Five Times Sam Chose Life, and One Time He Didn’t, by neth_dugan, Turquoise Cortina
Title: Five Times Sam Chose Life, and One Time He Didn’t
Author: Neth Dugan
Rating: Turquoise Cortina (PG-13)
Warnings: Some depressing Themes (nothing explicit however)
Characters: Sam, some Gene
Spoilers: End of Season 2
Word Count: 3,962 (excluding header)
Summary: There is a theory that says that anything that can happen, does happen. Every decision to every choice has been made somewhere. In the finale Sam had a reality to decide upon and a choice to make - these are the consequences.
Author Notes: I started this not long after the finale originally aired but didn’t finish it till now because the last bit got me stuck for ages. This is the result of pondering what the ending means, what others seem to think it means. Interpretations, disappointments, joys, everything that comes with the ending of a series, and the resulting gap of wonder in our heads. I have to say thank you to m31andy who beta read this for me, and did a good job if I may say so, so thank you!
Deny Time’s Victories
Sam looked at the light in the tunnel, and what a cliché was that? Very probably a figment of his imagination as no one else seemed to notice it. Slowly, like something in an old movie, he turned his head towards the screams of his friends, the always-prejudiced Gene and the others. Screaming at him, on the floor, Annie had tears of frustration and pain in her eyes and Gene had just been shot, falling to the floor slowly. He wondered what he should do, what his choice should be. Is this real, or is it all in his head? If it was real…
If it was real and he found out back in 2006, would he ever forgive himself? If this was real, if his friends weren’t figments of his imagination he couldn’t ever let them die. And this was his choice, the choice. Accept this as real, this time as his life to live and feel in, or go back to procedures and books and computers. To decide what is real, if only to him, and in the fraction of a second that seemed so much longer, his gut decided and his mind was made.
Arm raised, his finger tightened and a bullet shot out of his gun and into Gene’s assailant, the last left standing. Behind him, barely noticed, the light faded away leaving the time it had led to available only by the long road. Walking forward, time speeding up to normal and the world solidifying itself as reality, at last, he busied himself with these people whom he’d betrayed.
And, as Gene’s retaliations and insults flew, a small smile flickered across his face.
In the days that followed he explained it all to Annie, the only person he’s ever confided in about his origins. He hinted to Gene about it all and hoped that when Star Wars eventually came out he’d take notice and figure it out - and he had. He lived day-to-day speeding in an old car protecting his city, with his fellow coppers. Protecting their people from Morgan and never regretting his choice. After thirty years or so when he finally allowed himself to see his mother again he didn’t say much to her, he couldn’t. And every Saturday night he sat next to Gene, sometimes laughing, sometimes not, because reality is so very different from fiction.
***
Oil Creeps Over Myelin Covered Trees
As he saw Morgan walk away, Sam’s eyes fixed on the doctor as he slowly turned and smirked at him. It was amazing really how it was that the two Morgans looked identical in every way. Both had an air about them, something sinister and dark under their fair and modern persona. If he didn’t know any better…
But he did. His mother was next to him, he wasn’t hearing voices any longer, he was in his own time and there wasn’t any sign of an overweight, drunken cop to be seen. Not outside of old TV shows on the telly in his room anyway. Content, he closed his eyes and smiled tiredly. Mum talked to him, updating him on what he’d missed, some of which he already knew, and sounding just like the Mum he knew. Except, she wasn’t… quite there.
He supposed that was natural, it wasn't as if he was all there now either.
Reaching a hand up to rub his face in habitual fashion he felt something familiar brush his fingers, and he almost dismissed it for how normal it had become until the neon lights broke through his eyelids. Sideburns. He had sideburns, long ones too, just like he’d had in the dream. Reaching around his head he didn’t feel any bald spots, any bandages, nothing…
But he ignored it. He was in 2006, he was back home and nothing could change that. Nothing would. He got better remarkably fast, went back to work because he needed to. Because the dream was always threatening to break through, threads of Annie’s voice or Gene’s grunts, gunshots and car motors and whiffs of Old Spice and Brut. Things he needed to escape from, needed to bury.
Pseudo-life continued, a return to his flat, a narration of what he’d dreamt, a talk to his mother that seemed off key, day-by-day, step-by-step. The world around him was grey instead of brown, so very clean and so very distant. Birds chirped and children laughed, businessmen walked briskly and every one ignored what was around them. So much space in a crowd, and it ate at him but he tried, he tried to ignore it. Ignore the flashes of Morgan around corners he had, his eyes playing tricks, no doubt.
