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He watches DI Tyler leave for the pub with WDC Cartwright tucked under one arm, and DCI Hunt by his side. The Detective Inspector smiles broadly as he exchanges one last set of verbal jabs with DS Carling on the way out. Tyler has very pretty smile, but it is not what the watching bobby really wants to see, not the beauty that is his Sam. Something will have to be done.
****
Sam’s skin crawls as once again he feels himself being watched. Very slowly he raises he head from the forms he is filling out and takes a casual look around CID. No one out of place, no one who seems to be paying him to much attention, no one he hasn’t seen before. Sam bends his head and goes back to his forms. Gone were the days he felt able to leap to answer the voices only he heard and shake an accusing fist at the universe. This is the only world Sam has left, it is important to maintain at least the illusion of his sanity. But his skin is still crawling.
After a while Sam gets used to feeling watched. The prickly creeping sensation is difficult to ignore, but he is a man all to used to the unusual, he can handle it. He has to handle it. Then the phone calls start. Not the same as before, not the noise of life giving machines, no messages from another world, just cold dead silence. He always looks around to see if the others heard it ring, but somehow whether in his flat, at his desk, or once even at a crime scene, they only come when he is alone. Sam thinks about unplugging the phone in his flat, but decides it is more important for his team to be able to reach him. He doesn’t admit that he is afraid unplugging it won’t stop it from ringing.
The crawling certainty of being watched is only gets worse. Niggling in the back of his mind all the time now, making him jumpy and short-tempered. When he takes a young PC’s head off for no good reason, he hopes the others will blame it on the crime scene. Another bloody awful domestic. A lost and broken man that Sam might even have felt pity for, if he hadn’t taken her down with him. The bloke was docile enough now, giving a full statement to Chris and Ray, admitting everything. Which didn’t leave much for Sam to be doing. No evidence to look for, or witnesses to question, nothing to distract him from the growing itch between his shoulder blades.
He walks outside, hoping that some air will clear his head. At least it will keep the others from noticing how his hands are shaking. Leaning against a wall, Sam once again considers taking up smoking. Lung cancer seems very far away right now, but the prospect of Gene Hunt gloating is very close indeed. No smoking then, he decides, and looks up to see a man in a grey coat and blue hat disappear around a corner. The same blue hat he saw yesterday while buying groceries, and two days ago across town shopping for a present for Annie. Sam scrubs a hand across his face, leans back against the wall, and reminds himself there are a lot of blue hats in the world.
With his eyes closed, Sam doesn’t see the PC from earlier watching with a smile.
When he takes Annie to dinner Sam almost feels bad, because he knows that he didn’t bring her here to enjoy her company. In fact, he knows he is being a very poor conversationalist, but he couldn’t stand to be alone right now. After receiving two of those silent dead phone calls this morning, he was in desperate need of the distraction provided by Annie. Her calm smiling voice is soothing to nerves that seemed poised to jump right out of his skin at any moment, and Sam lets himself relax into the sound. He sits up sharply when the voice falters, she has noticed something is up. He pastes an apologetic grin on his face and does his best imitation of a sane and rational man, as he reminds himself that he can’t afford to be anything else.
The next time they go out, Sam tries harder, and manages an almost normal meal. He doesn’t jump when the phone rings, or shift in his chair to try and exorcise the now constant itch under his skin. She notices his attentiveness and rewards him with her sunny quirky smile. A smile that briefly brings relief. He is basking in that smile as they get up to leave, when a man rushes by, bumping him against the wall. A man in a blue hat. That hat.
Sam reacts without thinking, with all the pent up frustration and anger that have been building since this started. He spins the man around, pinning him against the wall outside the restaurant, looking into his eyes. The bewildered and scared eyes of a complete stranger. It is minutes after the man has gone before he dares to look at Annie. And when he does the look in her eyes is one he thought he had banished for good.
They don’t go to dinner again. This makes the watcher very happy.
Sam is a fighter, and he is determined to fight this. Being half crazy wasn’t much fun when he mostly didn’t believe in anything. Now, real or not, this is his life, the life that he chose. He wont give it up without a fight. Sam is a fighter, and in the end this is what breaks him. He’s lost Annie, is well on his way to losing the respect of the team. He can’t stand still, stand quiet, while something tears down his world. The world he gave up everything for. The world that made him happy, at least for a while. This world that might not even exist.
One night he takes a pipe to the television. Even though the set has done nothing but show him news, or football, or Dr. Who as requested ever since he got back. But he needs a focus for the anger that just won’t be contained anymore, so he reduces it to meaningless bits of wire and glass, all the while screaming at her. Screaming for her. For her to fix this, for her to stop this, for her to just let him keep this, and when she doesn’t answer, for her to at least come out and fight.
****
He watches as midnight finds Sam Tyler sobbing in the ruins of his television set begging the voices in his head to come back and make him sane. And as he watches, he smiles, because once again his Sam is beautiful.