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[oom] 2x03 Holding On
She could hear the medical machinery, could hear the sinus rhythm pinging, slow, erratic. Later she would remember screaming at them to keep trying, but now, all she could feel was the massive surge of electricity coursing through her torso. It was like being kicked by a mule. It literally lifted her off the floor and slammed her against the wall of her flat.
She slid to the ground, pleading for them to keep trying. She's not dead. She's still here.
The last thing she remembers before slipping into darkness was that horrible sound. Flat and mechanical, the lifeless, steady tone meant one and only one thing.
~~~
How she got to work, she didn't quite recall, but the Guv was putting her in a car. They'd found where Kevin Hales, suspected cop killer, was being held.
They arrived just in time to see his body being loaded into the coroner's van.
The Guv collected his personal effects. For further investigation.
The day only got better when Mr. Pattison arrived with his young daughter Charlotte in tow, bringing them a mutilated, bloody, maggot ridden rabbit carcass that they'd received in the mail.
It was Charlotte's birthday and she'd opened the box thinking it was a present.
The universe completed the hat trick as they were walking across the car park to Luigi's. A man on a motorcycle threw a firebomb at Pattison and his daughter took the brunt of the blast.
She'd never seen the Guv so filled with righteous rage. The sight was both terrifying and if she was honest, comforting.
~~~
She watched Gene open the envelope Pattison had forwarded to the Met with her heart in her mouth.
The vivisectionist legislation in Parliament had brought out the militants, and the threat said six attacks in the next three days.
They had only one lead. Robin Elliot. Unfortunately, he'd been in prison since 1975, and was on hunger strike to protest the bill. But the crime for which he was convicted fit the M.O. of the bombing against the Pattisons. An explosive thrown from a moving vehicle.
Alex was convinced he knew something. Gene, less so.
~~~
Robin Elliot had been forty days without so much as a cup of tea. His internal organs were beginning to fail.
He pegged Alex as a fellow intellectual, but Gene's delicate manner of handling suspects disrupted any kind of discourse they might have had. He was so hell bent on finding out who was behind firebombing young Charlotte, he missed the finer clues. He missed Elliot going on about playing the piano, about perfecting the piece by playing it over and over again.
(Molly. Her name was Molly. She's twelve years old. She's on her way to her birthday party.)
"Everyone wants to live, Alex. But who are we to decide who's worth being saved?"
She didn't know the answer to that question. And she could barely stomach watching the Guv eat and drink in front of the old man.
Gene wasn't hearing that Elliot knew something. Despite all evidence that he couldn't be receiving any information from the outside. She knew he was the key.
Gene was too focused on stopping the next attack. Getting results.
~~~
That she was hearing the voices of her doctors saying that she had no brain activity and that she was clinically dead did not help matters. The appearance of SuperMac was just the cherry on a shit sundae.
He wanted Gene to put a note in Kevin Hale's arrest record saying he was a suicide risk, and thus, close down any investigation. The look on Gene's face told her exactly what he thought of that.
~~~
Chris chased down the info on Elliot's lodger from 1975. A psychoanalyst named Jeremy Hulse. She appealed to him to give them any information he had that might help them form a connection to his life.
He wasn't very helpful until Alex asked him his opinion of the man as a patient.
"I'd probably diagnose narcissistic personality disorder."
"Sorry, come again?" It all sounded like bollocks to him, she could tell.
"He had a wildly exaggerated sense of his own importance. As if only he knew the truth."
Gene cut a glance at Alex. "Sounds familiar."
She ignored him, and invited Jeremy to accompany them back to reinterview Elliot, to help filter through some of the rhetoric he was employing.
~~~
Elliot kept looking at his watch. She noticed that even as she let him pull her deeper into conversation. Trying to create a rapport, an intimacy. She knew he was fighting to dehumanise himself, to put the cause ahead of his own life.
And she fought just as hard to explain to him that every moment of life was precious. Even his. But the details were slipping away from her (What colour were Molly's eyes? She couldn't remember.), and she lost it. Asked Elliot if he was the one sending the roses. She let him get under her skin. He clearly new nothing about her future. She was jumping at shadows again.
And so after a brief consult with Hulse and the Guv, she went back in to inform him that she was done. He had nothing of interest to them.