Days later, in a meeting, when he looked around him the world came crashing down. This wasn’t real, this couldn’t be real. All the signs he’d been ignoring, passing off, the glances and the blandness and the sense that something was just slightly off. Like Gene wearing the wrong aftershave. Like a cup of tea with a touch less sugar than he liked when the maker knew exactly how he loved it. The same numbers, the same names, faces and numbers that had no way of being the same unless this wasn’t real.
It blew his mind, and he could hear a vague grunt of amusement some where in the back of his head.
Blood coming out of his hand, not a feeling in him he remembered Nelson’s words. He remembered Morgan’s words; he remembered the words of Mum through the radio in that dingy room. As his mind was blown out, the rocks came tumbling down forming a perfect puzzle picture to show a map of what this all meant. Gene wasn’t the cancer, he wasn’t real but he wasn’t the cancer. Morgan had been, he still was.
And he was going to die.
To hell with this. To hell with this mockery of his former life, with its blandness and lack of feeling, with its lack of life. If he was going to die, he’d do it in his own way, in his own world where he still felt alive. He’d choose his own fate, not some manifestation of an insidious disease. Minutes later, as he jumped off the building he smiled, and as he drove off in Gene’s car he was happy in that split eternity of life.
No fate, but what you make may not be the absolute truth - but he’d done his best.
***
There’s No Place Like Home
Walking out of his hospital room he unconsciously rubbed at the sideburns he’d let grow out, let stay grown in any case. He wasn’t sure why his mum had grown them out but he was glad. Even if he wasn’t in 1973 he could at least carry a part of it with him, a war wound and something to remind him of his friends and his world. His former world.
One of the first things he did, other than spend an hour looking around the local PC World to confirm the existence of PC Terminal and all its cousins, was to begin a search in police and newspaper records. Had there ever been any one called Gene Hunt? His brain had to come up with those characters some place, and honestly he’d probably read something about one of them once and incorporated it. The first thing that struck him, and it was an amazing thing, amazing just how odd it was more than anything, was how he didn’t have to go searching through stacks of paper or send Chris off to do it instead. How it was all there in one, small and oh-so-neat computer monitor buzzing away in the background, joining the symphony of electronics that was now so pronounced to his ears.
PING!
Sam just about fell off his chair when the search came up with so many results. Gene Hunt, DCI was real, but that wasn’t all of it. He read articles about Gene, about himself, about Annie and the others, though he didn’t try to find anything for after he’d left, but there were photos from papers. Photos of Gene and himself working on a case and…
This was completely surreal. For so long he’d assumed it hadn’t been real, because it couldn’t be real. Yet it was. That tape he’d sent off to the colleague who’d wanted to know of his experiences would certainly be an odd experience for her. A bubble of laughter escaped him as the absurdity of it struck him. Then he ducked his head as others glared at him for daring to disturb the status quo of the room when as he looked at the photo of himself and Gene, the thought came to him that if they were real it meant he’d left them to die.
They were dead. They had to be, without him there they would’ve all died and oh god. Oh God. No, no no, this couldn’t… he hadn’t, but he had. Oh God. He’d left them to die because he’d been so bloody determined to escape a dream that hadn’t been one and… oh God. People, his friends, were dead because of him.
In a dizzying experience reminiscent of his days back in ’73 the world circled around him. All the suits, so tidy and immaculate, the baroness of this hyped-up wasteland. No visible friendship, no camaraderie in the office, no joking, no sitting on a desk and swapping stories about dates whilst solving the latest case. So impersonal, so grey, so abstract and in a light-headed experience, the contrast with just yesterday’s memories ate at his gut. He’d never been one to listen to his gut here, not in this was a place where The Book was lord, and instincts had no place.
Thoughts buzzed around in his head even whilst presiding over the meeting, his first as DCI in months. Click in, click out, in and out with image after image flying in front of his eyes and emotions turning in his stomach. Every single thing felt wrong here, and wasn’t it always the case that you spent so long trying to get home only to find out it wasn’t home? Like a house or a box that wasn’t right any more, that was entirely the wrong shape for him. He could change to fit again, he supposed, but it wasn’t his time any more. He wasn’t needed here except by a few people and…
Gene needed him. About to be shot, to be killed because of his betrayal, because the man he thought he could trust turned out to be a snitch of the worst kind. Tears in Annie’s eyes, anger in Ray’s and the thump of his DCI on the stony ground. So close and so far, so real and these faces… these faces around him were like paintings on a canvas. It wasn’t right; it wasn’t his place any more. The Guv had gone and changed him against his will; gone and freed him and what were those people pointing at?
