Work Text:
Chapter Four
“Trapped in the Past”
Fire...screaming...smoke...sirens...chaos...people, burned and bloody, staggering...objects falling...bodies falling...
Sam jolted awake, his heart hammering. He swung his legs out of bed, bent over, elbows on his knees, and ran both hands down his face. He was trembling, sweating, breathing hard. Just like that day...
He got up and padded across the room to the bathroom. He closed the door before he turned on the light so he wouldn’t wake Donna, and flinched at the harsh brightness. He squinted until his eyes got used to the light, then ran the cold water in the sink. Scooping water in his hands, he splashed his face, then filled the water glass and took a long drink. He glanced at the mirror, and the image reflecting back at him wavered.
Sam gripped the sink tightly as his own reflection was replaced by that of a tall, broad-shouldered Native American, his black hair grayed by ash, his face smeared by sweat and soot. He wasn’t a firefighter, wasn’t a policeman or medic. Just an ordinary citizen who happened to be nearby when the world started raining fire, rubble...and things best not contemplated. While hundreds fled, he turned and ran towards the destruction, forcing his way into the burning building. He had to save as many as he could...
Sam lowered his head and fought to control his breathing, and the tremors that were shaking his body. This wasn’t the first time he’d had this vivid recollection of the nightmarish events of that day. The worst Leap of his life, a day that no one would ever forget; September 11, 2001.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, so he pulled on a pair of sweatpants, socks and a tee-shirt, grabbed his robe and headed out to meander the halls.
Al was stretched out on the couch in his old office, eyes closed, a glass of scotch in one hand, and a “Best of Crosby, Stills and Nash” CD playing on his sound system. He’d been having trouble sleeping the last three days; every time he drifted off he had the same nightmare. He was nearly to the point where he was considering asking Verbeena for some sleeping pills, but he thought he’d try self-medicating first. It always used to work in the past. Of course, it’d been so long since he’d gotten seriously drunk that he just knew the hangover would kill him, but if he could spend one night in peace it’d be worth being walking dead the next day. The lecture from Sam, however...
“Let me guess: Coke and Coke?” that familiar voice asked from the doorway, as if just thinking his name had summoned him.
Al groaned. He knew he’d closed the door, but apparently he’d forgotten to lock it. “No,” he answered, eyes still closed. “Glenfiddich Special Reserve.” He gestured with his free hand at the bottle sitting on the floor by the couch. “First glass, in case you were going to lecture.”
Sam walked in and picked up the bottle. “I wasn’t. I was going to ask if you had another glass.”
Al opened his eyes and looked up at his friend in surprise. “Got a feeling it’s not just your regular-run insomnia.” He sat up and indicated the desk. “Third drawer.”
Sam got out the other glass, wheeled over the chair, and poured himself three inches. When Al raised an eyebrow at the amount, Sam shrugged. “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”
“Fair enough.” He took a sip, and let the 12-year-old scotch slowly work its magic. “Bit of déjà vu,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“’bout a month ago, wasn’t it, last time we sat in here?”
“Oh.” Sam’s mind was still filled with memories of that horrible day, and it took him a moment to focus. “Yeah, I think it was.”
Al stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed his ankles. He was wearing dark blue pajamas with green trim and a black robe, but his feet were bare. He closed his eyes again, listening to “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” for a while before he said anything else.
“Aren’t your feet cold?” Sam asked.
Al shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, but Tina threw out my slippers when I tried using duct tape to keep the soles on. Just haven’t had a chance to buy another pair. Been a bit...hectic around here.”
Sam grimaced and drank some of his scotch. “That’s...putting it extremely mildly.”
Al took another sip, savoring the taste of the single malt. “Most excitement we’ve had around here in a while,” he cracked, but there was an edge to his words.
“You never really did explain what happened. I mean, one day you showed up to tell me I was there to...” Sam trailed off with a frown, trying to remember which Leap was the last time he’d seen Al. “I think it was...when I was the horse trainer. Then you just...disappeared.”
Al winced. “Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that, buddy. I got back here and just as I got out of the Imaging Chamber...they cut the power.”
Sam looked over at him, startled by that revelation. “They...wait. What?”
Al groaned. “Our wonderful skinflint government decided we’d wasted enough of their precious money, and shut us down. Completely. Pulled the proverbial plug. Shut off the power, stopped all paychecks. Those figli di puttana didn’t even care that you were trapped back there alone.” He drained the last of his scotch in one swallow.
Sam raised an eyebrow at the vehemence of the curse, and poured his friend another couple inches. “But...you managed to get me back.”
Al nodded his thanks and took another sip. “Sammy Jo did,” he corrected. “I did my best to keep things running, paying all the bills myself, but eventually...” He shrugged again. “Then Sammy Jo said she’d figured out how to get you home, and found some...back-up generator...thing she could tap into. It was just enough, barely, to power the Imaging Chamber and enable Ziggy to get a strong enough lock on you. Sammy Jo tweaked the retrieval program and...here you are.”
Sam shook his head; it all sounded simple enough. But why did it take them so long to get him back? Why hadn’t they tried before?
“We tried a few other things,” Al went on, as if reading Sam’s mind. “Tried a couple times after you and I switched back. Nothing worked. Guess it just wasn’t time for you to come home.”
“And then it was.”
“And then it was.”
“Thank God,” Sam said.
“Or Fate,” Al added.
“Or Whatever.” Sam raised his glass in a toast. “I’m just glad you were here when I got home,” he added after they’d touched glasses and had a sip.
Al frowned. “Where else would I be, Sammy?”
Sam picked up on the hurt in Al’s voice, and tried to apologize. “No, I...I didn’t mean...I just...everyone else left, didn’t they?”