He looked at his watch one last time and gave her an address. The attack was supposed to take place in ten minutes. They were already late.
Not that they didn't try.
Turns out the time was right, but the target was wrong. They redirected to a university animal lab.
A lab right next to the music hall. She heard the piano music and followed it into a practice room. Someone had left a reel to reel tape machine playing.
She knew he'd been involved.
~~~
The Guv did not care. They'd found the can of spray paint that had been used to vandalise the wall of the lab. Whoever used it last would have green paint all over their hands.
Perhaps even the runner who bolted from the building and dove into the Student Union, forcing them to secure the building and search all the students.
Joy.
~~~
The Guv nicked him. Adrian Dunbar. Green paint on his hands, animal rights literature in his pocket. And a head full of militant slogans.
Of course he denied any association with Robin Elliot.
She had to rescue the poor bastard from Gene's special method of interrogation. After she got Ray to break the bathroom door down, they had it out in the hallway.
He refused to see that this was a crime of subtleties. That they were being played for the hamfisted, unsophisticated, pig-headed louts people always assumed the Met to be. That he was playing right into their hands by acting his part.
They ended up shouting at each other, as always, and when he dismissed her for the rest of the day, she took him up on it. She went straight home, foregoing drinks at Luigi's for a little peace and quiet.
~~~
The waking dream was so vivid, she felt like she could reach out and touch Molly's hair.
Alex saw her reflection in the television screen, and she didn't disappear when Alex turned to look. She was standing at the kitchen sink, brushing her teeth so hard she was spitting out blood.
Alex spoke to her, and told her to stop, but when the figure turned, it was Robin Elliot, spitting a mouthful of teeth and blood into the sink.
She blinked and he was gone, leaving her with a head full of doubts and a sinking stomach full of dread. She didn't know anymore whether she was alive or dead. She felt like she didn't know anything but grief.
~~~
She went to visit Elliot in hospital the next day, perching gingerly on the edge of his hospital bed, eyeing the tubes and wires with a certain strange sympathy.
"I thought you could help me. Probably, I wanted to help you."
She took a deep breath.
"I think... You haven't been touched since your mother died." Her hand came to rest on his. "Maybe that's what this is. The physical pain is easier than the loneliness and the grief.
"I know what it's like to be separated from someone." She tried to keep the tears at bay. "I don't know what time my daughter went to bed, and I don't know what time that little girl got up, but I feel like you know that. So if you think that nobody cares whether you live or die, you are so wrong. So wrong."
He struggled to speak, and she leaned in, intent.
"Who else is out there? Who else is doing this?"
His voice was thin and ragged.
"There's only one person. Just him and me."
~~~
She phoned the office and told the Guv the list of targets.
He was not well pleased, but he listened to her reel off the list and checked them against Dunbar's A to Z. Every page was dog-eared.
"Guv. Do you think that if I've saved some lives, that means I'm worth saving?"
His voice on the telephone was distant, cool.
"If you say so. Now get your bony arse back here."
Just a few minutes later, as she was walking out, he radioed back. There'd been another attack. Elliot had lied to her.
By the time she got back through security, he was gone. Multiple organ failure. Nothing to be done for it.
She did have a glance through his things. Wonder of wonders, she found a card with Jeremy Hulse's handwriting on it.
~~~
She confronted Hulse. Laid it out.
He'd been involved in the bombing in 1975, but Elliot had refused to implicate him. All the targets were the original targets from seven years previous. Elliot was threatening to expose his involvement if he didn't stop the current bill.
The man fell apart under her questioning, and for a moment, she wished she'd really waited to get him back to a proper interview room.
She never saw the threat coming.
~~~
Somewhere along the line, Gene and the lads showed up. She didn't precisely remember how or when. (He was always at her shoulder, wasn't he? He was always there to protect her.)
She heard the shot and felt him knock her to the ground.
The world tilted and everything went blurry.
The defibrillator whirred as it charged, and she heard the voices. She felt the kick again, lifting her off the floor.
(Her name is Molly.)
The heart monitor beeped.
(Today is her birthday.)
And beeped again.
Normal sinus rhythm. Everything came back into focus.
They saved her.
~~~
There was a rose waiting for her on her desk when she got back to CID.
She wanted it to be from Gene.