If you feel, you’re alive. If you don’t, you’re not.
And he couldn’t feel that wound on his thumb, nothing but numbness, nothing but a profound displacement deeper that the relief that he hadn’t been mad.
Running out of the room, and writing a note to his mother explaining as well as he could, asking that she be given the tape he’d recorded and assuring her that they’d meet again, he ran to the roof, resolute. As his legs left the solid floor he smiled. He was returning home, he was returning to his friends.
He saved their lives, and he’d tried explaining it to them as best he could. They thought he was bonkers but then what else was new? Besides they’d realise the truth soon enough. They worked as a team and they complemented each other, DCI and DI working together as an unbeatable partnership that became a legend in the force, saving lives and making a difference in peoples lives. After decades had gone by, after he read about his own apparent suicide he visited his mum and asked if she recognised him. She didn’t.
***
And Through It All
Staring down at the cut he’d managed to inflict upon himself he recalled Nelson’s words back there in the dream or the other life, his former life. This world, this bland world, full of people who were all so similar and rules and regulations that stifled any kind of difference or gut instinct worked up from experience. Walking anywhere was like walking past an endless montage of metal or architects post-modern sketches. No children playing football on the streets, or adults chatting in doorways. And here, in this job he’d loved, in this time that now seemed as unreal and foreign as it was confining, like bars on a cage keeping him in and restricting the muscles he’d built up in his coma.
It wasn’t right, and he had to get out there.
Not long later, whilst staring out at the city he’d protected for years, spinning slowly to take it all in he remembered his bewilderment when he’d first entered 1973 and Annie’s friend. The definitive step he’d almost taken all those months ago lay before him, so easy to take. So easy to return to that life, to jump off and return to the coma and to those people and a place where the bars were different. All he had to do was jump. But it was easy, too easy.
If 1973 had taught him anything, anything at all, it was that his easy choices weren’t always the right ones. No matter how appealing or freeing they were. Staring straight ahead, his curious but resolute expression plastered all over his face, he turned away and headed back down to the CID conference room.
That day he resigned his commission and went out searching for a life in this time with meaning. Remembering how he’d raged against Gene and the police of ’73 about their treatment of minorities and compared it to his idealised vision of this time, he decided to head in that direction, eventually finding a job helping to defend ethnic minorities from unfair treatment by the law. Every now and then Gene’s voice would play in the back of his mind, and he would grin silently but fondly. Maya never took him back, but he was fine with that, he had his mother, he had a full and rich life.
***
The Defendant Pleads Insanity
Sam was standing in the middle of the office, the smell of stale smoke from earlier in the evening filling his nostrils. Looking at everything anew, the papers he’d spread across the floor in a frenzy, the slight green tinge from low light and dingy walls. Papers strewn haphazardly across desks and old chairs placed only roughly near their desks. For so long it had seemed… wrong, alien, like something out of a perverted sci-fi movie.
And now he stood here, alone in the dark not knowing what to believe, what his last name was and who his parents really were. All around were the signs of reality that he’d always ignored. Details that he knew but always dismissed some how, the way things he expected to happen didn’t always.
Was it possible; was it really possible that he’d simply dreamt up 2006 in a haze of amnesia, cover story and fantasy? All the details of it, all the people and the movies and shows, all the books - Harry Potter! How could he imagine it all in so much detail?
Blinking as a bit of dust got too close to his eye, he wondered how he could have thought all of this a dream? This world and this life he was living in now, not something he remembered, but life right now. He knew it was possible to invent memories, he’d learnt that, dreamt that, years ago in some book or magazine.
Morgan had showed him proof, looking for more he’d found proof on his own, so much of it.
How did he know what do now? Did he wait for memories of life as Sam Williams to return and confirm who he had been, a life he didn’t know except for a minimalist biography and some gravestones? Or did he carry on has he was, as Sam Tyler, a man who didn’t really exist in any time, an artificial person manufactured by coincidence, aware that he may never remember his original life?
A thump of doors behind him brought him back to the present and, turning, he saw the Guv striding towards him wearing a grim expression on his face. Stopping a metre from him and tilting his body so it was just so the man conveyed just what it was he wanted.
“I didn’t know Guv, I swear. I… I got hit by a car, before I got here and forgot who I was, came up with something that-“
“Made you look like a poncy DI with a tendency towards insanity and stubbornness.”
Grinning sadly and staring down at his shoes briefly, Sam nodded slightly, Tyler’s memories demanding a snort that didn’t come.