“I didn’t,” Al stated quietly.
“No, I know. I-I just...”
“I was gonna stay here until the end, Sam. Right up until the bitter end.”
Feeling like a jerk, Sam knocked back the last of his scotch. He hadn’t meant to imply that Al would have given up on him; he knew his friend wouldn’t do that. He’d only meant it was a relief that Al had been present when he returned, instead of...Sam sighed and shook his head. Even in his mind he couldn’t straighten out that tangle.
They sat in an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the music still playing. It took Sam a few moments to remember the lyrics of the current song, but then he came in on the chorus.
“Teach your children well/Their fathers’ hell did slowly go by/And feed them on your dreams/The one they picked/The one they know by/Don’t you ever ask them why/If they told you, you would cry/So just look at them and sigh...”
He started to trail off as he realized how the lyrics reflected things in their lives right now, but then Al surprised him by taking the next verse.
“And you, of tender years/Can’t know the fears that your elders grew by/And so please help them with your youth/They seek the truth before they can die.”
Sam came into that verse with the counter melody, and they finished the song together, something they hadn’t done in many years.
Sam looked over at Al and smiled, though he felt tears running down his face. “That was...”
“Pretty nice,” Al finished, wiping at his own tears. “Can’t remember the last time we did that.”
“I think it was...when I went home. I was singing for Katie...” Suddenly it dawned on him that he hadn’t even tried to get in touch with the rest of his family. He stood up. “Katie...”
“Tina called them, Sam,” Al told him. “Your mother...passed away three years ago. I’m sorry, Sam.”
Sam sank back into his chair. “What about Katie? And Tom?”
Al sighed. “We lost track of Tom. Or...rather, he lost contact with us. He got...frustrated that he couldn’t see you, that...every time he came around there was ‘one excuse or another’ why you weren’t here. So he...” Al shrugged.
“Wrote me off?” Sam surmised.
“Yeah, pretty much. Sorry, buddy.”
“Well, I can’t really blame him. It’d be like...holding out hope someone who was missing in action was still alive.” Sam closed his eyes and swore. “Dammit. I’m sorry, Al.”
Al waved it off. “Forget about it. Anyway...Katie. She and Jim had two kids. They were living in Hawaii, but then Jim got transferred to a base in Germany. They haven’t been Stateside in years.”
Sam drank some scotch while he thought about that. “Well, I guess...it’s all for the best.” Off Al’s frown, he explained, “They got on with their lives. They weren’t...sitting around waiting to hear if I was dead or...whatever.”
Al dropped his gaze, uncomfortable with his friend’s nonchalance; family had always been very important to Sam. During the brief time he’d Leaped home to himself at sixteen, he’d done everything he could to change his family’s lives for the better – tried to get his father to stop smoking cigarettes, eat better and get more exercise, keep his sister from marrying an abusive drunk, save his brother’s life in Vietnam. But now he seemed...resigned to never seeing his family again.
“How long was I gone?” he asked. He knew he’d been told before, but his memory was still patchy at times.
“Ten years. It’d been nearly five months since the Project went dark when Sammy Jo got things running again.”
“And you and Tina have been married...”
“It’ll be four years next month.” Al tilted his head and frowned. “No...wait...this month? Uhh...” He started quietly counting backwards on his fingers, and suddenly got a very worried look. “Oh....I didn’t miss my anniversary, did I?”
“I don’t know, Al. I wasn’t there. Remember?”
Al shot him a withering look. “Don’t make fun of my memory, Sam.”
Sam blinked. “I-I...I wasn’t. I mean...I didn’t mean to.” He frowned. Had he been? He didn’t think so, but he was starting to feel the effects of the scotch, and he still had lingering after-images from the nightmare. Which...they still hadn’t gotten around to talking about.
“Ziggy?”
“Yes, Admiral?”
“When were Tina and I...”
“September 5th, 2000. You wanted an easy date to remember.”
“And today’s...”
“Technically it’s September 3rd, Admiral,” the computer informed him, just a hint of amusement in her voice.
“Oh. Whew.” Al sighed in relief. “That was close.”
“Al, with everything that’s been going on, I highly doubt Tina would get mad at you for forgetting your anniversary.”
“Maybe not. But I would.”
Sam frowned. “What do you mean?”
Al sighed again, got up, set his glass on the desk and looked off into the distance. “I’ve been...well...having these...headaches. And...sometimes...I forget things.”
Sam bit back any kind of crack he could make, because he picked up on the worry in Al’s voice. “How bad are the headaches?” he asked, getting up to cross to his friend.
“Varies. Sometimes they’re mild, sometimes...like a battalion of dwarves have taken up residence in my skull.”
“Have you been to the doctor?”
Al’s grin was weak. “You mean other than now?”
“All right, fine. What are your other symptoms? Dizziness? Blurred vision? Slurring?”
“Haven’t had that much to drink yet,” Al joked. When Sam gave him a stern look, he shook his head. “None of the above.”
“Any seizures? Changes in your hearing, hand tremors, loss of bladder control?”
Al made a face. “Really, Sam?”
“No time for joking around, Al. I’m trying to determine whether you have an aneurysm or a brain tumor.”
Al sank down at his desk. “God, I hope not.”
Sam sighed and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “So do I, buddy. So...any of those symptoms?”
“No. Nothing like that. Just...headaches and sometimes I forget things.”
“I know how much you hate going to doctors, but...you probably should go in for a complete physical. It could just be stress, or...well...”
Al looked up at him. “Old age?”
“Well...”