But it wasn't, and he seemed offended that she'd even asked.
(Her name is Molly. And she's the reason I can't stay, Gene.
All dialogue taken from 2x03 Ashes To Ashes
She slid to the ground, pleading for them to keep trying. She's not dead. She's still here.
The last thing she remembers before slipping into darkness was that horrible sound. Flat and mechanical, the lifeless, steady tone meant one and only one thing.
~~~
How she got to work, she didn't quite recall, but the Guv was putting her in a car. They'd found where Kevin Hales, suspected cop killer, was being held.
They arrived just in time to see his body being loaded into the coroner's van.
The Guv collected his personal effects. For further investigation.
The day only got better when Mr. Pattison arrived with his young daughter Charlotte in tow, bringing them a mutilated, bloody, maggot ridden rabbit carcass that they'd received in the mail.
It was Charlotte's birthday and she'd opened the box thinking it was a present.
The universe completed the hat trick as they were walking across the car park to Luigi's. A man on a motorcycle threw a firebomb at Pattison and his daughter took the brunt of the blast.
She'd never seen the Guv so filled with righteous rage. The sight was both terrifying and if she was honest, comforting.
~~~
She watched Gene open the envelope Pattison had forwarded to the Met with her heart in her mouth.
The vivisectionist legislation in Parliament had brought out the militants, and the threat said six attacks in the next three days.
They had only one lead. Robin Elliot. Unfortunately, he'd been in prison since 1975, and was on hunger strike to protest the bill. But the crime for which he was convicted fit the M.O. of the bombing against the Pattisons. An explosive thrown from a moving vehicle.
Alex was convinced he knew something. Gene, less so.
~~~
Robin Elliot had been forty days without so much as a cup of tea. His internal organs were beginning to fail.
He pegged Alex as a fellow intellectual, but Gene's delicate manner of handling suspects disrupted any kind of discourse they might have had. He was so hell bent on finding out who was behind firebombing young Charlotte, he missed the finer clues. He missed Elliot going on about playing the piano, about perfecting the piece by playing it over and over again.
(Molly. Her name was Molly. She's twelve years old. She's on her way to her birthday party.)
"Everyone wants to live, Alex. But who are we to decide who's worth being saved?"
She didn't know the answer to that question. And she could barely stomach watching the Guv eat and drink in front of the old man.
Gene wasn't hearing that Elliot knew something. Despite all evidence that he couldn't be receiving any information from the outside. She knew he was the key.
Gene was too focused on stopping the next attack. Getting results.
~~~
That she was hearing the voices of her doctors saying that she had no brain activity and that she was clinically dead did not help matters. The appearance of SuperMac was just the cherry on a shit sundae.
He wanted Gene to put a note in Kevin Hale's arrest record saying he was a suicide risk, and thus, close down any investigation. The look on Gene's face told her exactly what he thought of that.
~~~
Chris chased down the info on Elliot's lodger from 1975. A psychoanalyst named Jeremy Hulse. She appealed to him to give them any information he had that might help them form a connection to his life.
He wasn't very helpful until Alex asked him his opinion of the man as a patient.
"I'd probably diagnose narcissistic personality disorder."
"Sorry, come again?" It all sounded like bollocks to him, she could tell.
"He had a wildly exaggerated sense of his own importance. As if only he knew the truth."
Gene cut a glance at Alex. "Sounds familiar."
She ignored him, and invited Jeremy to accompany them back to reinterview Elliot, to help filter through some of the rhetoric he was employing.
~~~
Elliot kept looking at his watch. She noticed that even as she let him pull her deeper into conversation. Trying to create a rapport, an intimacy. She knew he was fighting to dehumanise himself, to put the cause ahead of his own life.
And she fought just as hard to explain to him that every moment of life was precious. Even his. But the details were slipping away from her (What colour were Molly's eyes? She couldn't remember.), and she lost it. Asked Elliot if he was the one sending the roses. She let him get under her skin. He clearly new nothing about her future. She was jumping at shadows again.
And so after a brief consult with Hulse and the Guv, she went back in to inform him that she was done. He had nothing of interest to them.
He looked at his watch one last time and gave her an address. The attack was supposed to take place in ten minutes. They were already late.
Not that they didn't try.
Turns out the time was right, but the target was wrong. They redirected to a university animal lab.
