Ficathon 2008: On a Clear Day, by jantalaimon, Purply-Blue Cortina.
TITLE: On a Clear Day
AUTHOR: Janni
EMAIL: jantalaimon@livejournal.com
RATING: Why is there no Cortina rating for pure mind-scramblage? ;) I'm torn between Blue Cortina for slashiness and Red Cortina for mental and psychological disturbance. But not Brown, because it's not purely smutty! Sloppy palette-knife-mixed Cortina, maybe? *is at a loss* Purple Cortina? Yeah.
WORDCOUNT: 8642
SPOILERS: Through S2.07. Relies heavily on canon knowledge through that point. Probably more heavily than anything else I've written, actually. You've been warned. :)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Written for the lifein1973 Ficathon 2008. For Requester #12, with prompt "young!Sam, a child's drawings, showing Gene the future." Chapter headings taken from various Jesus and Mary Chain lyrics, and as such, belong entirely to the brothers Reid and not the least bit to me. Also, I blame Audrey Niffenegger. Beta'd by the lovely and pointy-beaked usomitai. Never underestimate her; it's hard to hold a red pen with flippers! ;) Also beta'd by the fantastic m31andy, and if it weren't for the two of them reining me in, it's unlikely this fic would have made it to fruition. :)
SUMMARY: Two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
DISCLAIMER: Life on Mars and associated characters are copyright Kudos and the BBC. No infringement is intended and no money is being made.
ON A CLEAR DAY
easy streets are not for me. ((one.))
The keys clacked away endlessly, at speeds far greater than any Gene Hunt had ever personally borne witness to---a fact which was impressive to both dictator and dictatee since the typewriter in question was a far cry from the soft keys of 2006 PC terminals of any stripe.
I'm not much of a writer, never have been. Have always been more of a doer of deeds, both great and small. So what's suddenly got into me to make me want to write it all down?
The fact is, I can't make sense out of any of what's been going on. No sense at all. So I thought that a bit of 'gay-boy science ,' as it's called, might help.
"I'm not typing that last part," Sam Tyler glared mutinously over the sheaf of paper that sat next to the typewriter, just on the left for easy access.
"You're the one came up with that term, not me." Gene sniffed, even as a smirk pulled threateningly at the corners of his mouth.
Sam sighed long-sufferingly and said nothing, allowing the silence to speak for him. As he often did, now.
He hadn't always, of course. What he had been especially well known for in the past was running off at the mouth, and doing so a bit too often for Gene's tastes. And of course, Gene couldn't take any such challenge to his authority lying down now, could he? Course not. So off came the string driving gloves, in a manner of speaking.
Truth be known, it might almost have been easier, back in those days. When things were far less complicated. It was like they were running lines from a script, always practising for opening night: Gene said something blunt and possibly in questionable taste. Sam retorted. Next thing anyone knew, the inevitable screams and shouts of two incredibly stubborn men who both knew their own minds quite well had escalated to a deafening crescendo just seconds before their percussion section started in earnest.
In the end, their constant dust-ups might have been seen as a slightly brutal way of going about things, and it most certainly wasn't a carefully mediated performance review and rebuttal of same through the labyrinthine antiseptic channels of Human Resources . But in the end, it seemed to prove a much more effective means of communication---at least, for them. Neither of them had cause to doubt what the other was saying, and though there was certainly quite a bit of arguing, there was never "misunderstanding."
Gene snorted. Now that the curtain had apparently both risen and fallen, he almost missed Sam's mouthing off. They'd clearly got entirely too complacent as of late. Maybe things between them had changed too much?
As though sensing that it was exactly the right moment, Sam chose this particular time to glance up and catch Gene's eye with a wicked glint of amusement. And then his mouth quirked into that obscenely irritating half-smile.
"What are you grinning about, Dorothy?" Gene asked, not quite able to keep a stern face while so doing.
"I'm thinking that you're the easiest person in the world to read." For once, Sam gave a plain, unadorned answer---one that he hadn't hidden with words whose native element was the OED.
Gene glanced at him warily, surprised at the fact that he was still able to be surprised by Sam. "Think you've got the alphabet down, eh?"
"Let's just say I'd pass my A-level."
i don't think that i don't know. ((two.))
It had started, as many things do, with a kiss.
Phyllis had been out with her sister, taking in a crisp autumn day and doing her best to take her mind off work when a small child had suddenly latched himself onto her legs. As she didn't know him, she of course was more than a little startled. Seeing no one else around, she asked the obvious question.
"Are you lost, little boy?"
"No, I'm found," he said. "You're a policewoman. You live in my street, I know you."
"Do you, now, love? How come I've never seen you?" Phyllis' voice simultaneously tensed and softened---a reaction that she hated. This was a child---but either he was keenly observant, or else something more sinister was at work. She'd got more than her share of harassing phone calls in her time, and it wasn't for nothing that she'd honed her own observational instincts over the years.
"We've only just moved here. Dad's a travelling salesman, so it's mostly just my mum and me. Ruth Tyler? I'm Sam." Sam let go of her leg and solemnly offered her his hand, trying his most grown-up expression on for size. He couldn't have been more than six years of age, at the outside. Still, there was something about little Sam that Phyllis found slightly off-putting.
"Well, where's your mum now, Sam? She'll be worried sick looking for you, I'd expect." Phyllis said as she shook his hand, then deftly wrapped her own around it in a slightly different way and began walking with him, hand-in-hand.
"I can't find her. I was hoping you could help." Sam said, voice tiny and afraid, yet somehow awfully adult. Phyllis'd never had children of her own, but she felt her heart break a little as she caught the look of worry in his eye and remembered Vic Tyler. And wondered again about her DI's involvement with that case, and whether little Sammy was at all related.
She sighed. "Well, let's take you down the station. Bea, would you mind?"
"Course not. The police's work is never done, eh?" Beatrice, Phyllis' sister, gave a cheery wave. "I'd best be getting home now anyway, my cats will be looking for me. Good luck finding your mum, Sam."
Of course, being practical as ever, the street both Sam and Phyllis lived in was no more than four blocks away from CID. And of course, in one of those coincidences that only ever manages to happen either in very elaborately contrived fiction or else in actual everyday life, they walked through the door less than fifteen minutes after a visibly bruised and distraught Ruth Tyler had stormed in and demanded to file a report on the kidnapping of her only son.
Normally, of course, such a comparatively mundane occurrence wouldn't be a matter for the likes of Gene Hunt, but when the woman in question's husband was Vic Tyler, it was hardly a wonder that the man was all attentiveness and tea and biscuits. It also didn't hurt that she was quite a bit of alright, either. When the Guv sent Chris down the canteen to retrieve the aforementioned tea and biscuits, Ray merely smiled and shook his head.
"I'll make my visit short, sir. I believe my husband has kidnapped my Sammy, and I want you to do everything you can to find him. Is that perfectly clear?" Ruth may have looked as though she was in a state very close to nervous collapse, but her voice was wrought out of steel.
"You want us to find your husband or your Sammy?" Gene said, more gently than some would have expected. He didn't make it a habit to get punched by beautiful women, after all.
Ruth stilled herself for a moment, closing her eyes and seemingly drawing strength from some unseen reserves. At length, she opened her eyes and said, "I only want my son back. If I ran the world, I'd have Vic back too, and he'd never have got involved in whatever it was he's got himself involved in. If wishes were horses..."
"...Beggars would ride. Of course, Mrs. Tyler. I'll personally see that your Sammy is returned to you, safe and sound. And if we can't find you yours, you're more than welcome to mine. Though it's nothing like a fair swap," Gene said, and followed it up with a short bark of mirthless laughter.
"Can I have a moment, Guv?" the Sam Tyler in question said, by way of response.
"Of course you can, but you should know it's not polite to keep a lady waiting. Manners, Tyler." Gene winked at Ruth, whose lips failed to twitch into the expected smile. This one was *good*, Gene thought as he watched her carefully, eyes not sparking with laughter even as his lips and lungs told a different story.
"I meant with Mrs. Tyler," Sam's voice was low and urgent, and just as serious as Ruth's.
"Do you know, I do believe that's only the second sensible thing you've said since you got here? Better make sure you really aren't related first," Gene stage-whispered into Sam's ear before clapping him once, hard, on the shoulder.
"I'll be right outside if you need me, love. We'll get right on with finding your son, never you worry." He smiled, winked at Sam rather more exaggeratedly than was strictly necessary, and pulled the door shut behind him as he left.
"I'll get right to the point, Detective Inspector Tyler. I don't know who you think you are, nor do I know who you think I am, but I'm not stupid. I've never been a betting woman, that's always been more Vic's thing---but I would bet any amount of money you've not told your DCI what you told me about my husband." Ruth's voice was a curious mixture of gratefulness and resentment as she spat these words out, perhaps with slightly more vitriol than she'd intended.
Sam, meanwhile, wondered at the fact that he'd been the one to request a moment alone with her, and yet here she was controlling the whole scenario. He blinked. "You're right, Mrs. Tyler. It's just... well... I wanted to see that your family was safe."
Ruth's eyes searched his face, first accusingly, then muted themselves into a numb sort of pain, the kind where it's been throbbing away so long, you're no longer even aware that you feel it. Finally, she said, "If you'd really wanted that, you'd have done the right thing."
"I believed I was doing the right thing," was an awfully weak response, and he knew it, but it was the only thing Sam could come up with on short notice. How could he possibly hope to explain what Vic had told him? And how could he expect her to believe it, when as far as she knew, Ruth Tyler barely knew him? Besides all that, there's no way he could put her through that kind of pain. So instead, he chose to look like an insensitive prick, purely out of necessity.
It came as no great shock to him that her eyes were burning holes into him and saying things her lips couldn't. If anything happens to Sammy, I'm holding YOU accountable.
It wasn't any great surprise, either, that he felt exactly the same way. If he'd been sent back to change some monumentally important event out of his past, who was to say that other people couldn't have been sent back in exactly the same way? Maybe this time round, he'd come out of it having learned a life of crime at the knee of his long-lost father, instead of having his sainted mother be the only woman who truly mattered in his life up to and including the fabled year 2006? Oh, there'd been women he'd dated. There'd even been Maya. But in the end, none of them mattered as much as his mum did, and Sam knew that wasn't how things were meant to be, in a normal, healthy life. How could he help it, though? All those women were like Vic; none of them stayed. Except Ruth.
for i've connections too sublime. ((three.))