“Sammy, I’m no spring chicken. No use denying it.” He closed his eyes and rubbed them, then sighed. “All right. I’ll make an appointment.” He yawned largely. “Tomorrow.”
“Technically, it’s today,” Sam pointed out with a grin.
“So that’s where she got it,” Al grumbled as he got to his feet again.
“Where who got what?”
“Ziggy and her annoying need to be so damn precise all the time.”
Sam chuckled. “Like father...”
Al winced. “Yeah. They do tend to take after their fathers, don’t they?”
Sam felt a pang in his heart when he realized he had verbally stumbled again. And he had a feeling he knew what the cause of Al’s sleeplessness was. “How is Cat?”
“Haven’t seen her in a few days. I think she’s in hiding.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “She...probably thinks we all hate her.”
“I don’t think she thinks that, Al. She’s probably just...trying to sort things out. Give her some time; she’ll come around.”
“I hope you’re right, Sammy. I’m rather fond of the kid.”
Sam smiled. “I know exactly how you feel.”
Cat had found out from Verbeena that there was another time travel project in existence, though no one who worked on this one knew very much about it. Sam had encountered another Leaper, a woman named Alia, who said she was from a bit ahead of them, though whether she meant in time or in technology, they weren’t sure.
At first Cat had been excited to learn there was another project somewhere, especially since it seemed they were able to actually target where the Leaper ended up; she’d briefly entertained the idea of sneaking onto it somehow and using their Accelerator to go back and keep her mother and stepfather together. But from what Verbeena had told her, Alia wanted to escape that life. She was controlled by Lothos, the computer that ran her project, and forced to go through time and screw things up in people’s lives, essentially undoing the good that Sam had been doing. She never outright said it, but the implication was that she was tortured if she failed in her assignment.
The second time Sam encountered her he was able to free her from Lothos’ control, although it had been very dangerous for both of them. And since Zoey, Alia’s hologram, had gone back in time to kill Alia, Cat quickly changed her mind. Things were bad enough in her past; the last thing she needed was to attract the attention of an evil Leaper.
But now the nightmare had hold of her again. They’d found her. And they’d forced her to go back into her past to keep Al and her mother together. He turned out to be abusive, and beat her mother often, finally beating her to death the day she told him she was pregnant with Cat.
When she finally managed to wake up out of the nightmare, she was tangled in her sheets, which panicked her for a few moments until she fully awoke and was able to free herself. She was also rather nauseated by the images in her mind, and knew the rest of the night was lost to her. She got out of bed, replaced the disarrayed sheets, went to the bathroom and rinsed her mouth and washed her face, then got dressed and brewed herself a hot toddy. Then, picking up her book and a blanket, she headed for the library. She actually felt safer, more at home there than even in her own room.
Sammy Jo was worried. Cat had been avoiding her ever since she’d tried to use the Accelerator. Sammy Jo figured Cat was mad at her for rigging the alarm program, but she’d done it in case anyone tried to use the Accelerator, not just Cat. She knew her father would never use it again, or if he did it’d have to be an extreme situation, like a matter of life or death when all other options had failed. She’d actually been expecting Al to try using it, to change their vacation plans so he wouldn’t encounter Beth again, or to go back to stop Maxine from beating up Cat.
And, actually, Sammy Jo herself had considered using it. Not to change anything in anyone’s past, but for her father’s original intention – to just go back and observe her own life at different stages. Now that she knew the retrieval program worked, there wouldn’t be much danger of becoming stuck in time like he had. The allure was strong, so she’d worked up the alarm to alert everyone in case someone gave in to the temptation. Time was a very finicky thing to muck around with. For instance, her father was chronologically thirteen when she’d been conceived, but the man he’d replaced was twenty-seven, and he himself was physically forty-six. Just trying to sort all that out was enough to give a person a headache.
Or keep a person up all night. Which Sammy Jo was, for the third night in a row. She’d been going over Ziggy’s records of all of her father’s Leaps, trying to compare the original timelines to the altered ones to see where minor changes he’d made ended up affecting life back here on the Project. But she’d gotten sidetracked by reference to Alia, the Leaper from a different project, who apparently at first had been Sam’s evil counterpart. Eventually, though, it appeared that he’d managed to free Alia from the control of whoever, or whatever, ran her project, although where she went after that no one knew. Was she now trapped back in the past, destined to bounce around from life to life, decade to decade, never to return to her own home and time? Did she have a family waiting anxiously for her return?
According to Ziggy’s records, Sam had encountered her three times, but had never learned more than her first name.
“Ziggy?”
“Yes, Doctor Fuller?”
“Has anyone looked into Alia, tried to learn more about her or the project she was involved in?”
The computer didn’t reply for a while, presumably searching for the answer. “Not that I am aware of, Doctor. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I was just going over some of your records of Dad’s Leaps, and I came across a few mentions of her. I wasn’t even aware there was another project out there like this.”
“Neither were we, until Doctor Beckett first met her. And...other than leaping through time, I wouldn’t say the project she was involved in was much like this one. From what your father and the Admiral were able to learn, Alia was...used by those in charge, forced to go back through time and ruin lives, rather than fix them. The Admiral had a rather...outlandish theory that whereas our own project was governed by a force for good, such as God, theirs was...”
“Run by the Devil?” Sammy Jo surmised.
“Yes.”
“Not really that far-fetched, Ziggy. After all, didn’t Dad...run into him once during a Leap?”
“That is what the apparition identified itself as, yes,” the computer concurred. “It rather disturbingly assumed the guise of the Admiral, and attempted to strangle Doctor Beckett.”
“Ugh. That couldn’t have been pleasant.”
“Not at all. Unnerved the Admiral nearly as much as it did Doctor Beckett.”