“I understand you know, you came here to betray us all then went and changed your mind when you got here, that’s just typical of you. What I can’t understand is how when you found out, after everything you still went out and did that to us! To our team, to me! Can you explain that to me Sammy-boy?”
“I didn’t think this was real, I never thought this was… remember Tony Crane?”
“Yeah, so what?” Gene blustered, before realisation dawned. “Bollocks.”
“Yeah. It sounds so insane, so stupid, hell I thought I might be insane, but I didn’t think this was real. Or I’d have never… When I realised it was, when Morgan,” Sam paused, looking around the room and straining to find the words. “When Morgan proved that I was from this time, when I found out I’d been wrong, I tried to fix it, Gene. I found out you were undercover already and asked him for backup and, stupid me, thought he’d actually act on his word.”
Seconds of time passed by, slowly like hours whilst the older man thought, glaring at Sam. If he’d had a cigar he’d have been chewing on it like an old (not that old) western.
“Okay.”
“Okay? What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean Gladys? Okay. So long as you don’t still think you’re some poor sod from the future and realise we’re actually real so as to not betray us in times to come, okay. And some of that nancy boy imaginary science of yours actually comes in handy on occasion, much as I hate to admit it.”
“Thanks Guv.”
“Don’t forget it, and you still have to make it up to the others, I’m not helping you there. C’mon then, Pub!”
The two went off, got drunk and closed the case. It took time but eventually he was accepted back to the group. A long time for some and Ray never really trusted him for years to come. They did their job though; they solved crime and eventually became the best department in the CID. Sam never deciding which surname to go with, changed his it to Williams-Tyler, though still went by Tyler. Gene’s gut instincts and his science and procedure never quite melded, but whilst working together so often at least started to form something unmatched that didn’t seem quite possible. They still argued and fought of course, and without a map for the future it came as a complete surprise. No Star Wars or George Lucas devotees, but the first Star Trek movie was far better and kick-started the franchise into full gear a decade earlier than he’d dreamt. Society changed, tolerance came and grew. Manchester United went down in the league and David Beckham went to play for Manchester City who was at the top of the Premiership - pleasing Gene no end. Gene and Sam’s relationship, well that was something that was never spoken about nor defined but in the year 2006 and on the day that Sam had once thought he’d been knocked over they stood together, staring over their city. Life was good and full, and he felt every day of it.
***
Cogito Ergo Sum
Days went by and the numbness persisted, not the kind that resulted from nothing good or bad going on, but the kind where he just didn’t feel anything. The wound on this thumb had yet to hurt, though it now had stitches in it. No one had pointed it out to him, and he hadn’t felt it, just kept on stabbing himself unconsciously until the wound was so deep blood began seeping onto the table and some one finally noticed.
Not that he much cared; it wasn’t like it hurt.
Everything in this world was grey, black and blue. His suit was blue, the walls were grey and all the writing was black. And white, couldn’t forget the white to go with the black - everything so certain and so by the book with no room for deviation. It was all this way and that way, blue-tinted monochrome. His mother tried to help but nothing quite got through, the image of her now conflicted with the images of her thirty years ago. She, like the rest of this world, seemed not quite real, like an image on the wall, something apart from himself. He’d had moments like it as a teenager, but to live your entire life like that was something different, something he didn’t know how to deal with.
He stayed with the police for a while, he was still functional for the most part and he could still work - but it never held the same appeal or joy again. He tried to apply what he’d learnt from the past but got reeled out for it and in the end went so far off 'by the book' that his track record went down and down. Didn’t care about that much either. Not long later, he was asked to resign.
Several months went by until time saw him sitting on his couch, surrounded by rubbish and sweat-filled air, wearing nothing respectable and munching on a chocolate bar because, well, it seemed like the thing to do. Couldn’t forget to eat too often, and he did get hungry now and then. When the front door banged, bang-bang-BANG, he didn’t answer, ignored it 'til it opened to admit his mother, key in hand and a scared look on her face.
It registered, and a part of him was upset about it, the part that still cared about the world and this time and still tried to make everything mesh, make sense of it all. A part of him wanted to go up to her and hug her and say it would be all right, he’d figure it out eventually. But that part of him was distant, so all he did was look up at her and wonder, ask if she was okay and turn back to the TV when she mutely nodded before going to the fridge to throw away anything out of date and make sure he had some clean dishes.
Staring at her son’s hair, the silhouette of his figure against the television, she hoped that some day he’d come home to her, all of him together, and not just the pieces that made up a mind. So she worked, she looked after him and she hoped that some day he’d choose to live again.
