Chapter Text
“Do you remember that night, Al?”
Al paused halfway across the patio. He didn’t think he’d made a sound, and yet with her back to him Donna somehow not only knew someone was behind her, but who it was. She had her head tilted back, as if searching the sky for something.
“Uh...which night?” he asked, confused.
She pulled the shawl wrapped around her shoulders closer, still looking up into the night sky. “The night after he left again.”
“Oh.” Al moved a bit closer to her, and quietly said, “Yeah. I do.”
“It was a night like this, clear and cool. You told me where and when he was, what he was supposed to do.” Donna sighed, and Al could hear the impending tears as she went on. “And I asked Ziggy to locate a star for me.”
“Talitha.”
Donna nodded, then craned her neck to search the constellations above them. Here in the desert, far from any artificial light, one could be overwhelmed by the vastness of the galaxy, the millions of stars, planets, other moons and suns peppered across the blackness of space. “Do you know why I asked that?”
“Well, I...ah...didn’t really think about it,” he confessed.
“Because when you were back in 1945, he was testing my memory of the names of stars. He asked me to find Megrez, and I told him it was in Ursa Major, the faintest star in the bowl. When I asked why that one was so special, he said it was because it was 54 light-years from Earth.”
Al frowned for a few moments, then realized what Sam had meant. “And Talitha?”
“Was 43 light-years from Earth. It was ‘born’ the same year that Sam had Leapt to.”
Finally she turned to face him, and Al wasn’t surprised to see tears running down her face. He stepped up to her and gently wiped her cheeks dry, and she leaned against him. As he wrapped his arms around her, she said, “I know it sounds silly, but...I like to think of Talitha as ‘our’ star. That...” She sniffled, and shook her head slightly. “It’s like...he’s out there, some-when, and...maybe, if he can, he goes out at night and looks up at the same star, and maybe it’s the same time I’m looking at it, and...” She broke off as a sob rose in her throat.
Al tightened his embrace, feeling as if he was holding her together. “Shh,” he soothed.
“I...I don’t know...how much longer I can do this, Al,” she said, trying to regain control of her emotions. She lifted a hand to wipe at her eyes, and he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to her. Sniffling again, she moved away from him to lean against the short wall that surrounded the patio. “I...so many things...remind me of him. Tonight especially. It’s like...I can...feel him sometimes. You know?” She used the handkerchief, and sighed, shaking her head. “Do you think...is he ok?”
Al fought down his own emotions, determined to stay strong, and confident, for Donna’s sake. “Oh, yeah, Sammy’s fine. And we’ll get him back. We’ll figure out something, Donna, don’t worry.”
She scoffed lightly. “How?” She waved a hand towards the dark mountain. “We’re dead in the water, Al. Forget about trying to retrieve Sam; you can’t even use the Imaging Chamber.”
He had to clench his jaw, tightly, to keep back the retort. Snapping at Donna wouldn’t do any good, but it would hurt her. He knew she didn’t mean for him to give up on ever getting Sam home, she just meant... With an inward sigh, Al moved to lean against the wall near her. “I remember something else about that night,” he said, his voice low and soft. “Something I said to you then, and still think now.” When she turned to frown at him, he smiled gently. “You’re an amazing woman, Donna.”
Donna rolled her eyes and started to protest, but Al cut her off. “I mean it, Donna. You two were...young and in love. Both of you are brilliant beyond measure, and ambitious. Unfortunately, it was Sam’s ambitions that took him away from you. But...” He swallowed roughly, and cleared his throat. “You’ve held the faith all these years. You believed in him, that he’d succeed with this...crazy dream of his, and that he’ll manage to come home somehow. That’s what you said to me that night.”
She smiled faintly at the memory, and quoted herself. “He came back to me once. He’ll come back again.”
Al nodded and smiled, taking her hand and holding it tightly. “And he will. Something will happen; he’ll finish his good work back there, and the Powers in Charge will let him come home.”
Donna sighed and shook her head. “I wish I could believe you, Al. I wish I...” She choked back the sob and turned from him, looking out over the empty desert until she couldn’t see it through the tears.
Al felt his heart drop at the sound of defeat in her voice. He couldn’t believe she was giving up. Not now. Not after all these years of...but what did he expect of her? No matter how strong a person was, there was only so much pain and heartache they could take, before they finally had to move on, make a new life for themselves. He knew that only too well from bitter experience. He’d just hoped that it wouldn’t happen to his best friend.
“Where will you go?” he asked quietly after some minutes.
Donna gave a little start; she’d assumed he’d left. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. She turned back to him. “Tina said I can stay with her until I find a place. I-I think...I’d like to try teaching science.”
The sudden lump in his throat made it hard for Al to talk; all he managed to get out was a small “oh.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” she asked, taking his hand. “Tina misses you terribly.”
“I...” He cleared his throat, and brushed at the corner of his eye with his thumb. “I miss her, too.”
“Then why stay here, Al? Why...torture yourself like this? There’s nothing you can do anymore. Without any power...”
“What if Sammy comes home?” he asked raggedly, blinking rapidly to try keeping the tears from falling. “I...I have to be here. Coming home and no one’s there...”
Donna wrapped her arms around him, realizing what he must be thinking. There was nothing she could say to ease that hurt, although she could apologize for bringing back those memories. “Al, I...”
He kissed her cheek lightly, then shook his head as he pulled out of her hug. “It’s...I’m all right.” He tried for a smile, but it didn’t convince either of them. “I’ll stay another month,” he went on, sounding as if he hadn’t just been reminded of his first wife, Beth, having the Navy declare him dead while he was being held prisoner in Vietnam and remarrying. “If he doesn’t come home somehow, if...whatever’s bouncing him around in Time doesn’t decide he’s done enough good in other people’s lives and finally lets him live his own...” He swallowed hard, trying to rein in his emotions.
Al could feel anger and despair building in equal parts. Anger at Donna for losing faith that her husband would return, anger at his first wife for giving up on him, on their love for each other. And deep anger at God, Fate, Time or Whatever was in charge of Leaping Sam around in time for not letting him get home; the one time he did finally return, he had to leave again to save Al’s life. The most anger, however, was for the government, who had pressured Sam and those on his Project from the start to provide proof of what he was doing, and finally, after ten years of threatening, made good on those threats and cut power completely, leaving Sam stranded in the past.
And that was where a large amount of the despair stemmed from – his not being able to go back in time to help his best friend. It wasn’t that he had to be at Sam’s side constantly, or even that Sam couldn’t accomplish what he was there to do without Al’s help. But Al was Sam’s only link to his own time, his only sense of reality in the bizarreness that had become his life from the moment he first stepped into the Accelerator and was hurtled backwards through time.
“You’ll be alone,” Donna cut into his thoughts.
He blinked and frowned at her. “What?”
“For that month. You’ll be alone. Everyone else is gone, Al.”
“I’ve got Ziggy.” He grimaced. “Well, more or less.”
Donna sighed sadly and shook her head. She wasn’t going to convince him, and she knew it. Instead, she relented. “All right. A month. I’ll come back and check on you...”