"Come along with me, love, and we'll get you set up drawing. How does that sound?" Phyllis smiled down at Sam as she led him into Gene's empty office. She didn't guess he could get into much trouble if he sat alone in here while she hunted up the Guv---not if fully occupied with pencils and paper, at any rate.
Sam, eyes far too big and glassy with the excitement of being in a real, honest-to-goodness police station, could only nod in agreement.
"There's a good lad. Here you are. Now, I'll only be gone a moment. I'm going to get DCI Hunt to help you find your mum, how does that sound? Don't go anywhere while I'm gone; I'll be right back." The next sound was the door snicking shut behind Phyllis, who didn't stand around waiting for a response. She liked to think her mastery of vocal tones over the years was one which brooked no argument, especially from small children. For the most part, she was absolutely right.
******
So absorbed in his drawing was Sam that he didn't even look up as the door opened again and DCI Hunt came round to his side of the desk and looked over his shoulder.
"What have we got here, then?" Gene squinted down at the paper.
Sam was suddenly shy. He honestly didn't know what to say in the presence of a real, true police officer---and certainly not a DCI like he, himself hoped that he'd become one day. "I'm...waiting for someone to come get me."
"Oh, so you've met DI Tyler, have you?" Gene smirked. That ridiculous black leather jacket was unmistakable---as was the ludicrously short haircut.
Sam's eyes got huge as he nodded. He'd felt a connection with DI Tyler, even though he'd only met him once---and it couldn't be a coincidence that they had the same surname, could it? He'd asked his mum, and his mum swore that she didn't know of any male relatives on the force, and especially not here in Manchester. But he wasn't quite sure he believed her, because it was just too great of a coincidence.
"Well, I'm happy to say I've got good news for you. Your mum's come round looking for you, so there's no need to worry."
Sam looked up quickly, relieved. And yet he worried his bottom lip, as though there was something he wanted to say, but wasn't sure whether or not he should.
Gene's eyes narrowed fractionally as he observed this all-too-familiar gesture . "If you want to finish your drawing, I'll just go get your mum. I'll only be a minute, mind. Don't get scuff marks all over my chair," he added, eyeing Sam's slightly muddy shoes wrapped around the bottom rung of his office chair.
Sam nodded in relief, and smiled as he unwound his ankles from the chair and set pencil to paper once more as Gene stepped out and shut the door behind him.
******
It was Ruth Tyler's eyes that widened in utter shock and surprise as she beheld her only son sat up very straight and tall in the DCI's desk chair, so intent on whatever it was that he was drawing that he hadn't even looked up once since she'd come in. "Sammy! Oh, thank God!"
At this, Sam looked up, face mirroring his mother's own relief and joy. And still, despite his obvious joy at seeing his mother again, he worried his lower lip and was obviously fighting the urge to glance down at the piece of paper on the desk in front of him.
Ruth, knowing this look well, crinkled her eyes up as she grinned completely. "Are you nearly done? You can finish if you like, then. I'm sure DCI Hunt won't mind."
Sam nodded eagerly and responded, "Yes, almost there. It's a present for DCI Hunt, actually. As thanks for finding you, Mum. Hang on, only a little more..."
He scribbled furiously and wrote a caption underneath his drawing before signing his name with a flourish, tossing the pencil down, and hopping off of Gene's chair.
Gene smiled at this reunion, and hoped it would be the last time he'd have this particular Tyler family in his office. They'd seen entirely too much trouble in recent times, and he really did hate it when women and children were involved in the nasty bits of business that lowlifes like Vic did. Way he saw it, they really were better off without him.
"Now, what do you say, Sammy?" Ruth admonished her son.
"Thank you very much for finding my mum, DCI Hunt," Sam said, very solemnly holding out his hand to shake Gene's.
Gene stooped down to Sam's level and looked him in the eye. "DS Dobbs tells me you found her first thing when you noticed your mum was missing. Keep that up and you'll make a brilliant copper one day," he said, countering his equal level of seriousness with a wink at the end.
"Do you really think so? Thanks!" Sam's face broke out into a grin as sunny and bright as his mum's gorgeous blonde hair and he impulsively kissed Gene on the cheek before grabbing his mum's hand and swinging it tightly as he bounced out the door.
Gene smiled to himself as he walked over to his desk. On occasion, nice things that didn't involve banging anyone up for anything unfortunate did happen in his city, and although he wouldn't have admitted it out loud to anyone, he liked these small moments of happiness when they came.
And then he squinted at his desk, and all colour drained from his face.
Little Sammy Tyler had finished his drawing, and had drawn him in. Along with his car. And---holding DI Tyler's hand? Gene blinked. The boy was quite young, after all. He couldn't have known any better. He knew that he certainly hadn't known about the birds and the bees when he was six. Still, he wasn't sure he could display this particular piece of art unless he wanted no end of jokes from the rest of CID about it.
He couldn't bring himself to throw it away, though. They weren't the best portraits in the world, true---but there was some amount of truth in the expressions on their faces. And the caption underneath as well, which read: "Together, We Fight Crime."
He tucked the drawing away into a file folder at the back of his left bottom desk drawer, only to yank the drawer out again a minute later in complete disbelief.
That signature...no...it couldn't be.
"You wanted a word, Guv?" Sam's voice was quiet as he stood on the other side of Gene's desk and he leaned over to see what had made Gene's face suddenly go so pale.
"I think you've got some explaining to do," Gene said, quietly, when he finally found his voice again.
"Look, about Mrs. Tyler, it's really not what you're thinking..." Sam looked down, small spots of colour forming on his cheeks as he steeled himself for yet another argument with his superior officer.
"Never mind that. Try explaining this." And before he could rethink and stop himself, Gene brandished little Sammy’s drawing accusingly.
Sam's legs went slightly wobbly and it was lucky for him a chair was just behind him, or else he'd have been picking himself up from a nasty spill all over the floor in front of Gene's desk.
you'll be the death of me. ((four.))
Little Sammy sighed contentedly as he slipped back underneath the bubbles in his bath. He may have been quite small, but he was now constantly being reassured about what a big boy he was; so big, in fact, that he didn't need supervision while in the bath. Unlike what his Mum had always said.
He wasn't quite sure who was taking care of him, to be honest. But he did know he liked it. Instead of seeing all the other kids have all the nice things, he had them instead. No more hand-me-downs. No more tins of 'Oops for dinner every night, because it was all they had. Unless he wanted them, of course; he could have them anytime he wanted. His new caretakers didn't concern themselves with petty matters like forbidding Sam from doing things. Instead, they appealed to his greater sense of reason, to make him determine within himself that something wasn't meant for doing.
Sammy smiled. These people took him seriously. He didn't need pampering and cossetting and having his hand held as he crossed the street. Mind, those things were nice, and he wasn't saying otherwise. But the surest way to buy Sammy's silence was to keep his interest, and the way to do that was by treating him like the adult his mind liked to think he was. Sure, sometimes his body betrayed him---but his mind was so much sharper than any of them on the outside could have ever guessed.
It wasn't that he didn't love his mum. It was only that she didn't understand him, and never really had.
******
It wasn't necessarily that he was so much smarter, but there was one thing Vic Tyler had figured out about his son long before he suspected Ruth would ever have done. That was, quite simply, that the easiest way to control Sam was through Sam controlling himself. True, he hadn't lived a very long life so far, but it was still very obvious that his internal dialogue was some of the most important conversation-making the boy felt that he ever engaged in.
Vic smiled. He'd been heartbroken to realise that he could have all the success he'd ever wanted, even beyond his wildest dreams---but that he wouldn't be able to share it with his son. That was, until he arrived. And took Vic under his wing.
"There's ways around that, my friend. Quite simple, really. All you have to do is what I say, and you can have your cake and eat it, too. Or your Sammy can eat it. Whichever you like."
There really was no other word for it---the man was brilliant.
all my life i've lived to taste someone else's flavours on my tongue. ((five.))
"Now, what shall we have for dinner, Sammy?" Ruth asked, swinging little Sammy's hand merrily as they walked down the street together. Sometimes, she really did miss when he was just a little bit younger, and she could swing him up and carry him, snuggled in her arms. Just feeling his warmth and his little heart beating made her think that everything really was going to be all right, somehow.
"Mmmm...I don't know. You choose." Sammy grinned, a sunny, happy smile, like he had a secret.
"Why don't we go round to Auntie Heather's and see what she'd like? I'd say it's cause for celebration. No staying in for us tonight, Sammy!" Ruth grinned; she couldn't help it, Sammy's smile was contagious.
Sammy nodded vigorously. Any excuse to see Auntie Heather was a good one.
******
"And you drew him a picture? How sweet, now he's got a Sammy original! That'll be worth money someday, mark my words. Did he say thank you?" Auntie Heather rushed to try to cover up the strange look she'd got on her face when Sammy had mentioned DCI Hunt's involvement, but she wasn't fast enough for Sammy not to see. He made a mental note to write it down in his notebook later.
Sammy drowned out the sound of his mum and Auntie Heather as they talked on, choosing instead to draw again. He did best when left to his own devices, and he was pretty sure he'd known that from the time he'd learnt to talk.
and heaven, i think, is too close to hell. ((six.))
"This one's ugly, Guv. Man's got his fingers bashed to pieces and was found strangled with a telephone cord round his neck." Ray said, chewing thoughtfully on the filter end of his cigarette.
"Do we know this man, Raymondo?" Gene asked, fingers hooked through beltloops.
"Man's not got any prior arrest record, no known criminal contacts of any kind. His mum says he's always been the quiet, bookish type. Liked to keep to himself and toy with electronics more than anything," Ray grinned nastily, inferring some boys-own joke that Chris chuckled at, even though Chris wasn't fully sure he understood where the entendre (double, single, or otherwise) was. Phyllis snorted at Ray's obviousness as she overheard while hustling back over to the front desk.
And then Chris cleared his throat, and added one more piece to the puzzle. "Um, Guv...one more thing you might want to know."
"What is it, Chris?" Gene glanced up sharply, wondering what Chris could have picked up on that Ray had either missed or otherwise not been motivated to mention.
"There was a note, presumably left by the killer." Chris' expression was torn between excitement at being the one to reveal a potentially important piece of investigative knowledge, and a slightly whipped-puppy look as he expected Ray's disapproval at having been one-upped by an underling.
True to form, Gene rounded on Ray, eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Why wasn't I informed of this? Seems pretty important to me."