Author: Neth Dugan
Rating: Turquoise Cortina (PG-13)
Warnings: Some depressing Themes (nothing explicit however)
Characters: Sam, some Gene
Spoilers: End of Season 2
Word Count: 3,962 (excluding header)
Summary: There is a theory that says that anything that can happen, does happen. Every decision to every choice has been made somewhere. In the finale Sam had a reality to decide upon and a choice to make - these are the consequences.
Author Notes: I started this not long after the finale originally aired but didn’t finish it till now because the last bit got me stuck for ages. This is the result of pondering what the ending means, what others seem to think it means. Interpretations, disappointments, joys, everything that comes with the ending of a series, and the resulting gap of wonder in our heads. I have to say thank you to m31andy who beta read this for me, and did a good job if I may say so, so thank you!
Deny Time’s Victories
Sam looked at the light in the tunnel, and what a cliché was that? Very probably a figment of his imagination as no one else seemed to notice it. Slowly, like something in an old movie, he turned his head towards the screams of his friends, the always-prejudiced Gene and the others. Screaming at him, on the floor, Annie had tears of frustration and pain in her eyes and Gene had just been shot, falling to the floor slowly. He wondered what he should do, what his choice should be. Is this real, or is it all in his head? If it was real…
If it was real and he found out back in 2006, would he ever forgive himself? If this was real, if his friends weren’t figments of his imagination he couldn’t ever let them die. And this was his choice, the choice. Accept this as real, this time as his life to live and feel in, or go back to procedures and books and computers. To decide what is real, if only to him, and in the fraction of a second that seemed so much longer, his gut decided and his mind was made.
Arm raised, his finger tightened and a bullet shot out of his gun and into Gene’s assailant, the last left standing. Behind him, barely noticed, the light faded away leaving the time it had led to available only by the long road. Walking forward, time speeding up to normal and the world solidifying itself as reality, at last, he busied himself with these people whom he’d betrayed.
And, as Gene’s retaliations and insults flew, a small smile flickered across his face.
In the days that followed he explained it all to Annie, the only person he’s ever confided in about his origins. He hinted to Gene about it all and hoped that when Star Wars eventually came out he’d take notice and figure it out - and he had. He lived day-to-day speeding in an old car protecting his city, with his fellow coppers. Protecting their people from Morgan and never regretting his choice. After thirty years or so when he finally allowed himself to see his mother again he didn’t say much to her, he couldn’t. And every Saturday night he sat next to Gene, sometimes laughing, sometimes not, because reality is so very different from fiction.
***
Oil Creeps Over Myelin Covered Trees
As he saw Morgan walk away, Sam’s eyes fixed on the doctor as he slowly turned and smirked at him. It was amazing really how it was that the two Morgans looked identical in every way. Both had an air about them, something sinister and dark under their fair and modern persona. If he didn’t know any better…
But he did. His mother was next to him, he wasn’t hearing voices any longer, he was in his own time and there wasn’t any sign of an overweight, drunken cop to be seen. Not outside of old TV shows on the telly in his room anyway. Content, he closed his eyes and smiled tiredly. Mum talked to him, updating him on what he’d missed, some of which he already knew, and sounding just like the Mum he knew. Except, she wasn’t… quite there.
He supposed that was natural, it wasn't as if he was all there now either.
Reaching a hand up to rub his face in habitual fashion he felt something familiar brush his fingers, and he almost dismissed it for how normal it had become until the neon lights broke through his eyelids. Sideburns. He had sideburns, long ones too, just like he’d had in the dream. Reaching around his head he didn’t feel any bald spots, any bandages, nothing…
But he ignored it. He was in 2006, he was back home and nothing could change that. Nothing would. He got better remarkably fast, went back to work because he needed to. Because the dream was always threatening to break through, threads of Annie’s voice or Gene’s grunts, gunshots and car motors and whiffs of Old Spice and Brut. Things he needed to escape from, needed to bury.
Pseudo-life continued, a return to his flat, a narration of what he’d dreamt, a talk to his mother that seemed off key, day-by-day, step-by-step. The world around him was grey instead of brown, so very clean and so very distant. Birds chirped and children laughed, businessmen walked briskly and every one ignored what was around them. So much space in a crowd, and it ate at him but he tried, he tried to ignore it. Ignore the flashes of Morgan around corners he had, his eyes playing tricks, no doubt.
