Person Unknown

[margo_kim]

Title: Person Unknown
Fandom: Life on Mars
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 2,000
Characters/Pairings: Sam, Ruth, Annie, with some Gene. Established Sam/Annie.
Contains: Supporting character death, indirect descriptions of violence.
Summary: A dead man with a familiar face and no identification on him turns up in the early morning. Sam lets Ruth Tyler

Comments

[chamekke]

I have no words for how breathtaking this is.

I'll try to find some when I'm less stunned and tearful, but for now all I can say is: oh my God, you write like an angel.

[margo_kim]

Oh, wow. Thank you so much :)

[edzel2]

I absolutely, one-hundred-percent echo what chamekke said. Your style is what I'd call 'no fuss, no frills, just is,' and it suits LoM fiction SO well. I think, personally, that they should have asked YOU to write the new LoM eBooks....truly, this was wonderful and quite beautiful. My only complaint is that I didn't want it to finish... although it is perfect as it is. I just like your style...

I love that Ruth knows exactly who Sam is and just accepts it, even though to her it must indeed seem like madness. But they do say a mother will always know her own son and that is why this is just so perfect. I also love the hint that Gene knows too - not wanting to pry but are you using A2A canon which says that Gene knows where and what they really are, or is there some other motivation for what he did that I'm just not seeing? Just wondered, not important!

Thank you for sharing this gem with us.

[margo_kim]

Thank you so much :) That's high praise.

What I was thinking was that Gene's very aware that Sam's weird about Vic Tyler, even if Gene doesn't know exactly why. So taking into account that the last time Sam saw Vic, it lead to him pulling a gun on Gene and generally acting far more erratically than normal, Gene's decided that he's going to handle this situation carefully both because he cares about Sam and he doesn't want Sam to do anything stupid. I haven't yet written a fic with A2A canon, but I really want to. Gene as psychopomp is too interesting of a concept to pass up.

[anonyma73]

Oh, this is... sad. And so believable. Might have happened just like this.

So Ruth knows who Sam is, it seems. She recognizes his eyes... Does Gene know as well? At least he seems to know who the dead body is, and that Sam would be interested to know. And he brings Annie - maybe he feared that Sam would have one of his turns and wanted her to calm him?

Brilliant little story - thanks for writing!

[margo_kim]

Thank you. ♥

In my head, I'm not sure if Gene knows that Vic is Sam's father, or that Sam thinks Vic is his father. I think Gene's filed it under "strange quirks of his DI that he's not going to over-analyze."

[lacidiana]

I really love Sam's reactions in this -- "not recognizing" Vic after looking so many times, his interaction with Annie, his mother confronting him about his "insanity" and who/what he really is... awesome stuff, and Ruth's hand against Sam's face was especially moving. Thanks for sharing! ♥

[margo_kim]

Thanks!

eta: I had one word and I misspelled it. That's what they call skill.

[severinne]

There's something so pitch-perfectly creepy in this, somewhere between the affected indifference and the huge implications of what Sam and Ruth refuse to acknowledge at such a pivotal moment. This is really beautifully done, thank you for sharing :)

[margo_kim]

Thank you.

affected indifference

I quite like that phrase. Until you said it, I didn't realize that was what I was going for.