Ray's face reddened even as he began to protest. "If you'd actually seen the note, I don't think you'd make much of it. Just a child's drawing, is all. Man's got a young daughter; it's probably a gift from her to her dad."
Chris mumbled something that no one could quite make out.
"Something else to add, Chris?" Gene rumbled, not unencouragingly.
"I bagged it like DI Tyler showed us. Here." Chris handed it over, face flushing even more as he tried to draw himself in as far away from Ray as he could. Ray'd get over it. Chris was sure he would, and they'd all have a nice pint down the pub later, like nothing had ever happened.
Gene's expression was unreadable as he wordlessly surveyed the drawing through the clear plastic sandwich bag Chris had wrapped around it. And remained so as he handed it off to Sam, who'd been standing off to the side, massaging his temples with his hands and looking miserable.
"Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Chris," Sam said, both hands dropping by his sides rather uselessly as even his urge to gesticulate fled him.
"Do the usual enquiries and see if we can find anything out about who may have wanted this man dead, and why. Check with the daughter and see what school she goes to; check up on the girl's mum as well and see who she works for and who she's acquainted with on a daily basis. I want to know everything about that family, and I want to know it now. Are we clear?" Even Gene's roar was slightly subdued as he exchanged a heavily weighted look with Sam, then leaned over to retrieve the paper Sam had dropped.
"Anyone needs us, we'll be conferring in my office," Gene said, inferring with tone alone that interruptions were not to be made lightly, if they valued their jobs and/or lives.
Ray sniggered to himself, as he always did when the Guv took Sam into his office and shut the door. All twinges of envy were automatically assuaged the moment it became clear that Sam was going to get a dose of the Guv's own special brand of morale boosting. Ray didn't argue; his own morale was always markedly improved after these moments.
Just as Chris hoped, Ray's amusement at Sam's impending beating had completely erased all thoughts of Chris' earlier mutiny from his mind. Chris could see it in Ray's eyes, after years of long study.
Chris laughed, too, but for completely different reasons. The laugh didn't quite reach his eyes, but no one noticed.
******
The door had barely had the chance to slam shut behind them before Gene laid into Sam with a peculiarly restrained and terrifying fury that even Sam had never seen before. "So if I'm to believe it's your former self who did this drawing and the other one, do you want to tell me what you were doing at a murder scene as a young boy?" Gene was almost hissing now, and if Sam had been wearing his glasses, they'd have fogged over completely with the heat of the Guv's breath. "Happy family memories? The Tyler family killing spree? Or, oh no, the Tyler family criminal empire?"
Sam's face was no longer a healthy 1973 beige, and instead was a shade more akin to the paper little Sammy had done their evidence drawing on. His mouth worked open, then shut, and more than a few strangled sounds came out before he finally saw wisdom and stopped attempting to talk, and instead gestured for the paper.
Gene, for his part, hadn't backed off, and was still about an inch from Sam's face. Nonetheless, he'd learned how to read Sam quite well, and handed over the paper without a word. And still didn't back away, forcing Sam to tilt his head downward in order to look at it.
Yes, there was that damnable signature, all right. The one he'd tried to explain away with the truth, as he knew it, once he realised the Guv wasn't going to accept any useless exhortations of what a funny old world it was. The insane truth that there were two Sam Tylers in Manchester at the same time, both with parents with the same given names. The inexorable truth that the Guv had no choice but to accept, finally, even though he still hadn't fully processed every insane notion that Sam had filled his head with about time-travelling and being from the future and how he wasn't even sure how he'd landed here in the first place.
That signature was attached to a simple drawing of a man with green eyes and a beigeish coat slamming another man's hand repeatedly with a telephone. At a wooden table. In a dark room. Surrounded by shelves and shelves of random items and boxes with illegible labels. A room that looked disturbingly like---
"...Lost and Found. Do you want to tell me how you---he---drew this, Sam?" Gene said, in a dangerously quiet voice.
Sam's eyes flickered up to meet Gene's and saw the one thing he'd never, ever expected to see in them: fear. Pure, unbridled terror; horrifying and absolute. He had to stop himself following his instinctive train of thought, which had been that he'd somehow got it all wrong.
It wasn't him. It was, but it wasn't.
Sam stared at the Guv helplessly and swallowed down the lump in his throat.
with barbed wire kisses and her love. ((seven.))
"A thorough search has turned up nothing, Boss. Chester Milford here---" Chris gestured to the report on the dead man in the manila file folder in his hand, "has a daughter, and she's very young, but she's got a bit of a palsy. Can't even hold a pencil, much less draw with one---poor thing," he quickly added, trying his best to distance himself from the sort of rude remark Ray might have made in his place. "His wife is a homemaker, and she rarely goes out except to take care of her ailing mother, who lives just up the street. Quiet little thing, barely talks to anyone."
Gene and Sam exchanged a look once again, which Chris caught, but carefully schooled his face not to show him catching.
"Damn." Sam swore under his breath.
"There's been another one, Guv." Ray's voice was grim, and taut. Even he had to admit that something was going on, and the tension it was putting on CID was seriously beginning to put him off his beer, which was never a good thing.
"Another one what?" Gene's eyes glittered as he crossed his arms and waited for the report; something else Chris didn't miss. Usually the Guv stood with arms out, in a more offensive position; rarely did he stand in a way that so completely closed him off from the rest of the team. It wasn't as though he ran toward danger and unsettling situations with outstretched arms, exactly, but he didn't back away from it and curl up into a ball and hide, either. Chris found it vaguely unsettling.
"Another murder, of the smash-and-bash variety. Another middle-aged male, conspicuous marks of a beating, surrounded by what looks to be enough LSD tablets to make retiring to Mallorca by the end of the year a distinct possibility for the whole of CID." Ray laughed at his little joke, but was quick to jump in again before Chris had the chance. "Oh, and another drawing. That's the main thing. Looks like the same 'artist,' too." Ray smiled smugly as he handed over his plastic-wrapped parcel straight into the waiting hands of the Guv. That'll show *you* he smirked in Chris' direction.
Chris' face remained bland and impassive. After all, it wasn't about who did the job; it was about the job getting done, and done well. He had to believe that, at the end of the day.
Gene studied the drawing, face shuttered even more than it had been previously. At length, he cleared his throat and said, "Lads, I want you to phone up Mrs. Ruth Tyler and bring her in for questioning. And little Sammy, too."
All eyes involuntarily flickered toward Sam with such intensity that Sam would surely have flinched. That is, if he'd even noticed. Instead, he just massaged his temples and stared resolutely at the floor, at a space somewhere between the toes of his Cuban heels.
******
"You can't possibly think that I---he---murdered those people, can you?" Sam's voice was quiet as well. Conversations lately were far too important to have in the previous loud fashion to which they'd been accustomed.
Gene studied Sam's face closely, searching for any sign at all that he'd been betrayed. At last, he found whatever confirmation it was that he'd needed and he nodded slightly as he said, "No, I don't think I do. But Sammy's involved in this, somehow, and we've got to find out how. Are you absolutely sure you don't remember any of this?" his voice was almost pleading.
"I'd tell you if I did, Guv. I swear it, on my mother's life. This is as much of a mystery to you as it is to me. Although..." Sam's voice trailed off. He'd known that sooner or later, he was going to have to tear the sticking plaster off and let the scarcely-healed wound breathe. Only he'd never thought it would be this soon in coming.
"Although what?"
Sam squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height in order to meet his fate. "That business with Vic Tyler awhile back. I wasn't completely honest with you."
Gene gave him a surprisingly wounded look, but said nothing.
"Well, knowing what you do now, if he was your dad, would you have been?" Sam asked, instead of explaining further.
A mild and noncommittal grunt came from Gene's general direction, and some of the fiercely wounded pride in his eyes abated.
"I didn't want to destroy my family, was what it came down to. I know...I know now that he did it, all on his own. But I didn't want to send him down for his part, because it would have destroyed Ruth. And little Sammy." Sam spread his hands, palms up, begging Gene to understand.
Gene's face softened slightly, and he finally nodded, still not trusting his voice to speak.
"I know...I know my dad's scum. And I know he's got to be behind this, because there is absolutely no way my mum is. But how's he got my drawings? Drawings I don't remember ever doing? And I swear to you again, I never had anything to do with any murder scene investigations as a kid."
Gene almost smiled at how pitiful and pathetic poor Sam looked---even moreso than usual. He had to hold himself in check from wanting to ruffle Sam's hair, almost the same reaction usually inspired by the hapless DC Skelton's antics with birds. Almost.
"Not trying to atone for past sins by shacking up with the long arm of the law now, are you?" Gene broke his silence, voice slightly rusty as it malformed the joke, just slightly.
Sam's mouth went dry and he swallowed back a lump in his throat as he silently thanked all the gods in the universe for this moment. And thanked Gene with his eyes, alone.
i don't mind if i get broken. ((eight.))
"I don't know what you mean to imply by all this, DCI Hunt, but I can assure you I've had NO CONTACT WHATSOEVER with my husband. I wish I had done, now. I'd hand him over to you in a heartbeat, the way he ran off on me and Sammy like he did." Ruth Tyler crossed her legs in irritation, left hand snapping the folds of her skirt down smoothly around her knees as she repositioned them.
"And you're sure Sammy's not gone anywhere out of the ordinary recently? No nights over at friends' houses, where you weren't around to supervise?" Gene tented his fingertips as he leaned back in his chair and assessed Mrs. Tyler very seriously.
"Absolutely not. I've been more cautious than ever since he went missing; I don't ever want to be that terrified again. I don't know if you've got children, DCI Hunt, but I can assure you it's the worst feeling in the world. I'd rather be hit by a car than go through that kind of horror ever again." Ruth said, emphatically.
"And you, Sammy. Is there anything you'd like to tell me? You'd be helping in an important police investigation, you know." Gene smiled and tried to put some levity into his voice.
Sammy shook his head, but he looked scared---a fact that Sam did not fail to notice.
"Would you mind terribly if we spoke to your son alone for a few minutes, Mrs. Tyler?" Sam asked, as politely as he knew how.
"I...I don't suppose so, since you found him when he went missing. Sammy, I'll just be outside a minute if you need me. All right?" Ruth smiled down at Sammy, and he nodded and hugged her hard before she turned to walk out the door.
"Why don't you tell us what's really going on, Sammy?" Sam sat down, instinctively refusing to break eye contact with his younger self.