Days later, in a meeting, when he looked around him the world came crashing down. This wasn’t real, this couldn’t be real. All the signs he’d been ignoring, passing off, the glances and the blandness and the sense that something was just slightly off. Like Gene wearing the wrong aftershave. Like a cup of tea with a touch less sugar than he liked when the maker knew exactly how he loved it. The same numbers, the same names, faces and numbers that had no way of being the same unless this wasn’t real.
It blew his mind, and he could hear a vague grunt of amusement some where in the back of his head.
Blood coming out of his hand, not a feeling in him he remembered Nelson’s words. He remembered Morgan’s words; he remembered the words of Mum through the radio in that dingy room. As his mind was blown out, the rocks came tumbling down forming a perfect puzzle picture to show a map of what this all meant. Gene wasn’t the cancer, he wasn’t real but he wasn’t the cancer. Morgan had been, he still was.
And he was going to die.
To hell with this. To hell with this mockery of his former life, with its blandness and lack of feeling, with its lack of life. If he was going to die, he’d do it in his own way, in his own world where he still felt alive. He’d choose his own fate, not some manifestation of an insidious disease. Minutes later, as he jumped off the building he smiled, and as he drove off in Gene’s car he was happy in that split eternity of life.
No fate, but what you make may not be the absolute truth - but he’d done his best.
***
There’s No Place Like Home
Walking out of his hospital room he unconsciously rubbed at the sideburns he’d let grow out, let stay grown in any case. He wasn’t sure why his mum had grown them out but he was glad. Even if he wasn’t in 1973 he could at least carry a part of it with him, a war wound and something to remind him of his friends and his world. His former world.
One of the first things he did, other than spend an hour looking around the local PC World to confirm the existence of PC Terminal and all its cousins, was to begin a search in police and newspaper records. Had there ever been any one called Gene Hunt? His brain had to come up with those characters some place, and honestly he’d probably read something about one of them once and incorporated it. The first thing that struck him, and it was an amazing thing, amazing just how odd it was more than anything, was how he didn’t have to go searching through stacks of paper or send Chris off to do it instead. How it was all there in one, small and oh-so-neat computer monitor buzzing away in the background, joining the symphony of electronics that was now so pronounced to his ears.
PING!
Sam just about fell off his chair when the search came up with so many results. Gene Hunt, DCI was real, but that wasn’t all of it. He read articles about Gene, about himself, about Annie and the others, though he didn’t try to find anything for after he’d left, but there were photos from papers. Photos of Gene and himself working on a case and…
This was completely surreal. For so long he’d assumed it hadn’t been real, because it couldn’t be real. Yet it was. That tape he’d sent off to the colleague who’d wanted to know of his experiences would certainly be an odd experience for her. A bubble of laughter escaped him as the absurdity of it struck him. Then he ducked his head as others glared at him for daring to disturb the status quo of the room when as he looked at the photo of himself and Gene, the thought came to him that if they were real it meant he’d left them to die.
They were dead. They had to be, without him there they would’ve all died and oh god. Oh God. No, no no, this couldn’t… he hadn’t, but he had. Oh God. He’d left them to die because he’d been so bloody determined to escape a dream that hadn’t been one and… oh God. People, his friends, were dead because of him.
In a dizzying experience reminiscent of his days back in ’73 the world circled around him. All the suits, so tidy and immaculate, the baroness of this hyped-up wasteland. No visible friendship, no camaraderie in the office, no joking, no sitting on a desk and swapping stories about dates whilst solving the latest case. So impersonal, so grey, so abstract and in a light-headed experience, the contrast with just yesterday’s memories ate at his gut. He’d never been one to listen to his gut here, not in this was a place where The Book was lord, and instincts had no place.
Thoughts buzzed around in his head even whilst presiding over the meeting, his first as DCI in months. Click in, click out, in and out with image after image flying in front of his eyes and emotions turning in his stomach. Every single thing felt wrong here, and wasn’t it always the case that you spent so long trying to get home only to find out it wasn’t home? Like a house or a box that wasn’t right any more, that was entirely the wrong shape for him. He could change to fit again, he supposed, but it wasn’t his time any more. He wasn’t needed here except by a few people and…
Gene needed him. About to be shot, to be killed because of his betrayal, because the man he thought he could trust turned out to be a snitch of the worst kind. Tears in Annie’s eyes, anger in Ray’s and the thump of his DCI on the stony ground. So close and so far, so real and these faces… these faces around him were like paintings on a canvas. It wasn’t right; it wasn’t his place any more. The Guv had gone and changed him against his will; gone and freed him and what were those people pointing at?