“I imagine so. Weird enough to come face to face with your doppelganger, but then to find out it was the Devil...” Sammy Jo shuddered. “So...what happened during that Leap? How did Dad figure out what he was dealing with?”
“It was a most peculiar Leap to begin with. Your father was a horror novelist named Joshua Rae, and arrived on the eve of Halloween. Supposedly he was there to help set up for a haunted house, but strange things kept happening; mysterious deaths, messages turning up on a page in the typewriter when no one had been around to type it, objects flying through the room. Eventually Doctor Beckett realized that a lot of what the Admiral had been telling him the whole time didn’t make sense, and there were little things that were out of character for him. After the sheriff had been killed in an auto accident, Doctor Beckett returned to the house, and confronted the apparition, just as we were finally able to get a lock on him and the Admiral got there. That’s when the apparition identified itself.”
There was a shimmer in the air to Sammy Jo’s left, and when she turned to face it she saw a projection of what had happened in the room, an audio and visual recording Ziggy had made while Al was in the Imaging Chamber, which she was able to do since Sam and everything around him was a hologram for Al.
Standing to one side was Al, in a powder blue suit and black shirt, but on the opposite side of Sam was...Al, in a green multi-patterned shirt, silver tie and black pants. The one in the suit had a really nasty look on his face, and Sammy Jo had no trouble telling which Al was the real one.
A female voice from out of Sammy Jo’s view asked, “Who are you?” and the nasty-faced Al sneered before replying, his voice a much more guttural version of Al’s, his narrowed eyes glowing with an eerie red light.
“Yin and yang...good and bad...God...”
“And the Devil,” Sam finished, coming to a very unsettling conclusion.
“In the flesh, so to speak.” And the creature chuckled nastily.
“This isn’t possible!” the female voice said.
“Come on, Al. Tell me he’s not real.”
The proper Al replied somewhat shakily. “Oh...ahh..he’s real, Sam. Oh, Sam, he’s very real.”
“Why are you doing this?” Sam demanded.
“To put an end to your meddling. WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO GO BUNGLING AROUND IN TIME, PUTTING RIGHT WHAT I MADE WRONG!?”
“Just trying to get home,” Sam stated simply.
“Well, you’re not going to make it.” And the demonic Al lunged forward and grabbed Sam by the throat.
Sammy Jo shuddered. “Ok, I’ve seen enough.”
“Man, that’ll give you a world-class case of the heebie-jeebies,” a sudden voice said from the doorway.
Sammy Jo yelped in surprise, and spun around to face...Cat, who had a rather sheepish look on her face.
“Sorry. I was on my way to the library when I heard voices.”
Sammy Jo smiled. “Glad to see you’re still with us.”
Cat frowned. “Where else would I be?” She stepped into Sammy Jo’s office. “I mean...” she shrugged a shoulder, “this is my family.” She looked at Sammy Jo. “Isn’t it?”
For answer, Sammy Jo pulled her into a hug. “Of course it is, you dork,” she assured her friend. She let go of Cat and added, “As long as you don’t go mucking around in time and changing things.” Her grin showed she was just teasing.
“Yeah...about that...um.” Cat ran a hand through her hair and bounced on her toes a little. “I...uhh...sorry.”
Sammy Jo waved it off. “Nothing to be sorry for. No one’s mad at you, Cat.”
“They’re...not?” Cat asked with a puzzled frown.
“Of course not! Geez, kid. Anyone would’ve done what you did, given the circumstances. Hell, I would’ve.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. Only I would’ve gone back and kicked the crap out of Maxine the first time she lifted a hand against you.”
Cat blushed slightly. “Thanks.”
“I mean it. Anyone hurts you, ever, you come to me, or Dad. Ok? We’re trained in several different ways to kick ass.”
Cat chuckled. “Ok. I’ll remember that.”
“’course, we’d have to get in line. Pretty sure Al would lay down some serious hurt first.”
Cat raised an eyebrow. “Dad?”
“Oh yeah. Trust me – you don’t want to piss that man off. He might seem all sweet and loveable, but...hurt someone he cares about, and look out.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cat said with a light chuckle.
“I’m actually not kidding. He was a Golden Gloves boxing champ when he was younger, and, after the simo-Leap with Dad, he got into taekwondo. I’ve sparred with him a few times, just for exercise, and he’s put me on my back.”
Cat blinked. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Let’s just say Maxine would’ve ended up in worse shape if Al had gotten to her before the cops did. He’s...fiercely protective of those he loves.”
Sam blinked several times and did his best to focus on Al. But it was as if he was looking at him through a gauzy veil. “You’re fuzzy,” he informed his friend.
Al sat up straight and frowned. Very carefully and with much dignity he replied, “You...” He pointed at Sam, although his finger was weaving so much he was actually pointing two feet to his right, “need a shave and a haircut.”
“I do not,” Sam said, highly offended.
“You do,” Al insisted, starting to list to port slightly. “Long-haired hippie.”
“Need not apply,” Sam sang, off-key.
“Ha! Signs...every where’s signs.” Al swung a hand in a wide gesture, and swept the empty bottle off the desk. “Oops. Dead soldier.” He leaned over towards the bottle and managed to get off a sketch of a salute before he fell out of his chair.
“Man down!” Sam yelled.
A hand holding the empty bottle materialized on the other side of the desk. It tried to set the bottle down but kept missing the desk. “Wait. Hang on...” Al put the bottle down on the floor and used the desk to lever himself upright, but he was swaying so badly he promptly sat down again. Fortunately this time he managed to land in his chair rather than on the floor again, but dropping into it so suddenly sent it skittering across the room.