"If I do, you won't believe me," Sammy said, in a very small voice.
"You'd be surprised, the things I believe," Gene said, gently.
"I've got a twin. He's got the same name as me. He claims he is me, only I don't know how that's even possible. Do you?" Sammy's words tumbled out in a rush.
Sam and Gene exchanged another look, both seeming to agree that they shouldn't say anything, and should just let the boy tell his story.
"He says he lives with my dad. I haven't seen my dad for ages---not since I was four. He's been on the road ever since, sends me and Mum postcards every once in awhile. But I would have known if I had a twin brother, wouldn't I?" Sammy seemed partially awed, and partially terrified.
Wordlessly, Sam reached out and held Sammy's hand for strength.
"Would you like something to drink, Sammy? Water? Do you like tea?" Gene offered, moving as though to walk out toward the canteen even though it was quite clear by the look on his face that he didn't want to miss this for the world.
"No, thank you sir. I'm fine." Sammy sniffled slightly, and Sam handed him a tissue.
Gene looked relieved, and settled back into his chair and waited.
"At first, I was excited. We've moved around so much, and I've never had many friends. But he seemed to know everything about me---and it got so that I didn't even question it anymore. One day he asked why didn't we switch places, and wouldn't it be a fun prank to play on everyone? I didn't understand at first, but then he told me more about my dad. Who he'd been living with...wait, is that "who" or "whom"? I always get those mixed up." Sammy smiled sadly as he grasped for his grammar.
"I think it's "who,"" Gene smirked, snapping a rubber band at the older Sam's head as he continued to listen.
Sam ignored him and squeezed Sammy's hand reassuringly. "And then what happened?"
"Nothing. At least, not that I know of. We only did it once. I didn't tell Mum, you see. I didn't think she'd understand, and she definitely wouldn't like it. We only ever switched once, honest."
Gene's gaze crystallised. "So you know your dad's address, do you?"
Sam was already writing it down.
******
Vic Tyler was waiting with a full cocktail service for four ranged around the bar when they got there.
"Evening, gentlemen. What can I get you? DCI Hunt, I understand you're partial to a nice single malt?" Vic smiled, clad in a rather nice smoking jacket and considerably more nicely outfitted than he'd been when last anyone from CID had seen him.
"What are you playing at, Vic?" Sam growled tonelessly, eyes colder than Gene had ever seen them.
"I've already played my hand. Now I'm just waiting for yours." Vic poured out as he spoke. And then turned to greet the newcomer as he entered the room. "Oh good, I was beginning to get worried. Tony, this is DCI Hunt and DI Tyler."
"A pleasure meeting you again, DCI Hunt. DI Tyler and I are already well-acquainted," the man said, as he stepped out from the shadow of the doorway.
As Sam had been disconcertingly pale before, so his internal bits seemed to zoom in the other direction as he turned a perfectly bright tomato red. "Tony Crane. MY Tony Crane. So, how did it feel to hear Eve beg for her life? Did it make you feel like a properly big man?" Sam spat, heedless of any and all decorum he might usually have shown.
Tony whistled slightly under his breath and gave a slight laugh as he addressed Gene. "My, I see that my memory hasn't served me ill at all. You've got quite a mental case on your hands there, haven't you, DCI Hunt?" he asked, just as unctuous in his tones as ever.
Having been confronted with the notion of three Sam Tylers surrounding him within a ten-meter span just a short while ago, Gene was surprised to find that a second, much older Tony Crane than the one he'd recently had the distinct displeasure of meeting didn't phase him in the slightest.
"I thought we'd banged you up for life in the loony bin," Gene retorted, not missing a beat.
Sam met his gaze gratefully, then flicked back to the giant, gaping time anomaly standing directly in front of him---but not before Tony Crane had the chance to notice.
"Oh, so we're sleeping our way to the top now, are we, Detective Inspector Tyler? I'd have thought that would be beneath you," Tony snarled, lip curled in disgust as his mouth formed the word "inspector". "Now I know where that "Chief" in your title comes from---in my time, of course, DCI Hunt. You haven't got a thing to worry about at present." Tony tutted in an obscene caricature of a mother soothing a fussy baby.
"Even if that were true, it'd be a thousand times better than anything you've done since the unfortunate day you were born, Crane." Sam had managed to pull himself together enough to handle Crane's particular brand of barbed language.
"You know, it's funny. I didn't used to be nearly so bad as you've made me out to be. Used to be, all I wanted was my own small pie d'terre, a little tiny empire "Oop Norf," as they say. Just a little tiny thing to call my own," Tony pontificated, pausing only to swirl a bit of his scotch around in his mouth, neatly.
"But then I met an insufferably self-righteous copper in 1973 called Sam Tyler, who told me about how he was from the future. Told me a whole great load of nonsense, and then who hung for it? Me. Maybe I hadn't been the most upstanding citizen this sorry excuse for a town has ever seen. Maybe so. But did I deserve to get fitted up for being insane, especially when it clearly wasn't me who was guilty of that particular crime? That's a depth even I wouldn't have sunk to. Then, anyway." Tony paused; dramatic effect was clearly not a concept lost on him.
"So I planned ways to escape. Oh yes, there are ways to escape even if you're down for life in the loony bin. I could tell you how, but we'd be here all afternoon, and I'd rather tell you the juicy bits instead. I never could resist a good story," Tony smiled mirthlessly as he poured himself a second scotch. "Would you like a seat, gentlemen? This might take awhile."
Gene and Sam both seated themselves in one smoothly choreographed gesture while Vic made himself scarce and busied himself with setting up the hidden cameras.
"I'd thought you were merely insane, Tyler. That is, until I met you in the future. Then I realised that somehow, no matter how fantastic your story had seemed to me at the time, it obviously had to be true. Of course, it didn't take long to figure out that the you of the 2000s didn't know it. You didn't know about any of this, because---and here's the beautiful part---you hadn't travelled backward through time yet! So I knew, but you didn't!" Tony couldn't resist cackling and clapping his hands together gleefully.
"Meeting you again was what did it; obviously I had to build a bigger empire, or else how was I to fund research into building my own time-travel machine?" Tony sipped his scotch politely, as though it were a fine bone-china cup of tea.
Sam licked his very dry lips as Gene handed him his flask of scotch from out of his coat pocket. Sam unscrewed the cap and took a healthy swig before responding, "So if all this is true, why didn't you stop me from banging you up in the first place?"
Tony looked wounded. "Gentlemen, please. I could have had the whole of CID dead and mounted on flagpoles ranged round the city limits by now if I'd wanted to! Believe me, I haven't drugged your scotch. Nor has my youthful associate Vic over here. No, indeed, I merely thought we might have progressed to the point in our relationship where we could all sit and enjoy a fine single malt together. Like...well, no, not like mates, exactly, but at least like civilised folk."
Gene said nothing, instead taking a double swig from his flask, which Sam had returned to him as soon as he'd poured a healthy swig of the burning liquid down the back of his throat.
"You still haven't answered my question," was Sam's only response.
"I thought this way would be much more poetic. What could be better than pitting you against yourself? You've surely thought of the notion of parallel universes yourself, Sam---even if you'd never read about it before landing yourself in your current predicament. So I did some research, and found out a bit more about your dad. The criminal element has ways of finding out information that even you couldn't touch, DCI Hunt. Where you failed to find Vic Tyler and bring him to justice, I found it quite easy to locate him. And even easier still to buy his loyalty---all I had to do was promise him little Sammy. He really did love you, you know," Tony's mouth was a moue of sadness, almost clownlike, as he returned his attention to Sam.
"I've heard enough," Gene said, voice deadly quiet as he pulled out his gun.
"I'd think the better of that if I were you, DCI Hunt." Tony Crane said, warningly, nodding toward the wall just behind them. "We're being watched, you know."
Gene snorted. "I don't believe you."
"Sam, why don't you tell your Guv about how very inexpensive good camcorders are in 2006, and what an amazing surveillance tool they make, when properly used?" Tony smiled brightly, taking yet another fortifying sip of his scotch.
Sam looked...grey. And more unhealthy than Gene had ever seen him in the entire time he'd known him, which was really saying quite a lot, considering. Gene made a snap decision. No pretty speeches, nothing in the slightest to give him away. He stood, aimed, and fired.
At nothing. The shells lodged in the wall behind where Tony Crane had been sitting, only mere moments before.
Tony Crane had disappeared.
A thorough search of the flat revealed that Vic Tyler had disappeared as well.
i don't mind if i get fixed. ((nine.))
When neither of them had shown up even weeks later, and the lease on the flat Vic Tyler had registered under an alias had come up unpaid, Gene grudgingly had to put the case on the back burner.
Sam had looked ashen ever since. He'd withdrawn, even more than usual. He wasn't up to being the picky-pain he'd always been. He'd go down the pub with the rest of CID, and he'd buy rounds of drinks, but he always sat and drank his own silently.
He wouldn't meet Gene's gaze. Not ever. Which worried Gene most of all.
A knock came from his door as he sat in his office late one night. He hadn't actually been doing work; instead, he'd been sitting and bouncing a small bouncy ball off the wall, the way Chris used to drive him crazy doing.
"What is it?" he asked, half-expecting it to be Annie with some half-forgotten bit of evidence turned up on some case or other. She was turning into quite the crack detective, was Cartwright---if only he could have been bothered to care.
"DCI Hunt? I wanted to say thanks," came a small, familiar voice from the doorway.
"Sammy? Where's your mother? She'll be worried sick about you," Gene immediately admonished.
"She's just outside. I told her I had another drawing for you, and we saw your light on so I told her I'd just be a minute." Sammy smiled.
Gene grunted in assent; this explanation made as much sense as anything was doing, lately. "So which one are you, then?"
"That's for me to know, DCI Hunt." Sammy smiled mysteriously. "Only I will tell you this: those drawings weren't Tony Crane's doing. He thinks they were, but they weren't. He wanted to make this much more painful. Me, well, I always knew I could trust you---in any time. The drawings were the only way, I thought. That's why I made sure to sign all of them. Oh, and one last thing---I don't think that he's finished with you yet. I heard him saying something about 'The Ghost of Christmas Past' a few times, if that means anything. Here, you can see for yourself; it's all in the drawing."
Seated on a small box just behind the Guv and completely out of view, Sam smiled to himself---the first genuine urge to smile he'd felt in weeks.