A lab right next to the music hall. She heard the piano music and followed it into a practice room. Someone had left a reel to reel tape machine playing.
She knew he'd been involved.
~~~
The Guv did not care. They'd found the can of spray paint that had been used to vandalise the wall of the lab. Whoever used it last would have green paint all over their hands.
Perhaps even the runner who bolted from the building and dove into the Student Union, forcing them to secure the building and search all the students.
Joy.
~~~
The Guv nicked him. Adrian Dunbar. Green paint on his hands, animal rights literature in his pocket. And a head full of militant slogans.
Of course he denied any association with Robin Elliot.
She had to rescue the poor bastard from Gene's special method of interrogation. After she got Ray to break the bathroom door down, they had it out in the hallway.
He refused to see that this was a crime of subtleties. That they were being played for the hamfisted, unsophisticated, pig-headed louts people always assumed the Met to be. That he was playing right into their hands by acting his part.
They ended up shouting at each other, as always, and when he dismissed her for the rest of the day, she took him up on it. She went straight home, foregoing drinks at Luigi's for a little peace and quiet.
~~~
The waking dream was so vivid, she felt like she could reach out and touch Molly's hair.
Alex saw her reflection in the television screen, and she didn't disappear when Alex turned to look. She was standing at the kitchen sink, brushing her teeth so hard she was spitting out blood.
Alex spoke to her, and told her to stop, but when the figure turned, it was Robin Elliot, spitting a mouthful of teeth and blood into the sink.
She blinked and he was gone, leaving her with a head full of doubts and a sinking stomach full of dread. She didn't know anymore whether she was alive or dead. She felt like she didn't know anything but grief.
~~~
She went to visit Elliot in hospital the next day, perching gingerly on the edge of his hospital bed, eyeing the tubes and wires with a certain strange sympathy.
"I thought you could help me. Probably, I wanted to help you."
She took a deep breath.
"I think... You haven't been touched since your mother died." Her hand came to rest on his. "Maybe that's what this is. The physical pain is easier than the loneliness and the grief.
"I know what it's like to be separated from someone." She tried to keep the tears at bay. "I don't know what time my daughter went to bed, and I don't know what time that little girl got up, but I feel like you know that. So if you think that nobody cares whether you live or die, you are so wrong. So wrong."
He struggled to speak, and she leaned in, intent.
"Who else is out there? Who else is doing this?"
His voice was thin and ragged.
"There's only one person. Just him and me."
~~~
She phoned the office and told the Guv the list of targets.
He was not well pleased, but he listened to her reel off the list and checked them against Dunbar's A to Z. Every page was dog-eared.
"Guv. Do you think that if I've saved some lives, that means I'm worth saving?"
His voice on the telephone was distant, cool.
"If you say so. Now get your bony arse back here."
Just a few minutes later, as she was walking out, he radioed back. There'd been another attack. Elliot had lied to her.
By the time she got back through security, he was gone. Multiple organ failure. Nothing to be done for it.
She did have a glance through his things. Wonder of wonders, she found a card with Jeremy Hulse's handwriting on it.
~~~
She confronted Hulse. Laid it out.
He'd been involved in the bombing in 1975, but Elliot had refused to implicate him. All the targets were the original targets from seven years previous. Elliot was threatening to expose his involvement if he didn't stop the current bill.
The man fell apart under her questioning, and for a moment, she wished she'd really waited to get him back to a proper interview room.
She never saw the threat coming.
~~~
Somewhere along the line, Gene and the lads showed up. She didn't precisely remember how or when. (He was always at her shoulder, wasn't he? He was always there to protect her.)
She heard the shot and felt him knock her to the ground.
The world tilted and everything went blurry.
The defibrillator whirred as it charged, and she heard the voices. She felt the kick again, lifting her off the floor.
(Her name is Molly.)
The heart monitor beeped.
(Today is her birthday.)
And beeped again.
Normal sinus rhythm. Everything came back into focus.
They saved her.
~~~
There was a rose waiting for her on her desk when she got back to CID.
She wanted it to be from Gene.
But it wasn't, and he seemed offended that she'd even asked.
(Her name is Molly. And she's the reason I can't stay, Gene.
All dialogue taken from 2x03 Ashes To Ashes