“Find some music while you’re over there,” Sam ordered, propping himself up with one elbow on the desk.
“Aye-aye captain.” Al poked at his stereo system for a while until he finally managed to change the setting from CD to radio, then grabbed the knob and spun it through the channels until he found a station playing Oldies. With a grin, he put one foot against the wall and shoved, sending his chair sliding back towards his desk. As he approached, at a rather high rate of speed, he managed to snag a drawer handle and slow himself down. “Woo. That...was kinda fast.”
“You’re drunk,” Sam realized, and giggled.
“You’re drunker,” Al shot back.
“Hrmph.”
Al draped an arm over the back of his chair and sprawled in it. “She mighta died, you know.”
Sam frowned. “Who might’ve?”
“Cat. If she’d...if she’d...” He stopped, fighting down a hiccup, and waved a hand. “Ya know...” He made a sizzling sound and waggled his fingers.
“Fried bacon?”
“Leaped, ya doofus.”
“Oh.” Sam thought about that. “Yeah. Mebbe.”
“’s what I was worried ‘bout. The nightmare. Ya know.”
“Oh?”
Al pulled himself more or less upright in the chair and leaned towards Sam. “I was...worried...she’d get zapped using the Ac...Accelerator...” He had a bit of difficulty with that word. “Or she’d do s-something...stupid back there and...wipe herself out.”
“Tha...” Sam frowned, and tried the word again. “That...wouldna been good.” He shook his head, and tried one more time. “That...would not...have been good.” He grinned, proud to have formed a sentence clearly.
Al shook his head. “Not really, no. All...kindsa bad things coulda happened, Sammy. Wh-what if...what if I...was the abusive one? Or...she didn’t get born? Or...wha’if...wha’if I stayed with...Maxine and...never met Tina? Or you?” Suddenly Al was horrified by that thought. He reached over and grabbed Sam’s hands. “What if I never met you?”
“But you did.”
“But if she’d gone back there...maybe I wouldn’t’ve.” Al actually started crying. “I don’t want my life without you, Sammy. I love you!”
Sam leaned forward and awkwardly patted Al on the shoulder. “I love you, too. And I promise...I’m never gonna leave you again.”
They sat that way for a few minutes, and then Al had a brilliant idea. “You know what would be good right now?”
Sam snorted and lifted his head; he’d dozed off. “What?”
“A...bacon cheeseburger.”
Sam frowned, and then raised an eyebrow. “That...does sound good. With cheese.”
“And bacon.”
“I like mine with lettuce and tomato,” Sam sang, sitting upright, or mostly upright, “Heinz 57 and french-fried potatoes.”
“Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer!” Al shouted the next line.
Sam held his hand up. “Shh...not so loud.”
“Oh, ok,” Al replied in a stage whisper. “What comes next?”
After a few puzzled moments, Sam admitted, “I forgot.” He pointed at his forehead. “Swiss cheese.”
“I prefer American.”
That was just the funniest thing Sam had heard in a long time, and he laughed so hard he got tears in his eyes, and had to hold onto the arms of his chair to keep from falling out.
Revenge. There were many proverbs about it. “Revenge is a kind of wild justice.” “Revenge triumphs over death.” “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” But her personal favorite was something from an old movie; “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” The idea of putting a lot of thought and time into exacting one’s revenge, and then enacting it long after the incident, when your victim would be least expecting it, appealed to her.
And so she’d waited. It hadn’t always been easy, but she prided herself on being patient. She was good at what she did, very good. Because she loved it. She loved the cruelty, the twist of the knife, the betrayal of trust. Except when the trust that had been betrayed was her own, when the knife that was twisted was in her back.
The fair Alia had betrayed them. She’d given in to that most human of weaknesses, love, and allowed herself to be corrupted by the disgustingly good Samuel Beckett. To believe that there was good in the world, that people cared and loved and deserved a happy life...rubbish. The world was filled with anger and hatred, people killing each other over religious differences, race, political beliefs, or just for the sheer thrill of taking another life. That was reality.
And that was what they strove for. To plant the seed, fuel the fire, instigate the riot. To cause strife, ruin lives. It’s what they did, what they were good at. Until the meddlesome Sam Beckett had crossed their path and began undoing everything they had fought so hard and long, had clawed their way out of hell to accomplish.
Alia had escaped. They could find no trace of her. She was lost to them. No matter – they would only have tortured her to death if they’d found her. They had something else to focus on now, something much more important: revenge against Doctor Samuel Beckett. And the best way to accomplish that was to go after his trusted advisor, his best friend, the one man he relied on more than anyone else. Admiral Albert Calavicci.
It wasn’t hard to find information on him; she had access to countless records, spanning several decades. She started by looking into the government-funded project located somewhere in the deserts of New Mexico, and that’s when the first kernel of an idea came to her. Security clearance was no problem, and once she’d broken into those records, she compiled a thick file on him.
The first thing she did was set up a date with her favorite senator, who happened to be on the financing committees for numerous projects, her own included. After a night of wining, dining and wild sex, the first stage of her plan was in put into motion. Funding for the New Mexican project would be cut, completely.
And at first, it seemed like that was all she’d have to do. Funding was cut, the Doctor was stuck, and, as amazing luck would have it, the Admiral was killed in a tragic accident at the Project. But then that traitorous bitch Alia fouled things up again. Now the Doctor was home, and the Admiral was alive, and she was right back to the proverbial first square.
But she wasn’t daunted. She thrived on challenges. This was just a minor setback, nothing serious. She had an idea how the mission could still be carried out to a successful conclusion. There was someone she could use, manipulate, to reach her goal. She just needed to find a way in. When the solution present itself, it was exactly the kind of delicious twist she favored.