He grabbed Gene's hand and squeezed hard.
~~~fin~~~
AUTHOR: Janni
EMAIL: jantalaimon@livejournal.com
RATING: Why is there no Cortina rating for pure mind-scramblage? ;) I'm torn between Blue Cortina for slashiness and Red Cortina for mental and psychological disturbance. But not Brown, because it's not purely smutty! Sloppy palette-knife-mixed Cortina, maybe? *is at a loss* Purple Cortina? Yeah.
WORDCOUNT: 8642
SPOILERS: Through S2.07. Relies heavily on canon knowledge through that point. Probably more heavily than anything else I've written, actually. You've been warned. :)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Written for the lifein1973 Ficathon 2008. For Requester #12, with prompt "young!Sam, a child's drawings, showing Gene the future." Chapter headings taken from various Jesus and Mary Chain lyrics, and as such, belong entirely to the brothers Reid and not the least bit to me. Also, I blame Audrey Niffenegger. Beta'd by the lovely and pointy-beaked usomitai. Never underestimate her; it's hard to hold a red pen with flippers! ;) Also beta'd by the fantastic m31andy, and if it weren't for the two of them reining me in, it's unlikely this fic would have made it to fruition. :)
SUMMARY: Two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
DISCLAIMER: Life on Mars and associated characters are copyright Kudos and the BBC. No infringement is intended and no money is being made.
ON A CLEAR DAY
easy streets are not for me. ((one.))
The keys clacked away endlessly, at speeds far greater than any Gene Hunt had ever personally borne witness to---a fact which was impressive to both dictator and dictatee since the typewriter in question was a far cry from the soft keys of 2006 PC terminals of any stripe.
I'm not much of a writer, never have been. Have always been more of a doer of deeds, both great and small. So what's suddenly got into me to make me want to write it all down?
The fact is, I can't make sense out of any of what's been going on. No sense at all. So I thought that a bit of 'gay-boy science ,' as it's called, might help.
"I'm not typing that last part," Sam Tyler glared mutinously over the sheaf of paper that sat next to the typewriter, just on the left for easy access.
"You're the one came up with that term, not me." Gene sniffed, even as a smirk pulled threateningly at the corners of his mouth.
Sam sighed long-sufferingly and said nothing, allowing the silence to speak for him. As he often did, now.
He hadn't always, of course. What he had been especially well known for in the past was running off at the mouth, and doing so a bit too often for Gene's tastes. And of course, Gene couldn't take any such challenge to his authority lying down now, could he? Course not. So off came the string driving gloves, in a manner of speaking.
Truth be known, it might almost have been easier, back in those days. When things were far less complicated. It was like they were running lines from a script, always practising for opening night: Gene said something blunt and possibly in questionable taste. Sam retorted. Next thing anyone knew, the inevitable screams and shouts of two incredibly stubborn men who both knew their own minds quite well had escalated to a deafening crescendo just seconds before their percussion section started in earnest.
In the end, their constant dust-ups might have been seen as a slightly brutal way of going about things, and it most certainly wasn't a carefully mediated performance review and rebuttal of same through the labyrinthine antiseptic channels of Human Resources . But in the end, it seemed to prove a much more effective means of communication---at least, for them. Neither of them had cause to doubt what the other was saying, and though there was certainly quite a bit of arguing, there was never "misunderstanding."
Gene snorted. Now that the curtain had apparently both risen and fallen, he almost missed Sam's mouthing off. They'd clearly got entirely too complacent as of late. Maybe things between them had changed too much?
As though sensing that it was exactly the right moment, Sam chose this particular time to glance up and catch Gene's eye with a wicked glint of amusement. And then his mouth quirked into that obscenely irritating half-smile.
"What are you grinning about, Dorothy?" Gene asked, not quite able to keep a stern face while so doing.
"I'm thinking that you're the easiest person in the world to read." For once, Sam gave a plain, unadorned answer---one that he hadn't hidden with words whose native element was the OED.
Gene glanced at him warily, surprised at the fact that he was still able to be surprised by Sam. "Think you've got the alphabet down, eh?"
"Let's just say I'd pass my A-level."
i don't think that i don't know. ((two.))
It had started, as many things do, with a kiss.
Phyllis had been out with her sister, taking in a crisp autumn day and doing her best to take her mind off work when a small child had suddenly latched himself onto her legs. As she didn't know him, she of course was more than a little startled. Seeing no one else around, she asked the obvious question.
"Are you lost, little boy?"
"No, I'm found," he said. "You're a policewoman. You live in my street, I know you."
"Do you, now, love? How come I've never seen you?" Phyllis' voice simultaneously tensed and softened---a reaction that she hated. This was a child---but either he was keenly observant, or else something more sinister was at work. She'd got more than her share of harassing phone calls in her time, and it wasn't for nothing that she'd honed her own observational instincts over the years.
"We've only just moved here. Dad's a travelling salesman, so it's mostly just my mum and me. Ruth Tyler? I'm Sam." Sam let go of her leg and solemnly offered her his hand, trying his most grown-up expression on for size. He couldn't have been more than six years of age, at the outside. Still, there was something about little Sam that Phyllis found slightly off-putting.
"Well, where's your mum now, Sam? She'll be worried sick looking for you, I'd expect." Phyllis said as she shook his hand, then deftly wrapped her own around it in a slightly different way and began walking with him, hand-in-hand.
"I can't find her. I was hoping you could help." Sam said, voice tiny and afraid, yet somehow awfully adult. Phyllis'd never had children of her own, but she felt her heart break a little as she caught the look of worry in his eye and remembered Vic Tyler. And wondered again about her DI's involvement with that case, and whether little Sammy was at all related.
She sighed. "Well, let's take you down the station. Bea, would you mind?"
"Course not. The police's work is never done, eh?" Beatrice, Phyllis' sister, gave a cheery wave. "I'd best be getting home now anyway, my cats will be looking for me. Good luck finding your mum, Sam."
Of course, being practical as ever, the street both Sam and Phyllis lived in was no more than four blocks away from CID. And of course, in one of those coincidences that only ever manages to happen either in very elaborately contrived fiction or else in actual everyday life, they walked through the door less than fifteen minutes after a visibly bruised and distraught Ruth Tyler had stormed in and demanded to file a report on the kidnapping of her only son.
Normally, of course, such a comparatively mundane occurrence wouldn't be a matter for the likes of Gene Hunt, but when the woman in question's husband was Vic Tyler, it was hardly a wonder that the man was all attentiveness and tea and biscuits. It also didn't hurt that she was quite a bit of alright, either. When the Guv sent Chris down the canteen to retrieve the aforementioned tea and biscuits, Ray merely smiled and shook his head.
"I'll make my visit short, sir. I believe my husband has kidnapped my Sammy, and I want you to do everything you can to find him. Is that perfectly clear?" Ruth may have looked as though she was in a state very close to nervous collapse, but her voice was wrought out of steel.
"You want us to find your husband or your Sammy?" Gene said, more gently than some would have expected. He didn't make it a habit to get punched by beautiful women, after all.
Ruth stilled herself for a moment, closing her eyes and seemingly drawing strength from some unseen reserves. At length, she opened her eyes and said, "I only want my son back. If I ran the world, I'd have Vic back too, and he'd never have got involved in whatever it was he's got himself involved in. If wishes were horses..."
"...Beggars would ride. Of course, Mrs. Tyler. I'll personally see that your Sammy is returned to you, safe and sound. And if we can't find you yours, you're more than welcome to mine. Though it's nothing like a fair swap," Gene said, and followed it up with a short bark of mirthless laughter.
"Can I have a moment, Guv?" the Sam Tyler in question said, by way of response.
"Of course you can, but you should know it's not polite to keep a lady waiting. Manners, Tyler." Gene winked at Ruth, whose lips failed to twitch into the expected smile. This one was *good*, Gene thought as he watched her carefully, eyes not sparking with laughter even as his lips and lungs told a different story.
"I meant with Mrs. Tyler," Sam's voice was low and urgent, and just as serious as Ruth's.
"Do you know, I do believe that's only the second sensible thing you've said since you got here? Better make sure you really aren't related first," Gene stage-whispered into Sam's ear before clapping him once, hard, on the shoulder.
"I'll be right outside if you need me, love. We'll get right on with finding your son, never you worry." He smiled, winked at Sam rather more exaggeratedly than was strictly necessary, and pulled the door shut behind him as he left.
"I'll get right to the point, Detective Inspector Tyler. I don't know who you think you are, nor do I know who you think I am, but I'm not stupid. I've never been a betting woman, that's always been more Vic's thing---but I would bet any amount of money you've not told your DCI what you told me about my husband." Ruth's voice was a curious mixture of gratefulness and resentment as she spat these words out, perhaps with slightly more vitriol than she'd intended.
Sam, meanwhile, wondered at the fact that he'd been the one to request a moment alone with her, and yet here she was controlling the whole scenario. He blinked. "You're right, Mrs. Tyler. It's just... well... I wanted to see that your family was safe."
Ruth's eyes searched his face, first accusingly, then muted themselves into a numb sort of pain, the kind where it's been throbbing away so long, you're no longer even aware that you feel it. Finally, she said, "If you'd really wanted that, you'd have done the right thing."
"I believed I was doing the right thing," was an awfully weak response, and he knew it, but it was the only thing Sam could come up with on short notice. How could he possibly hope to explain what Vic had told him? And how could he expect her to believe it, when as far as she knew, Ruth Tyler barely knew him? Besides all that, there's no way he could put her through that kind of pain. So instead, he chose to look like an insensitive prick, purely out of necessity.
It came as no great shock to him that her eyes were burning holes into him and saying things her lips couldn't. If anything happens to Sammy, I'm holding YOU accountable.
It wasn't any great surprise, either, that he felt exactly the same way. If he'd been sent back to change some monumentally important event out of his past, who was to say that other people couldn't have been sent back in exactly the same way? Maybe this time round, he'd come out of it having learned a life of crime at the knee of his long-lost father, instead of having his sainted mother be the only woman who truly mattered in his life up to and including the fabled year 2006? Oh, there'd been women he'd dated. There'd even been Maya. But in the end, none of them mattered as much as his mum did, and Sam knew that wasn't how things were meant to be, in a normal, healthy life. How could he help it, though? All those women were like Vic; none of them stayed. Except Ruth.
for i've connections too sublime. ((three.))
