DADDY'S HOME
A/N: I was inspired to write this after watching the three-part Season 5 episode.
CHAPTER 1
Dr. Sam Beckett felt the familiar blue light envelop him after he'd completed his mission in the recent leap, which involved him being a toddler and saving his host's older brother from getting killed by a school bus. I wonder where I'm going, or if I'll ever get home, he thought. He was tired of it.
All of it.
Tired of finding himself in other moments in time, not to mention the bodies of other people besides his own, tired of always being up shit's creek without a paddle, and tired of always having to right the wrongs of other people.
Righting the wrongs. That's what he did, all right.
"I right the wrongs that make the whole world sing..."
Oh, Jesus, that song was stuck in his head again. He was never crazy about the music of Barry Manilow to begin with, but he especially hated that particular song, mostly because it was one that one of his fellow scientists, Dr. Verbeena Beeks, was singing when he prematurely stepped into the accelerator and made his first leap. And she thought it'd be funny if she changed the words around a little.
"I write the songs that irritate Sam Beckett," Sam softly sang to himself as the light intensified, irritate being the operative word. When—or if—he got home, he was going to give Dr. Beeks a piece of his mind for singing that song. In retrospect, she was probably glad that she wasn't the one who'd be getting herself in all those crazy situations.
He was tired, both physically and mentally. Why the hell wouldn't they just let him go home already?
The next thing Sam knew, he was standing in a hallway, and right in front of him was a door to a nearby bathroom. As he stumbled in and leaned against the wall to catch his breath, he looked down at his hands. That was always the first thing he did whenever he arrived at any time and place. As always, the hands were his own, but they looked much older. What the hell? Sam thought in surprise and alarm. When did this happen? How long have I been doing this shit?
Then a mirror on the opposite wall caught his eye. This was always the one part about leaping he always dreaded. Each time he looked into it, he never saw his own image. If he wasn't the understudy for the lead in a touring production of Man of La Mancha, he was his great-grandfather in the midst of the Civil War, an inmate on death row awaiting execution—which is why he would later feel a twinge of sympathy for the few inmates whose executions he would later assist on—a chimp, or God knows what else. One leap in particular he wished he could forget was when he was Dr. Ruth Westheimer. It was bad enough that Ziggy was cruel enough to make him a little old German lady who talked about things that would make a porn star blush, but he also had to protect this poor legal secretary from her sadistic pervert of a boss. Talk about work hazards!
The only upside was that he never went to a moment in history that was outside neither his time or genetic line, other than when he and Al traded places, and Sam had to save him. If, God forbid, that was how Project Quantum Leap worked, it would've been just his luck that he would've found himself in the body of a prisoner during the Spanish Inquisition—specifically that of Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes, whose story Man of La Mancha is based on.
All right, Ziggy, let's get this over with, Sam thought as he approached the mirror, his eyes squeezing shut in dread. Who am I this time, and what's my mission?
When Sam opened his eyes, he found his own reflection staring back at him. About two or three decades older, mind you, but there's no mistaking what he saw. He had on a white dress shirt and tan slacks with socks and loafers.
"Oh, boy!" he exclaimed. "Oh, boy-oh-boy, I made it! JESUS H. TAP-DANCIN' CHRIST, I MADE IT! I'M FINALLY HOME!"
Yes, he was definitely home. He was so overjoyed that he started jumping around like a baboon, cheering, screaming, and hollering up a storm. Sure, he looked really silly doing that, and if anyone else was in that bathroom, they would've thought he was an es-caped mental patient, but who gave a rat's ass? He was home.
He was finally, finally home.
As soon as Sam pulled himself together, he very quickly splashed some cold water on his face in an attempt to wake himself up, then ran out into the hall, almost colliding with Dr. Beeks. "Welcome back, Dr. Beckett," she said when she saw him.
"Oh, boy!" Sam said to himself, for what seemed like the millionth time. On that note, a hundred bucks says that'll be on his gravestone.
"Are you okay?"
"I—I think so. Am I really home?"
Dr. Beeks burst out laughing. "Yes, Doctor," she answered. "This last leap brought you home, just like Sammy Jo hoped it would."
"Where is she now?" Sam asked.
"In the control room," Dr. Beeks answered.