Maxine was not looking forward to meeting with the court-appointed psychiatrist. She wasn’t crazy, she just...had a little trouble keeping away from the painkillers. And she smacked her kid a few times. But what parent hadn’t whacked their kid from time to time? Gotta keep them in line, make sure they know who’s boss. But since they told her she could get some privileges if she met with the shrink, she’d play by the rules.
The shrink wasn’t what she was expecting. She’d imagined some dour old man in tweed coats with elbow patches and sweater vests, smoking a pipe and asking her intimate questions about her sex life, or whether her father hugged her enough as a child.
What she got instead was a very prim woman in her late sixties, with a light British accent, and the first thing she asked after Maxine sat in the chair across from her desk was, “So...how much do you hate your ex-husband?”
When their husbands turned up late in the morning looking like day-old death, Tina and Donna were hard pressed not to give them grief. But since they’d both woken to empty beds, and had been woken the previous two nights by Sam and Al crying out in their sleep, they resisted the urge. Neither man wanted to talk about what was troubling them, which worried their wives quite a bit.
“You really should talk about it, Al,” Tina insisted as she prepared brunch.
Al stared at the omelet she was making, and felt immediately queasy. “It’s...it’s nothing,” he lied, trying hard not to get sick.
“You and Sam got plastered last night. That doesn’t sound like nothing.” She finished sautéing the mushrooms and slid them into the middle of the omelet, then folded the edge over and lifted it out of the pan.
Al closed his eyes, but he couldn’t block the smell. “Why’s it have to be something? Can’t it just be...” He swallowed hard. “Can’t it just be two friends having a good time together?” he finished weakly.
“Was it?” Tina asked, bringing the plate over to him.
“No,” Al admitted. And ten seconds later he bolted for the bathroom.
Donna, meanwhile, was serving Sam a bloody mary.
He blinked at the offered drink, and looked up at her with a slight frown. “Dog of the hair....hair of the dog that bit me?” he asked, feeling as if his head would fall off his shoulders any second now.
“Actually, it’s just tomato juice,” she admitted, sitting down, carefully, next to him on the couch.
“Oh. Much better idea.” He winced when the cushion shifted as Donna sat down. Squinting against the brightness, and loudness, of the light, he held the glass in one hand for a few moments, before taking a tentative sip.
Donna gently brushed the hair away from his eyes. “You need a haircut.”
“That’s...” Sam winced and lowered his voice. “Al said that last night.”
“So...what did you two do?”
“Besides get stupidly drunk?”
“There’s a besides?” She smiled at him, sorry he felt so miserable.
“Mm. Kind of.” Sam closed his eyes, and drank some more tomato juice, moving as little as possible. Right now the thought of his bed was very enticing, sinking down, down into the mattress, burrowing under the blankets, falling...falling...bodies were falling...people were jumping from the building...other things were falling, parts of buildings, parts of...people....
Sam let out an inarticulate scream and lurched to his feet, sloshing the tomato juice out of the glass. Clutching his head, he fell to his knees, whimpering. Donna crouched next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Sam? Sam, what is it? What’s wrong?” When he didn’t answer, just started rocking and making a plaintive sound as if he was in a great deal of pain, she called out, “Ziggy! Get Verbeena down here right away!” Not knowing what else to do, she wrapped her arms around Sam and held him close. He turned and buried his face against her chest, sobbing like his heart would break.
It seemed to take forever, but couldn’t have been more than five minutes before Verbeena showed up. She hurried to them and knelt on Sam’s other side. “What happened?” she asked with concern.
“I...I don’t know. We were...talking and then he-he...screamed out and fell to his knees and...” Donna choked on a sob and closed her mouth, panic clear in her eyes as she looked over at Verbeena.
“Sam?” Verbeena said gently. “Sam, it’s me. It’s Verbeena. Can you hear me, Sam?” She laid a hand on his arm, but he gave no reaction. “Sam. Answer me, Sam. Come on. Come back to us.” She tried coaxing him for a few more minutes, but if anything he withdrew further. Finally she rocked back on her heels and shook her head sadly. “I...don’t know what’s wrong,” she admitted. She sighed and shook her head. “It’s as if...he’s disappeared inside himself.”
“What could have caused that?” Donna asked, fighting to keep her voice level.
Verbeena shook her head again. “I wish I could give you an answer, Donna. But...I don’t know. The last time something like this happened, it was because of the shock therapy...” She trailed off as an idea started to come to her. “Did...did he suffer any kind of...shock recently? A bump to the head or something?”
Donna frowned. “No, nothing like that. At least...I don’t think so. He and Al got rather...drunk last night. Maybe...?”
Verbeena raised an eyebrow. “Really?” She shook her head in bemusement, then called out, “Ziggy, have Al come down to Sam’s quarters, please.”
This was his first time in New York, and the city was everything he’d imagined. He was a country boy, born and raised, and at first he’d been overwhelmed by the towering buildings, the crush of people on the sidewalks, the smell and noise of cars on the streets. And, just like in the song, it seemed as if the place was alive 24 hours a day, that no one ever slept. Horns honked and sirens whooped all through the night, car alarms blared, babies cried, people shouted. He’d sat in the window of his hotel room the first night, staring out at the bustling world below him. It wasn’t true night. Not like back home. There were so many lights – street lights, neon lights, stop lights – that it never really got dark.
It was a beautiful, clear day. He was just out strolling, taking in the sights. He was an amateur photographer, and he was scouting locations for a shoot. He was going to submit an article to his hometown paper when he got back, and was looking for things that really “spoke” to him of the city. Not just the typical high-rises and touristy things, but the variety of people going to and from work, school, errands. The way light played on the buildings, reflected off their massive windows. The drone of an airplane overhead...