"Come along with me, love, and we'll get you set up drawing. How does that sound?" Phyllis smiled down at Sam as she led him into Gene's empty office. She didn't guess he could get into much trouble if he sat alone in here while she hunted up the Guv---not if fully occupied with pencils and paper, at any rate.
Sam, eyes far too big and glassy with the excitement of being in a real, honest-to-goodness police station, could only nod in agreement.
"There's a good lad. Here you are. Now, I'll only be gone a moment. I'm going to get DCI Hunt to help you find your mum, how does that sound? Don't go anywhere while I'm gone; I'll be right back." The next sound was the door snicking shut behind Phyllis, who didn't stand around waiting for a response. She liked to think her mastery of vocal tones over the years was one which brooked no argument, especially from small children. For the most part, she was absolutely right.
******
So absorbed in his drawing was Sam that he didn't even look up as the door opened again and DCI Hunt came round to his side of the desk and looked over his shoulder.
"What have we got here, then?" Gene squinted down at the paper.
Sam was suddenly shy. He honestly didn't know what to say in the presence of a real, true police officer---and certainly not a DCI like he, himself hoped that he'd become one day. "I'm...waiting for someone to come get me."
"Oh, so you've met DI Tyler, have you?" Gene smirked. That ridiculous black leather jacket was unmistakable---as was the ludicrously short haircut.
Sam's eyes got huge as he nodded. He'd felt a connection with DI Tyler, even though he'd only met him once---and it couldn't be a coincidence that they had the same surname, could it? He'd asked his mum, and his mum swore that she didn't know of any male relatives on the force, and especially not here in Manchester. But he wasn't quite sure he believed her, because it was just too great of a coincidence.
"Well, I'm happy to say I've got good news for you. Your mum's come round looking for you, so there's no need to worry."
Sam looked up quickly, relieved. And yet he worried his bottom lip, as though there was something he wanted to say, but wasn't sure whether or not he should.
Gene's eyes narrowed fractionally as he observed this all-too-familiar gesture . "If you want to finish your drawing, I'll just go get your mum. I'll only be a minute, mind. Don't get scuff marks all over my chair," he added, eyeing Sam's slightly muddy shoes wrapped around the bottom rung of his office chair.
Sam nodded in relief, and smiled as he unwound his ankles from the chair and set pencil to paper once more as Gene stepped out and shut the door behind him.
******
It was Ruth Tyler's eyes that widened in utter shock and surprise as she beheld her only son sat up very straight and tall in the DCI's desk chair, so intent on whatever it was that he was drawing that he hadn't even looked up once since she'd come in. "Sammy! Oh, thank God!"
At this, Sam looked up, face mirroring his mother's own relief and joy. And still, despite his obvious joy at seeing his mother again, he worried his lower lip and was obviously fighting the urge to glance down at the piece of paper on the desk in front of him.
Ruth, knowing this look well, crinkled her eyes up as she grinned completely. "Are you nearly done? You can finish if you like, then. I'm sure DCI Hunt won't mind."
Sam nodded eagerly and responded, "Yes, almost there. It's a present for DCI Hunt, actually. As thanks for finding you, Mum. Hang on, only a little more..."
He scribbled furiously and wrote a caption underneath his drawing before signing his name with a flourish, tossing the pencil down, and hopping off of Gene's chair.
Gene smiled at this reunion, and hoped it would be the last time he'd have this particular Tyler family in his office. They'd seen entirely too much trouble in recent times, and he really did hate it when women and children were involved in the nasty bits of business that lowlifes like Vic did. Way he saw it, they really were better off without him.
"Now, what do you say, Sammy?" Ruth admonished her son.
"Thank you very much for finding my mum, DCI Hunt," Sam said, very solemnly holding out his hand to shake Gene's.
Gene stooped down to Sam's level and looked him in the eye. "DS Dobbs tells me you found her first thing when you noticed your mum was missing. Keep that up and you'll make a brilliant copper one day," he said, countering his equal level of seriousness with a wink at the end.
"Do you really think so? Thanks!" Sam's face broke out into a grin as sunny and bright as his mum's gorgeous blonde hair and he impulsively kissed Gene on the cheek before grabbing his mum's hand and swinging it tightly as he bounced out the door.
Gene smiled to himself as he walked over to his desk. On occasion, nice things that didn't involve banging anyone up for anything unfortunate did happen in his city, and although he wouldn't have admitted it out loud to anyone, he liked these small moments of happiness when they came.
And then he squinted at his desk, and all colour drained from his face.
Little Sammy Tyler had finished his drawing, and had drawn him in. Along with his car. And---holding DI Tyler's hand? Gene blinked. The boy was quite young, after all. He couldn't have known any better. He knew that he certainly hadn't known about the birds and the bees when he was six. Still, he wasn't sure he could display this particular piece of art unless he wanted no end of jokes from the rest of CID about it.
He couldn't bring himself to throw it away, though. They weren't the best portraits in the world, true---but there was some amount of truth in the expressions on their faces. And the caption underneath as well, which read: "Together, We Fight Crime."
He tucked the drawing away into a file folder at the back of his left bottom desk drawer, only to yank the drawer out again a minute later in complete disbelief.
That signature...no...it couldn't be.
"You wanted a word, Guv?" Sam's voice was quiet as he stood on the other side of Gene's desk and he leaned over to see what had made Gene's face suddenly go so pale.
"I think you've got some explaining to do," Gene said, quietly, when he finally found his voice again.
"Look, about Mrs. Tyler, it's really not what you're thinking..." Sam looked down, small spots of colour forming on his cheeks as he steeled himself for yet another argument with his superior officer.
"Never mind that. Try explaining this." And before he could rethink and stop himself, Gene brandished little Sammy’s drawing accusingly.
Sam's legs went slightly wobbly and it was lucky for him a chair was just behind him, or else he'd have been picking himself up from a nasty spill all over the floor in front of Gene's desk.
you'll be the death of me. ((four.))
Little Sammy sighed contentedly as he slipped back underneath the bubbles in his bath. He may have been quite small, but he was now constantly being reassured about what a big boy he was; so big, in fact, that he didn't need supervision while in the bath. Unlike what his Mum had always said.
He wasn't quite sure who was taking care of him, to be honest. But he did know he liked it. Instead of seeing all the other kids have all the nice things, he had them instead. No more hand-me-downs. No more tins of 'Oops for dinner every night, because it was all they had. Unless he wanted them, of course; he could have them anytime he wanted. His new caretakers didn't concern themselves with petty matters like forbidding Sam from doing things. Instead, they appealed to his greater sense of reason, to make him determine within himself that something wasn't meant for doing.
Sammy smiled. These people took him seriously. He didn't need pampering and cossetting and having his hand held as he crossed the street. Mind, those things were nice, and he wasn't saying otherwise. But the surest way to buy Sammy's silence was to keep his interest, and the way to do that was by treating him like the adult his mind liked to think he was. Sure, sometimes his body betrayed him---but his mind was so much sharper than any of them on the outside could have ever guessed.
It wasn't that he didn't love his mum. It was only that she didn't understand him, and never really had.
******
It wasn't necessarily that he was so much smarter, but there was one thing Vic Tyler had figured out about his son long before he suspected Ruth would ever have done. That was, quite simply, that the easiest way to control Sam was through Sam controlling himself. True, he hadn't lived a very long life so far, but it was still very obvious that his internal dialogue was some of the most important conversation-making the boy felt that he ever engaged in.
Vic smiled. He'd been heartbroken to realise that he could have all the success he'd ever wanted, even beyond his wildest dreams---but that he wouldn't be able to share it with his son. That was, until he arrived. And took Vic under his wing.
"There's ways around that, my friend. Quite simple, really. All you have to do is what I say, and you can have your cake and eat it, too. Or your Sammy can eat it. Whichever you like."
There really was no other word for it---the man was brilliant.
all my life i've lived to taste someone else's flavours on my tongue. ((five.))
"Now, what shall we have for dinner, Sammy?" Ruth asked, swinging little Sammy's hand merrily as they walked down the street together. Sometimes, she really did miss when he was just a little bit younger, and she could swing him up and carry him, snuggled in her arms. Just feeling his warmth and his little heart beating made her think that everything really was going to be all right, somehow.
"Mmmm...I don't know. You choose." Sammy grinned, a sunny, happy smile, like he had a secret.
"Why don't we go round to Auntie Heather's and see what she'd like? I'd say it's cause for celebration. No staying in for us tonight, Sammy!" Ruth grinned; she couldn't help it, Sammy's smile was contagious.
Sammy nodded vigorously. Any excuse to see Auntie Heather was a good one.
******
"And you drew him a picture? How sweet, now he's got a Sammy original! That'll be worth money someday, mark my words. Did he say thank you?" Auntie Heather rushed to try to cover up the strange look she'd got on her face when Sammy had mentioned DCI Hunt's involvement, but she wasn't fast enough for Sammy not to see. He made a mental note to write it down in his notebook later.
Sammy drowned out the sound of his mum and Auntie Heather as they talked on, choosing instead to draw again. He did best when left to his own devices, and he was pretty sure he'd known that from the time he'd learnt to talk.
and heaven, i think, is too close to hell. ((six.))
"This one's ugly, Guv. Man's got his fingers bashed to pieces and was found strangled with a telephone cord round his neck." Ray said, chewing thoughtfully on the filter end of his cigarette.
"Do we know this man, Raymondo?" Gene asked, fingers hooked through beltloops.
"Man's not got any prior arrest record, no known criminal contacts of any kind. His mum says he's always been the quiet, bookish type. Liked to keep to himself and toy with electronics more than anything," Ray grinned nastily, inferring some boys-own joke that Chris chuckled at, even though Chris wasn't fully sure he understood where the entendre (double, single, or otherwise) was. Phyllis snorted at Ray's obviousness as she overheard while hustling back over to the front desk.
And then Chris cleared his throat, and added one more piece to the puzzle. "Um, Guv...one more thing you might want to know."
"What is it, Chris?" Gene glanced up sharply, wondering what Chris could have picked up on that Ray had either missed or otherwise not been motivated to mention.
"There was a note, presumably left by the killer." Chris' expression was torn between excitement at being the one to reveal a potentially important piece of investigative knowledge, and a slightly whipped-puppy look as he expected Ray's disapproval at having been one-upped by an underling.
True to form, Gene rounded on Ray, eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Why wasn't I informed of this? Seems pretty important to me."