"Have her meet me in the Waiting Room," Sam said, forgetting about telling her off for dragging him into this mess in the first place. "I need to talk to her right away."
"No problem." With that, Dr. Beeks headed to the control room to get Sammy Jo as Sam headed to the waiting room. On the way, the following conversation played through his mind:
"Does she know I'm her father?"
"No. And Ziggy says that after this leap, you won't know, either."
"Oh, I'll know, Al. I'll always know."
The conversation with Al following the end of his mission in the life of Abigail Fuller, Sammy Jo's mother, played over and over in his mind. Already, he could picture her reaction to finding out that he was her father.
Upon arriving in the Waiting Rooms, Sam sat on the edge of the table, where each leapee had sat while Sam was living their lives and completing his mission. There was so much he wanted to tell Sammy Jo: how Project Quantum Leap began, the leaping, how it worked, and some of the adventures he'd had. And there was so much he wanted to know about his daughter: what she was like, how old she was, what she was doing with her life, you name it.
And that's when it finally hit him: he was going to see Sammy Jo. Not in the past, and not while he was on yet another potentially dangerous mission. No, he was actually going to see his daughter. His own flesh and blood.
A few minutes later, while Sam was looking down at his hands and softly humming "The Impossible Dream" and "Almost Like Being In Love" from Brigadoon—another of his favorite shows—the door quietly opened, and a pretty middle-aged brunette walked in. She had blue eyes and squarish rimless glasses, and was wearing a pale pink polo shirt and matching Chuck Taylor high-tops, tan capris, a white button-down sweater with a matching headband, and silver earrings. "Dr. Beckett?" she said in a fairly thick New Orleans accent. "You wanted to see me?"
Sam hopped off the table and turned to face the woman. "Yes," he said. "Have a seat."
Sammy Jo sat on the table while Sam leaned against it. "Yes?" she asked.
"Have you ever heard of the string theory?" Sam asked.
Sammy Jo looked at him for a moment, then shook her head. "What is it?" she asked.
"Here," Sam said, pulling a piece of string out of his pocket. "Imagine that this piece of string is a person's lifetime. One end equals birth, and the other is death. You tie the string together..." As he spoke, he did just that "...and it creates a loop. If you ball the loop, all the days of your life touch each other, and you can go from point A to point B in your lifetime."
"How does the leap work?" Sammy Jo asked.
"Well, in my case, I found myself being surrounded by a blue haze, and the next thing I knew, I was out of one body and into another, but I'd never know who, until I looked in the mirror."
Sammy Jo nodded. "Oh-kayyy," she said. There was no mistaking the skepticism in her voice.
"That's what I've been doing all these years," Sam explained as he started pacing. "I like to think of myself as a time-traveling Lone Ranger with Admiral Calavicci as my Ton-to. My mission this whole time has been to set things right that once went wrong, like the three occasions on which I saved your mother's life."
Now, Sammy Jo was really confused. "You want to run that by me again?" she asked as Sam stopped pacing.
"On my first leap, which was when your mother was about ten years old, I leaped into her father—Clayton Fuller, your grandfather—to keep her from getting killed in a house fire."
"The one she said my grandfather was killed in?"
"That's right. I didn't see her again until eleven years later. That was when I leaped into a young man she was engaged to—on the night before they were to be married—the man you always believed was your real father, to protect her from a lynch mob when a little boy she was baby-sitting disappeared, and was later found at a local mill. And do you remember a man who introduced himself as Sam Larry Stanton?"
"Very vaguely. Larry Stanton III was Mom's defense attorney when she was charged with murder, if I'm not mistaken."
"That's right," Sam repeated. "Anyway, that was the third person I leaped into, to help your mother when you were eleven, and she was accused of murdering the woman who had accused her of a double homicide when she was a little girl."