He tilted his head back and stared, transfixed, as the plane rammed into the side of a building just down the block from him. It seemed unfathomable that the pilot couldn’t avoid the huge structure. Seconds later the reality hit him – a plane had just crashed into the side of a building in one of the country’s largest cities. People must’ve been hurt, if not killed. As the first clouds of dust started to drift his way, he ran. Not away from the destruction, but towards it. If someone was hurt, he had to try to help...
It was chaos beyond anything he’d imagined. By now the panicked word flying around was that a second plane had struck the other World Trade Tower, and rescue workers, and ordinary citizens like him, were scrambling over rubble, searching desperately for survivors. His brain couldn’t process everything he was seeing, the mangled bodies jumbled with broken pieces of the building, the blood and ash everywhere. And yet he kept on. Kept climbing, kept digging, kept searching. He didn’t know how many he rescued that day, didn’t know how many others he missed in the confusion, just knew he had to keep trying.
He struggled to surface from the whirlpool of memories. That wasn’t him. He wasn’t that man struggling to save people as the World Trade Tower collapsed around them. He was..someone else. He tried to focus on who he was, but he couldn’t remember his name.
And then...someone was calling to him, calling his name. He listened as hard as he could, and from somewhere far off he heard the name. “Sam...come on, buddy. Come back...please come back.
Sam. That sounded right. Sam...what? Sam...who? The voice calling to him was desperate now, he could hear it in the words. “Come on, buddy. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”
He looked down. There was a bloodied hand reaching for his leg, fingernails ripped away, fingers broken, but still it grasped. “Don’t leave me,” a hoarse voice pleaded. “Help me...” He could just make out the face peering at him from under a broken section of the ceiling. He knew those dark eyes, watched them grow unfocused. He recognized that voice, heard it fade to nothing...
With a strangled scream, Sam woke up.
“Sammy? Sam? Can you hear me? Are you all right?”
Sam blinked. There was something heavy on his head, blocking his vision. He managed to lift his head slightly, then groaned and lowered his head. “What..?”
“Aw, geez, Sam. You took quite a hit. Can you move?”
Sam could hear Al, but he couldn’t see him anywhere. He heard a voice cry out “Hold!” and then something that made absolutely no sense to Sam: “You shall return to the field of honor at five of the clock to conclude your duel. Your loyal subjects will return as well to cheer you to victory.”
“Al?” Sam asked in a low whisper. Something felt...wrong. He’d...said this before, experienced this moment before. But...when? His memory felt fuzzy, but there was something about...jousting and...Al couldn’t get a lock on him for some reason because the Imaging Chamber wasn’t working...
But he was home. He’d been home...
He looked down. There was a face staring up at him from the rubble, a face he’d only gotten to know in recent months. She was so young, rather beautiful, and...dead. He couldn’t save her. Couldn’t save his own daughter...
Sam sat up in bed with a scream.
“Sammy? Geez, you startled me,” Al said from somewhere off to Sam’s right.
“Al?” Sam asked in a low whisper, unsure if his ears were playing tricks on him.
“Yeah, it’s me, buddy. Ziggy had a helluva time getting a lock. We nearly lost you. You ok?”
“Ziggy?” Sam frowned and struggled to sit up. His head was pounding, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as he massaged his temples. “What do you mean?”
“The super-computer you designed, Sam. You do remember, don’t you?”
Sam opened his eyes with a sigh. “C’mon, Al. I’ve been home for months. Why are you acting like I’m still Leaping?”
Al’s voice was worried now. “Uh, no, Sam. You haven’t been home in four years. You sure you’re all right?” He leaned forward to look at his friend, and was surprised when Sam stuck his hand out...straight through Al’s chest.
Sam pulled his hand back and stared at it. “No,” he said softly, shaking his head. “Oh, no. No, no, please...this...this isn’t happening. Please...” He closed his eyes against the tears that were welling up.
“Sam? Please...where are you? I need you. Help me...please, help me.”
He looked down, into brown eyes he’d fallen in love with so many years ago. The face was bloodied and covered in soot and grime, but he still recognized it. What was she doing here? How could she be...
Sam lurched upright in bed, heart hammering. What was going on? Where was he? More importantly, who and when was he? He stumbled out of bed, tangled in the sheets, and leaned against the wall for support. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
He looked around the room, and realized he recognized it, vaguely. It was a small room, completely white. There was a table with two chairs in front of him, and a large mirror that took up most of the wall opposite. There was one door, through which someone...Freddie had just brought him into the fun room with the puzzles. He looked over at the mirror and grinned, and made faces at his reflection. He liked this room.
And there was the nice guy in the suit with the funny little noisy thing in his hands. He looked worried.
“You have to tell Doctor Masters you want another treatment,” he said.
“But...I don’t.”
“If you don’t, I won’t be able to come back.”
“You come back!” he pleaded.
“Then you tell the doctor you want another shock treatment.” The man was begging him now, his eyes getting all wet like when people were going to cry, and he was squeezing his funny little thing that was all made of different colored blocks.
“No! Don’t leave Jimmy!”
He frowned. His name wasn’t Jimmy. It was...it was...
“Sam’s locked away in his mind. I can’t get through to him,” Verbeena said, defeated. She was sitting in the chair next to Sam’s bed, holding his hand, and she looked up at Donna, Al and Tina. “I...I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happened, but...I’ve done everything I can think of.”
“I’ll tell Sammy Jo,” Tina offered. She kissed Al’s cheek and gave Donna a hug before leaving.