Ray's face reddened even as he began to protest. "If you'd actually seen the note, I don't think you'd make much of it. Just a child's drawing, is all. Man's got a young daughter; it's probably a gift from her to her dad."
Chris mumbled something that no one could quite make out.
"Something else to add, Chris?" Gene rumbled, not unencouragingly.
"I bagged it like DI Tyler showed us. Here." Chris handed it over, face flushing even more as he tried to draw himself in as far away from Ray as he could. Ray'd get over it. Chris was sure he would, and they'd all have a nice pint down the pub later, like nothing had ever happened.
Gene's expression was unreadable as he wordlessly surveyed the drawing through the clear plastic sandwich bag Chris had wrapped around it. And remained so as he handed it off to Sam, who'd been standing off to the side, massaging his temples with his hands and looking miserable.
"Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Chris," Sam said, both hands dropping by his sides rather uselessly as even his urge to gesticulate fled him.
"Do the usual enquiries and see if we can find anything out about who may have wanted this man dead, and why. Check with the daughter and see what school she goes to; check up on the girl's mum as well and see who she works for and who she's acquainted with on a daily basis. I want to know everything about that family, and I want to know it now. Are we clear?" Even Gene's roar was slightly subdued as he exchanged a heavily weighted look with Sam, then leaned over to retrieve the paper Sam had dropped.
"Anyone needs us, we'll be conferring in my office," Gene said, inferring with tone alone that interruptions were not to be made lightly, if they valued their jobs and/or lives.
Ray sniggered to himself, as he always did when the Guv took Sam into his office and shut the door. All twinges of envy were automatically assuaged the moment it became clear that Sam was going to get a dose of the Guv's own special brand of morale boosting. Ray didn't argue; his own morale was always markedly improved after these moments.
Just as Chris hoped, Ray's amusement at Sam's impending beating had completely erased all thoughts of Chris' earlier mutiny from his mind. Chris could see it in Ray's eyes, after years of long study.
Chris laughed, too, but for completely different reasons. The laugh didn't quite reach his eyes, but no one noticed.
******
The door had barely had the chance to slam shut behind them before Gene laid into Sam with a peculiarly restrained and terrifying fury that even Sam had never seen before. "So if I'm to believe it's your former self who did this drawing and the other one, do you want to tell me what you were doing at a murder scene as a young boy?" Gene was almost hissing now, and if Sam had been wearing his glasses, they'd have fogged over completely with the heat of the Guv's breath. "Happy family memories? The Tyler family killing spree? Or, oh no, the Tyler family criminal empire?"
Sam's face was no longer a healthy 1973 beige, and instead was a shade more akin to the paper little Sammy had done their evidence drawing on. His mouth worked open, then shut, and more than a few strangled sounds came out before he finally saw wisdom and stopped attempting to talk, and instead gestured for the paper.
Gene, for his part, hadn't backed off, and was still about an inch from Sam's face. Nonetheless, he'd learned how to read Sam quite well, and handed over the paper without a word. And still didn't back away, forcing Sam to tilt his head downward in order to look at it.
Yes, there was that damnable signature, all right. The one he'd tried to explain away with the truth, as he knew it, once he realised the Guv wasn't going to accept any useless exhortations of what a funny old world it was. The insane truth that there were two Sam Tylers in Manchester at the same time, both with parents with the same given names. The inexorable truth that the Guv had no choice but to accept, finally, even though he still hadn't fully processed every insane notion that Sam had filled his head with about time-travelling and being from the future and how he wasn't even sure how he'd landed here in the first place.
That signature was attached to a simple drawing of a man with green eyes and a beigeish coat slamming another man's hand repeatedly with a telephone. At a wooden table. In a dark room. Surrounded by shelves and shelves of random items and boxes with illegible labels. A room that looked disturbingly like---
"...Lost and Found. Do you want to tell me how you---he---drew this, Sam?" Gene said, in a dangerously quiet voice.
Sam's eyes flickered up to meet Gene's and saw the one thing he'd never, ever expected to see in them: fear. Pure, unbridled terror; horrifying and absolute. He had to stop himself following his instinctive train of thought, which had been that he'd somehow got it all wrong.
It wasn't him. It was, but it wasn't.
Sam stared at the Guv helplessly and swallowed down the lump in his throat.
with barbed wire kisses and her love. ((seven.))
"A thorough search has turned up nothing, Boss. Chester Milford here---" Chris gestured to the report on the dead man in the manila file folder in his hand, "has a daughter, and she's very young, but she's got a bit of a palsy. Can't even hold a pencil, much less draw with one---poor thing," he quickly added, trying his best to distance himself from the sort of rude remark Ray might have made in his place. "His wife is a homemaker, and she rarely goes out except to take care of her ailing mother, who lives just up the street. Quiet little thing, barely talks to anyone."
Gene and Sam exchanged a look once again, which Chris caught, but carefully schooled his face not to show him catching.
"Damn." Sam swore under his breath.
"There's been another one, Guv." Ray's voice was grim, and taut. Even he had to admit that something was going on, and the tension it was putting on CID was seriously beginning to put him off his beer, which was never a good thing.
"Another one what?" Gene's eyes glittered as he crossed his arms and waited for the report; something else Chris didn't miss. Usually the Guv stood with arms out, in a more offensive position; rarely did he stand in a way that so completely closed him off from the rest of the team. It wasn't as though he ran toward danger and unsettling situations with outstretched arms, exactly, but he didn't back away from it and curl up into a ball and hide, either. Chris found it vaguely unsettling.
"Another murder, of the smash-and-bash variety. Another middle-aged male, conspicuous marks of a beating, surrounded by what looks to be enough LSD tablets to make retiring to Mallorca by the end of the year a distinct possibility for the whole of CID." Ray laughed at his little joke, but was quick to jump in again before Chris had the chance. "Oh, and another drawing. That's the main thing. Looks like the same 'artist,' too." Ray smiled smugly as he handed over his plastic-wrapped parcel straight into the waiting hands of the Guv. That'll show *you* he smirked in Chris' direction.
Chris' face remained bland and impassive. After all, it wasn't about who did the job; it was about the job getting done, and done well. He had to believe that, at the end of the day.
Gene studied the drawing, face shuttered even more than it had been previously. At length, he cleared his throat and said, "Lads, I want you to phone up Mrs. Ruth Tyler and bring her in for questioning. And little Sammy, too."
All eyes involuntarily flickered toward Sam with such intensity that Sam would surely have flinched. That is, if he'd even noticed. Instead, he just massaged his temples and stared resolutely at the floor, at a space somewhere between the toes of his Cuban heels.
******
"You can't possibly think that I---he---murdered those people, can you?" Sam's voice was quiet as well. Conversations lately were far too important to have in the previous loud fashion to which they'd been accustomed.
Gene studied Sam's face closely, searching for any sign at all that he'd been betrayed. At last, he found whatever confirmation it was that he'd needed and he nodded slightly as he said, "No, I don't think I do. But Sammy's involved in this, somehow, and we've got to find out how. Are you absolutely sure you don't remember any of this?" his voice was almost pleading.
"I'd tell you if I did, Guv. I swear it, on my mother's life. This is as much of a mystery to you as it is to me. Although..." Sam's voice trailed off. He'd known that sooner or later, he was going to have to tear the sticking plaster off and let the scarcely-healed wound breathe. Only he'd never thought it would be this soon in coming.
"Although what?"
Sam squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height in order to meet his fate. "That business with Vic Tyler awhile back. I wasn't completely honest with you."
Gene gave him a surprisingly wounded look, but said nothing.
"Well, knowing what you do now, if he was your dad, would you have been?" Sam asked, instead of explaining further.
A mild and noncommittal grunt came from Gene's general direction, and some of the fiercely wounded pride in his eyes abated.
"I didn't want to destroy my family, was what it came down to. I know...I know now that he did it, all on his own. But I didn't want to send him down for his part, because it would have destroyed Ruth. And little Sammy." Sam spread his hands, palms up, begging Gene to understand.
Gene's face softened slightly, and he finally nodded, still not trusting his voice to speak.
"I know...I know my dad's scum. And I know he's got to be behind this, because there is absolutely no way my mum is. But how's he got my drawings? Drawings I don't remember ever doing? And I swear to you again, I never had anything to do with any murder scene investigations as a kid."
Gene almost smiled at how pitiful and pathetic poor Sam looked---even moreso than usual. He had to hold himself in check from wanting to ruffle Sam's hair, almost the same reaction usually inspired by the hapless DC Skelton's antics with birds. Almost.
"Not trying to atone for past sins by shacking up with the long arm of the law now, are you?" Gene broke his silence, voice slightly rusty as it malformed the joke, just slightly.
Sam's mouth went dry and he swallowed back a lump in his throat as he silently thanked all the gods in the universe for this moment. And thanked Gene with his eyes, alone.
i don't mind if i get broken. ((eight.))
"I don't know what you mean to imply by all this, DCI Hunt, but I can assure you I've had NO CONTACT WHATSOEVER with my husband. I wish I had done, now. I'd hand him over to you in a heartbeat, the way he ran off on me and Sammy like he did." Ruth Tyler crossed her legs in irritation, left hand snapping the folds of her skirt down smoothly around her knees as she repositioned them.
"And you're sure Sammy's not gone anywhere out of the ordinary recently? No nights over at friends' houses, where you weren't around to supervise?" Gene tented his fingertips as he leaned back in his chair and assessed Mrs. Tyler very seriously.
"Absolutely not. I've been more cautious than ever since he went missing; I don't ever want to be that terrified again. I don't know if you've got children, DCI Hunt, but I can assure you it's the worst feeling in the world. I'd rather be hit by a car than go through that kind of horror ever again." Ruth said, emphatically.
"And you, Sammy. Is there anything you'd like to tell me? You'd be helping in an important police investigation, you know." Gene smiled and tried to put some levity into his voice.
Sammy shook his head, but he looked scared---a fact that Sam did not fail to notice.
"Would you mind terribly if we spoke to your son alone for a few minutes, Mrs. Tyler?" Sam asked, as politely as he knew how.
"I...I don't suppose so, since you found him when he went missing. Sammy, I'll just be outside a minute if you need me. All right?" Ruth smiled down at Sammy, and he nodded and hugged her hard before she turned to walk out the door.
"Why don't you tell us what's really going on, Sammy?" Sam sat down, instinctively refusing to break eye contact with his younger self.
