Alex Drake sits. She sits at the window and stares out over London. She sits at the window in her flat over Luigi’s and stares out over London. And she waits.

She’s not sure what she’s waiting for, if she’s really waiting for anything. She’s spent a long time waiting. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting to see her daughter. Waiting for a familiar voice to break through this fantasy and remind her of home. Like what happened to Sam. The way it’s supposed to happen.

But tonight, there is only quiet. She hasn’t even felt Molly sitting behind her, or felt that painful need to turn around and try to catch a glimpse of her. But Molly isn’t real, not here, anyway. She’s just a fleeting feeling. A fading memory.

The London night is cold, and Alex shuts the window. The restaurant downstairs is quiet, the patrons having stumbled their way blindly into the London streets hours before. She had watched Gene and Ray and Chris and Shaz bid each other goodbye, and resisted the urge to lean out the window and wish them all goodnight. They aren’t real, anyway. Just fleeting constructs in the last moments of her life. A fading life.

Alex wonders how much time she has left. Maybe one second, maybe ten. Maybe one hour, maybe a hundred. For Sam, years had passed in the few moments before his death. And if he could be believed - and if Alex can believe the life she lives now - and this is all real, was it all worth it to Sam? Was he given a life he wanted to live for just a few seconds before his death?

And what kind of man would choose to live in this world? This archaic, abusive, lonely world?

She reasons, as she sits down on her couch and swishes around warm wine in a glass, that this world isn’t all bad. She thinks about Shaz, and how Alex fought to bring her back from death, to breathe air back into her lungs and bring colour to her cheeks. She had fought for the life of a glorified imaginary friend, but why?

“Because she deserves to live,” Alex replied, aloud, to herself. “Because even if she’s just a part of me, she’s a part that deserves to live.”

Of course, there is Ray and Chris, and even bloody Gene Hunt. They all have a way about them, and a spirit that Alex isn’t sure she’s creative enough to have invented on her own. They all have their own lives, don’t they? Histories and personalities and relationships that she couldn’t have invented, that she’s not even sure if Sam could have invented. They live on, and meanwhile Alex, alone and probably a bit drunk, just survives. She’s makes it day to day, with the only thing keeping her going is that tomorrow she may find the key to take her home.

Meanwhile, she’s missing everything that’s keeping her alive. This place, these people. The one thing she tries to escape is the only thing that makes her feel.

Sam made a choice, and it cost him his life. She thinks, anyway. But it was his choice to make. And maybe, if this place really did exist independent of their imagination, it was a choice not to die, but to live.

Alex sighs and pulls the blanket up over her. She spreads out on the couch, and the churn of alcohol in her stomach lulling her to sleep. When she closes her eyes, she can feel the thunder of her own heartbeat. She hears the distant whoops and laughter of early morning drunks passing on the street. She hears the hum of the lights around her, and she feels the scratch of the blanket against her skin. Could she have invented it all, every detail, every subtle bit of life in the world around her?

“Come join the land of the living,” Gene had said to her, hours and hours before.

Tomorrow, she decides in a sleepy haze, it will be different. She may be only seconds away from death, but she’s been given a choice. Maybe a second chance, not to save her parents, and not to change history, but instead to just get to feel alive. And if she’s meant to spend her last seconds in this place, she will no longer spend those seconds just surviving. She will no longer spend them waiting.

She’ll live them.



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Cut for Spoilers: Series 1 finale of Ashes to Ashes and minor spoilers for the finale of Life on Mars.
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Muse: Alex Drake
Prompt: None
Verse: Canon
Word Count: 748