If you feel, you’re alive. If you don’t, you’re not.
And he couldn’t feel that wound on his thumb, nothing but numbness, nothing but a profound displacement deeper that the relief that he hadn’t been mad.
Running out of the room, and writing a note to his mother explaining as well as he could, asking that she be given the tape he’d recorded and assuring her that they’d meet again, he ran to the roof, resolute. As his legs left the solid floor he smiled. He was returning home, he was returning to his friends.
He saved their lives, and he’d tried explaining it to them as best he could. They thought he was bonkers but then what else was new? Besides they’d realise the truth soon enough. They worked as a team and they complemented each other, DCI and DI working together as an unbeatable partnership that became a legend in the force, saving lives and making a difference in peoples lives. After decades had gone by, after he read about his own apparent suicide he visited his mum and asked if she recognised him. She didn’t.
***
And Through It All
Staring down at the cut he’d managed to inflict upon himself he recalled Nelson’s words back there in the dream or the other life, his former life. This world, this bland world, full of people who were all so similar and rules and regulations that stifled any kind of difference or gut instinct worked up from experience. Walking anywhere was like walking past an endless montage of metal or architects post-modern sketches. No children playing football on the streets, or adults chatting in doorways. And here, in this job he’d loved, in this time that now seemed as unreal and foreign as it was confining, like bars on a cage keeping him in and restricting the muscles he’d built up in his coma.
It wasn’t right, and he had to get out there.
Not long later, whilst staring out at the city he’d protected for years, spinning slowly to take it all in he remembered his bewilderment when he’d first entered 1973 and Annie’s friend. The definitive step he’d almost taken all those months ago lay before him, so easy to take. So easy to return to that life, to jump off and return to the coma and to those people and a place where the bars were different. All he had to do was jump. But it was easy, too easy.
If 1973 had taught him anything, anything at all, it was that his easy choices weren’t always the right ones. No matter how appealing or freeing they were. Staring straight ahead, his curious but resolute expression plastered all over his face, he turned away and headed back down to the CID conference room.
That day he resigned his commission and went out searching for a life in this time with meaning. Remembering how he’d raged against Gene and the police of ’73 about their treatment of minorities and compared it to his idealised vision of this time, he decided to head in that direction, eventually finding a job helping to defend ethnic minorities from unfair treatment by the law. Every now and then Gene’s voice would play in the back of his mind, and he would grin silently but fondly. Maya never took him back, but he was fine with that, he had his mother, he had a full and rich life.
***
The Defendant Pleads Insanity
Sam was standing in the middle of the office, the smell of stale smoke from earlier in the evening filling his nostrils. Looking at everything anew, the papers he’d spread across the floor in a frenzy, the slight green tinge from low light and dingy walls. Papers strewn haphazardly across desks and old chairs placed only roughly near their desks. For so long it had seemed… wrong, alien, like something out of a perverted sci-fi movie.
And now he stood here, alone in the dark not knowing what to believe, what his last name was and who his parents really were. All around were the signs of reality that he’d always ignored. Details that he knew but always dismissed some how, the way things he expected to happen didn’t always.
Was it possible; was it really possible that he’d simply dreamt up 2006 in a haze of amnesia, cover story and fantasy? All the details of it, all the people and the movies and shows, all the books - Harry Potter! How could he imagine it all in so much detail?
Blinking as a bit of dust got too close to his eye, he wondered how he could have thought all of this a dream? This world and this life he was living in now, not something he remembered, but life right now. He knew it was possible to invent memories, he’d learnt that, dreamt that, years ago in some book or magazine.
Morgan had showed him proof, looking for more he’d found proof on his own, so much of it.
How did he know what do now? Did he wait for memories of life as Sam Williams to return and confirm who he had been, a life he didn’t know except for a minimalist biography and some gravestones? Or did he carry on has he was, as Sam Tyler, a man who didn’t really exist in any time, an artificial person manufactured by coincidence, aware that he may never remember his original life?
A thump of doors behind him brought him back to the present and, turning, he saw the Guv striding towards him wearing a grim expression on his face. Stopping a metre from him and tilting his body so it was just so the man conveyed just what it was he wanted.
“I didn’t know Guv, I swear. I… I got hit by a car, before I got here and forgot who I was, came up with something that-“
“Made you look like a poncy DI with a tendency towards insanity and stubbornness.”
Grinning sadly and staring down at his shoes briefly, Sam nodded slightly, Tyler’s memories demanding a snort that didn’t come.