Al shook his head. “No. He’s not gone,” he said firmly. “He’s still in there, somewhere. He has to be. I’m not gonna give up on him. I never gave up on him, ever.” His anger was masking his fear and desperation. There was no way he was going to lose his friend. Not after they’d finally gotten him home. “Let me try, ‘Beena. I’ve gotten through to him before.”
She nodded and got up from the chair, letting Al take her place. She thought it was futile, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. The two had been through so much together, too much, for Al to just...give up.
Al took Sam’s hand in both of his and held it gently. “Hey Sam. It’s me, it’s your buddy. Al. I’m right here, Sam. I’m not gonna leave you. We’re all here, waiting. We miss you, Sammy. You were gone for so long. Wherever you are...you gotta come back. Ok?”
“Just trying to get home,” Sam said simply.
“Well, you’re not gonna make it,” the demonic apparition wearing his friend’s face sneered. It lunged forward and grabbed Sam by the throat, trying to squeeze the life out of him.
He felt the world around him dim as the blood was cut off to his brain, and then distantly he heard a voice. “What made you think I’d let you go that easily? You’re mine, Samuel Beckett. I own your soul.”
He tried to protest, tried to...deny that claim. But he had no voice. He wanted desperately to get free, but he couldn’t feel his body to move.
There was laughter, an evil, dry, cackling laugh. “Oh, it was so much fun watching you and your silly friend bungling around in time, trying to fix things, trying to make them ‘right’ again. You fool! Did you really think it would be that easy? That you could just...rescue a cat from a tree, or pilot a plane out of the Bermuda Triangle, and everything would be ok? That everyone could just...walk away and live a happily-ever-after life?” Again, that horrible laughter. “That’s for fairytales, you idiot! Fairytales aren’t real. This is real!”
And suddenly Sam could see again. As soon as his eyes opened, he wished he could close them again. There was fire everywhere, all around him. Thick black smoke hung in the air, the smell of things burning assailed his nostrils. And then the screams reached his ears. People were dying, burning alive. Some were being slowly crushed under things he couldn’t make out, but he could hear their bodies collapsing under the weight, hear bones snapping and internal organs liquefying...
Sam sat up in bed, the scream caught in his throat.
Al let go of his friend and buried his face in his hands, sobbing hard. Donna hurried to her husband’s side and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly until Sam could stop shaking long enough to draw breath.
“Oh...god...Donna...I...I was...there...”
“Shh, honey. It’s all right. I’m here. You’re safe now. It’s ok, Sam.”
He shook his head, fighting against the sobs. “N-no. I...I w-was...there...in New York...th-three years ago.”
Al looked up, his face white as a sheet. “Oh god...Sammy. No.” He shook his head, and looked over at Verbeena.
She had one hand over her mouth, and she looked over at Al. “PTSD,” she said softly.
Al closed his eyes and swore softly.
They were gathered in Verbeena’s office. She’d given Sam something to get him to sleep, and now was telling everyone what she could do for him.
“The Ambien should help him sleep, and there are other medications, like Zoloft or Paxil, that he can start taking to help with any depression or numbness he might be experiencing. Until I’ve had a chance to talk to him, I’m not really sure what his symptoms are, other than the nightmares.”
“Do you think he’s been experiencing them before, or were they somehow...triggered because it’s September now?” Sammy Jo asked.
Verbeena shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s possible that his...Swiss-cheese memory was actually a...blessing of sorts, while he was traveling in time. Perhaps now that his memory is returning, other...traumatic events that he witnessed will start to come back to him, too.”
Al groaned. “Sammy experienced a lot of that kinda stuff, Verbeena. Not counting all the times his life was on the line, there was the hurricane, the house fire when he was Abigail Fuller’s father, Vietnam...”
Verbeena raised her eyebrow slightly, but didn’t say anything. She knew how Al had dealt with his own experience during that war, and silently hoped that Sam wouldn’t follow that path. She also made a mental note to talk to Al alone sometime, just to see how he was doing.
“What else can be done?” Donna asked, her voice raw with emotion.
“Talking will help a lot. One of the most common methods of treatment is psychotherapy. But he can talk with any of you; it doesn’t have to just be me. Other treatments include exposure therapy, and cognitive restructuring.”
“Will he get better?”
Verbeena nodded. “With time. Usually psychotherapy is six to twelve weeks, but it can sometimes take longer. With support from family, it might take less time. Each case is different.”
“God,” Cat said softly, shaking her head. “I...I kinda know...what he’s going through. I mean...when Mom was...beating me, I’d have nightmares for weeks. Sometimes I wanted to...hurt myself, mostly I just wanted to hurt her back. Only thing that kept me from turning to drugs or alcohol was knowing that’s what made her that way. She was the sweetest person ever when she was sober.”
Al slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close. It pained him to hear her talk about the abuse, but Verbeena said talking about that kind of stuff could help. “Maybe...you two should talk?” he suggested. “I mean...it’s not the same thing, but...maybe...sharing how you feel, what’s going on in your head...maybe that can help.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea, Al,” Verbeena praised. “Victims of repeated abuse often suffer some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Having someone else who is going through some of the same things might help Sam feel...more connected. Just talking to me, or Donna, might seem...futile. We won’t understand what he experienced, what he feels about what he witnessed.”
“Maybe...hiking would help?” Tina offered. “I’d read somewhere that being out in nature was a good therapy. Kind of...reinforces the...beauty and good in life.”
Al looked at her with a frown. Why had she been researching PTSD treatments? Was she worried about him, or had she looked into it for Cat’s sake?
“Also a good idea.” Verbeena smiled. “I think Sam’s going to be in very good hands.”