Sammy Jo thought for a minute. "I think I remember," she said. "I was hiding in the kitchen, and I watched this woman, Mrs. Aider, destroy it before cutting her throat with Mom's kitchen knife. She was trying to frame Mom for murder again, if both hers and Mom's fingerprints were on the knife. I was afraid to go into the kitchen for the longest time after that. The way I heard it, Mom and this other woman's daughter were fighting over a locket. When Grandmama tried to talk to the other girl, she fell down the well and left my grandmother holding her locket, which she kept for the rest of her life, and her bones were down there for about twenty-five years before a restoration crew found her. That didn't come to light until the attorney went to the asylum where my grandmother had lived ever since, because folks believed she was crazy for watching her mother murder her siblings, which turned out not to be true. The part about her being crazy, that is, and she died there about twenty years ago."
"Exactly," Sam agreed, trying to hide his relief that Sammy Jo didn't think he was some nutjob. "Anyway, your mother told me—well, Mr. Stanton—that your grandfather didn't want her to have the locket in the first place, but she still wanted it, so your grandmother was trying to help her save money to buy it, but the other little girl bought it out of spite, which made your mother mad enough to beat her up. And the lady put a curse on your mother, saying that she and her ancestors were crazy, which was another reason why your grandmother was committed, and any children she had—including you—would be cursed."
"But I'm not crazy!" Sammy Jo protested. Judging from her tone of voice, Sam could tell that she'd dealt with being labeled as such for most of her life.
"I know, I know," Sam quickly reassured her. "Anyway, when your mother was acquitted of the murder, thanks to your testimony, the curse was broken."
"What the hell does this have to do with me?" Sammy Jo demanded.
"You may not know this, but—I am your father."
Dead silence.
For the next couple of minutes or so, Sammy Jo just stared at him, and the look on her face was a combination of shock, disbelief, and the universal look that clearly said, Okay, what mental hospital did you just escape from?
"No," she finally managed to say. "No, it's not possible. I never knew my real father, but I've heard lots of stories. His name was Will Kinman, and the last I'd heard, he'd moved out West to write a book."
"That's right, he did. You see, during my second leap into your mother's life, when I was her fiancé, we had a romantic night..."
"You can skip the details," she cut him off with a raise of her hand.
"Sorry. Okay. Well, how about you?"
"Well, like I said, I never knew my real father. Mom remarried sometime after I turned thirteen, and we moved to Chicago from Pottersville, Louisiana, which is just south of Shreveport. I graduated from high school about three years later, then went to MIT..."
"As did I."
"Right. I graduated with degrees in theoretical physics, medicine—specifically, anesthesiology, and astronomy," Sammy Jo continued. "I got engaged and married within the first year after I graduated from college, and we had two daughters and a son, all in their teens now. And believe me, whoever said raising teenagers was a full-time job sure knew what they were talking about."
"What about your husband?"
"We're divorced," Sammy Jo explained. "I won't bore you with the details, but he wasn't exactly the nicest guy in the world, and our parting was anything but amicable. Anyway, shortly after that, I brought my kids from Chicago to New Mexico, and got the job with Project Quantum Leap. My cousin took us in until we found a place. And he's told me on several occasions how much my kids are like me, with their high IQ's and all. In fact, my oldest just got her acceptance letter from USC. She'll be going in the fall, and her major is astrogeophysics."
"Wow," was all Sam could say.
"Anything else I should know?"
"Well, let me tell you about some of the interesting leaps I've had over the years," Sam said. "I helped some celebrities, too. In fact, I helped Buddy Holly write the lyrics to 'Peggy Sue'."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. When I first met him, he was a vet's assistant, as well as an aspiring musician, and he'd sometimes pick up his guitar and write songs at random about farm life."
"Anyone else?"
"Well, let's see...I gave a young Stephen King the ideas for Cujo, Christine, and Carrie," Sam continued. "I've been Elvis, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Lee Harvey Oswald. And like I said, I've met your mother on a few occasions. I've even met some very famous people on some of my leaps. Once, I was an Olympic swimmer from Israel at the 1972 Sum-mer Games, and that's when I met Mark Spitz. And another time, I was in Fred Rogers' birthplace, and drove past him on the street."
Now it was Sammy Jo's turn to say wow.
"And in addition to those, I leaped into one of Donna's old college professors and helped her repair her relationship with her estranged father, not only before he left for Vietnam, but also to keep her from leaving me at the altar."
Sammy Jo nodded. This was turning out to be an interesting conversation. And all the while, she was having the strangest feeling, as if something she'd secretly wished for all her life was finally coming true.