"If I do, you won't believe me," Sammy said, in a very small voice.
"You'd be surprised, the things I believe," Gene said, gently.
"I've got a twin. He's got the same name as me. He claims he is me, only I don't know how that's even possible. Do you?" Sammy's words tumbled out in a rush.
Sam and Gene exchanged another look, both seeming to agree that they shouldn't say anything, and should just let the boy tell his story.
"He says he lives with my dad. I haven't seen my dad for ages---not since I was four. He's been on the road ever since, sends me and Mum postcards every once in awhile. But I would have known if I had a twin brother, wouldn't I?" Sammy seemed partially awed, and partially terrified.
Wordlessly, Sam reached out and held Sammy's hand for strength.
"Would you like something to drink, Sammy? Water? Do you like tea?" Gene offered, moving as though to walk out toward the canteen even though it was quite clear by the look on his face that he didn't want to miss this for the world.
"No, thank you sir. I'm fine." Sammy sniffled slightly, and Sam handed him a tissue.
Gene looked relieved, and settled back into his chair and waited.
"At first, I was excited. We've moved around so much, and I've never had many friends. But he seemed to know everything about me---and it got so that I didn't even question it anymore. One day he asked why didn't we switch places, and wouldn't it be a fun prank to play on everyone? I didn't understand at first, but then he told me more about my dad. Who he'd been living with...wait, is that "who" or "whom"? I always get those mixed up." Sammy smiled sadly as he grasped for his grammar.
"I think it's "who,"" Gene smirked, snapping a rubber band at the older Sam's head as he continued to listen.
Sam ignored him and squeezed Sammy's hand reassuringly. "And then what happened?"
"Nothing. At least, not that I know of. We only did it once. I didn't tell Mum, you see. I didn't think she'd understand, and she definitely wouldn't like it. We only ever switched once, honest."
Gene's gaze crystallised. "So you know your dad's address, do you?"
Sam was already writing it down.
******
Vic Tyler was waiting with a full cocktail service for four ranged around the bar when they got there.
"Evening, gentlemen. What can I get you? DCI Hunt, I understand you're partial to a nice single malt?" Vic smiled, clad in a rather nice smoking jacket and considerably more nicely outfitted than he'd been when last anyone from CID had seen him.
"What are you playing at, Vic?" Sam growled tonelessly, eyes colder than Gene had ever seen them.
"I've already played my hand. Now I'm just waiting for yours." Vic poured out as he spoke. And then turned to greet the newcomer as he entered the room. "Oh good, I was beginning to get worried. Tony, this is DCI Hunt and DI Tyler."
"A pleasure meeting you again, DCI Hunt. DI Tyler and I are already well-acquainted," the man said, as he stepped out from the shadow of the doorway.
As Sam had been disconcertingly pale before, so his internal bits seemed to zoom in the other direction as he turned a perfectly bright tomato red. "Tony Crane. MY Tony Crane. So, how did it feel to hear Eve beg for her life? Did it make you feel like a properly big man?" Sam spat, heedless of any and all decorum he might usually have shown.
Tony whistled slightly under his breath and gave a slight laugh as he addressed Gene. "My, I see that my memory hasn't served me ill at all. You've got quite a mental case on your hands there, haven't you, DCI Hunt?" he asked, just as unctuous in his tones as ever.
Having been confronted with the notion of three Sam Tylers surrounding him within a ten-meter span just a short while ago, Gene was surprised to find that a second, much older Tony Crane than the one he'd recently had the distinct displeasure of meeting didn't phase him in the slightest.
"I thought we'd banged you up for life in the loony bin," Gene retorted, not missing a beat.
Sam met his gaze gratefully, then flicked back to the giant, gaping time anomaly standing directly in front of him---but not before Tony Crane had the chance to notice.
"Oh, so we're sleeping our way to the top now, are we, Detective Inspector Tyler? I'd have thought that would be beneath you," Tony snarled, lip curled in disgust as his mouth formed the word "inspector". "Now I know where that "Chief" in your title comes from---in my time, of course, DCI Hunt. You haven't got a thing to worry about at present." Tony tutted in an obscene caricature of a mother soothing a fussy baby.
"Even if that were true, it'd be a thousand times better than anything you've done since the unfortunate day you were born, Crane." Sam had managed to pull himself together enough to handle Crane's particular brand of barbed language.
"You know, it's funny. I didn't used to be nearly so bad as you've made me out to be. Used to be, all I wanted was my own small pie d'terre, a little tiny empire "Oop Norf," as they say. Just a little tiny thing to call my own," Tony pontificated, pausing only to swirl a bit of his scotch around in his mouth, neatly.
"But then I met an insufferably self-righteous copper in 1973 called Sam Tyler, who told me about how he was from the future. Told me a whole great load of nonsense, and then who hung for it? Me. Maybe I hadn't been the most upstanding citizen this sorry excuse for a town has ever seen. Maybe so. But did I deserve to get fitted up for being insane, especially when it clearly wasn't me who was guilty of that particular crime? That's a depth even I wouldn't have sunk to. Then, anyway." Tony paused; dramatic effect was clearly not a concept lost on him.
"So I planned ways to escape. Oh yes, there are ways to escape even if you're down for life in the loony bin. I could tell you how, but we'd be here all afternoon, and I'd rather tell you the juicy bits instead. I never could resist a good story," Tony smiled mirthlessly as he poured himself a second scotch. "Would you like a seat, gentlemen? This might take awhile."
Gene and Sam both seated themselves in one smoothly choreographed gesture while Vic made himself scarce and busied himself with setting up the hidden cameras.
"I'd thought you were merely insane, Tyler. That is, until I met you in the future. Then I realised that somehow, no matter how fantastic your story had seemed to me at the time, it obviously had to be true. Of course, it didn't take long to figure out that the you of the 2000s didn't know it. You didn't know about any of this, because---and here's the beautiful part---you hadn't travelled backward through time yet! So I knew, but you didn't!" Tony couldn't resist cackling and clapping his hands together gleefully.
"Meeting you again was what did it; obviously I had to build a bigger empire, or else how was I to fund research into building my own time-travel machine?" Tony sipped his scotch politely, as though it were a fine bone-china cup of tea.
Sam licked his very dry lips as Gene handed him his flask of scotch from out of his coat pocket. Sam unscrewed the cap and took a healthy swig before responding, "So if all this is true, why didn't you stop me from banging you up in the first place?"
Tony looked wounded. "Gentlemen, please. I could have had the whole of CID dead and mounted on flagpoles ranged round the city limits by now if I'd wanted to! Believe me, I haven't drugged your scotch. Nor has my youthful associate Vic over here. No, indeed, I merely thought we might have progressed to the point in our relationship where we could all sit and enjoy a fine single malt together. Like...well, no, not like mates, exactly, but at least like civilised folk."
Gene said nothing, instead taking a double swig from his flask, which Sam had returned to him as soon as he'd poured a healthy swig of the burning liquid down the back of his throat.
"You still haven't answered my question," was Sam's only response.
"I thought this way would be much more poetic. What could be better than pitting you against yourself? You've surely thought of the notion of parallel universes yourself, Sam---even if you'd never read about it before landing yourself in your current predicament. So I did some research, and found out a bit more about your dad. The criminal element has ways of finding out information that even you couldn't touch, DCI Hunt. Where you failed to find Vic Tyler and bring him to justice, I found it quite easy to locate him. And even easier still to buy his loyalty---all I had to do was promise him little Sammy. He really did love you, you know," Tony's mouth was a moue of sadness, almost clownlike, as he returned his attention to Sam.
"I've heard enough," Gene said, voice deadly quiet as he pulled out his gun.
"I'd think the better of that if I were you, DCI Hunt." Tony Crane said, warningly, nodding toward the wall just behind them. "We're being watched, you know."
Gene snorted. "I don't believe you."
"Sam, why don't you tell your Guv about how very inexpensive good camcorders are in 2006, and what an amazing surveillance tool they make, when properly used?" Tony smiled brightly, taking yet another fortifying sip of his scotch.
Sam looked...grey. And more unhealthy than Gene had ever seen him in the entire time he'd known him, which was really saying quite a lot, considering. Gene made a snap decision. No pretty speeches, nothing in the slightest to give him away. He stood, aimed, and fired.
At nothing. The shells lodged in the wall behind where Tony Crane had been sitting, only mere moments before.
Tony Crane had disappeared.
A thorough search of the flat revealed that Vic Tyler had disappeared as well.
i don't mind if i get fixed. ((nine.))
When neither of them had shown up even weeks later, and the lease on the flat Vic Tyler had registered under an alias had come up unpaid, Gene grudgingly had to put the case on the back burner.
Sam had looked ashen ever since. He'd withdrawn, even more than usual. He wasn't up to being the picky-pain he'd always been. He'd go down the pub with the rest of CID, and he'd buy rounds of drinks, but he always sat and drank his own silently.
He wouldn't meet Gene's gaze. Not ever. Which worried Gene most of all.
A knock came from his door as he sat in his office late one night. He hadn't actually been doing work; instead, he'd been sitting and bouncing a small bouncy ball off the wall, the way Chris used to drive him crazy doing.
"What is it?" he asked, half-expecting it to be Annie with some half-forgotten bit of evidence turned up on some case or other. She was turning into quite the crack detective, was Cartwright---if only he could have been bothered to care.
"DCI Hunt? I wanted to say thanks," came a small, familiar voice from the doorway.
"Sammy? Where's your mother? She'll be worried sick about you," Gene immediately admonished.
"She's just outside. I told her I had another drawing for you, and we saw your light on so I told her I'd just be a minute." Sammy smiled.
Gene grunted in assent; this explanation made as much sense as anything was doing, lately. "So which one are you, then?"
"That's for me to know, DCI Hunt." Sammy smiled mysteriously. "Only I will tell you this: those drawings weren't Tony Crane's doing. He thinks they were, but they weren't. He wanted to make this much more painful. Me, well, I always knew I could trust you---in any time. The drawings were the only way, I thought. That's why I made sure to sign all of them. Oh, and one last thing---I don't think that he's finished with you yet. I heard him saying something about 'The Ghost of Christmas Past' a few times, if that means anything. Here, you can see for yourself; it's all in the drawing."
Seated on a small box just behind the Guv and completely out of view, Sam smiled to himself---the first genuine urge to smile he'd felt in weeks.
He grabbed Gene's hand and squeezed hard.
~~~fin~~~