“I understand you know, you came here to betray us all then went and changed your mind when you got here, that’s just typical of you. What I can’t understand is how when you found out, after everything you still went out and did that to us! To our team, to me! Can you explain that to me Sammy-boy?”
“I didn’t think this was real, I never thought this was… remember Tony Crane?”
“Yeah, so what?” Gene blustered, before realisation dawned. “Bollocks.”
“Yeah. It sounds so insane, so stupid, hell I thought I might be insane, but I didn’t think this was real. Or I’d have never… When I realised it was, when Morgan,” Sam paused, looking around the room and straining to find the words. “When Morgan proved that I was from this time, when I found out I’d been wrong, I tried to fix it, Gene. I found out you were undercover already and asked him for backup and, stupid me, thought he’d actually act on his word.”
Seconds of time passed by, slowly like hours whilst the older man thought, glaring at Sam. If he’d had a cigar he’d have been chewing on it like an old (not that old) western.
“Okay.”
“Okay? What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean Gladys? Okay. So long as you don’t still think you’re some poor sod from the future and realise we’re actually real so as to not betray us in times to come, okay. And some of that nancy boy imaginary science of yours actually comes in handy on occasion, much as I hate to admit it.”
“Thanks Guv.”
“Don’t forget it, and you still have to make it up to the others, I’m not helping you there. C’mon then, Pub!”
The two went off, got drunk and closed the case. It took time but eventually he was accepted back to the group. A long time for some and Ray never really trusted him for years to come. They did their job though; they solved crime and eventually became the best department in the CID. Sam never deciding which surname to go with, changed his it to Williams-Tyler, though still went by Tyler. Gene’s gut instincts and his science and procedure never quite melded, but whilst working together so often at least started to form something unmatched that didn’t seem quite possible. They still argued and fought of course, and without a map for the future it came as a complete surprise. No Star Wars or George Lucas devotees, but the first Star Trek movie was far better and kick-started the franchise into full gear a decade earlier than he’d dreamt. Society changed, tolerance came and grew. Manchester United went down in the league and David Beckham went to play for Manchester City who was at the top of the Premiership - pleasing Gene no end. Gene and Sam’s relationship, well that was something that was never spoken about nor defined but in the year 2006 and on the day that Sam had once thought he’d been knocked over they stood together, staring over their city. Life was good and full, and he felt every day of it.
***
Cogito Ergo Sum
Days went by and the numbness persisted, not the kind that resulted from nothing good or bad going on, but the kind where he just didn’t feel anything. The wound on this thumb had yet to hurt, though it now had stitches in it. No one had pointed it out to him, and he hadn’t felt it, just kept on stabbing himself unconsciously until the wound was so deep blood began seeping onto the table and some one finally noticed.
Not that he much cared; it wasn’t like it hurt.
Everything in this world was grey, black and blue. His suit was blue, the walls were grey and all the writing was black. And white, couldn’t forget the white to go with the black - everything so certain and so by the book with no room for deviation. It was all this way and that way, blue-tinted monochrome. His mother tried to help but nothing quite got through, the image of her now conflicted with the images of her thirty years ago. She, like the rest of this world, seemed not quite real, like an image on the wall, something apart from himself. He’d had moments like it as a teenager, but to live your entire life like that was something different, something he didn’t know how to deal with.
He stayed with the police for a while, he was still functional for the most part and he could still work - but it never held the same appeal or joy again. He tried to apply what he’d learnt from the past but got reeled out for it and in the end went so far off 'by the book' that his track record went down and down. Didn’t care about that much either. Not long later, he was asked to resign.
Several months went by until time saw him sitting on his couch, surrounded by rubbish and sweat-filled air, wearing nothing respectable and munching on a chocolate bar because, well, it seemed like the thing to do. Couldn’t forget to eat too often, and he did get hungry now and then. When the front door banged, bang-bang-BANG, he didn’t answer, ignored it 'til it opened to admit his mother, key in hand and a scared look on her face.
It registered, and a part of him was upset about it, the part that still cared about the world and this time and still tried to make everything mesh, make sense of it all. A part of him wanted to go up to her and hug her and say it would be all right, he’d figure it out eventually. But that part of him was distant, so all he did was look up at her and wonder, ask if she was okay and turn back to the TV when she mutely nodded before going to the fridge to throw away anything out of date and make sure he had some clean dishes.
Staring at her son’s hair, the silhouette of his figure against the television, she hoped that some day he’d come home to her, all of him together, and not just the pieces that made up a mind. So she worked, she looked after him and she hoped that some day he’d choose to live again.