Designated Leaper
by Kathryn Lively
This Quantum Leap fan fiction places Dr. Sam Beckett in the body of Law and Order's Detective Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) during the events of the L&O episode "Aftershock." If you are familiar with Law and Order, you will know that this episode closed the sixth season of the series and delved into the personal lives of the main characters after they witnessed an execution.Having read extensive collections of Law and Order fan fiction on the Internet, I believe that this particular episode has inspired the most fan fiction stories, the majority of which end in wishful thinking. This is one such story, and if you are a fan of either Quantum Leap or Law and Order, I hope you enjoy it. Comments are always welcome. Please note also that this story is a post "Mirror Image" tale, meaning that it takes place after Quantum Leap's final episode.
Quantum Leap is a property of Belisarius Productions and MCA/Universal. Law and Order is the property of Wolf Films, NBC and MCA/Universal. No profit is made from this site.
Designated Leaper
"Sam? Sam, you awake?"Sam groaned, his head teetering on the palm of his right hand while the left cradled an empty glass. The limp support looked to be giving way in a matter of seconds.
The last thing Dr. Sam Beckett remembered before his consciousness faded to black was the roar of the Pacific Ocean and the salty taste in his mouth as he swallowed a mouthful of briny blue. There was a girl, he recalled. He was a life guard and was performing CPR on her as a frantic, large woman screamed in his ear. Bring her back! Bring her back!
So he did, eventually, after three deep breaths forced into the girl's tiny lungs. She coughed up about four tablespoons of ocean water and sand, and Sam was able to leap, his mission in that time completed.
Now he was dry, sitting on barstool, and uncomfortable in a rumpled grey suit. His head, however, continued to swim, most likely with whatever it was his host body had consumed before he arrived on the scene.
Admiral Al Calavicci, or rather a holographic projection of said gentleman, leaned over the bar for a better look at his friend's face. "Sam?" he asked again. "Are you drunk?"
Al consulted a blinking remote object, a computerized handlink which connected him to Project Quantum Leap, for further information about their current mission. Whether or not Sam would be capable of accomplishing anything in his current state was another matter, and unfortunately it was one Al could not immediately fix. As a hologram, Al had no tangible contact in Sam's present environment, and nobody except Sam could see him.
He probably thinks I'm a hallucination anyway, Al thought as the project's supercomputer Ziggy uploaded personal data on Sam's host body. Sam, meanwhile, appeared to be entranced with the rather loud, drunken ramblings of another patron, this one a wiry man with graying hair whose own advanced age appeared more pronounced with each shot of bourbon he eagerly slammed down his throat.
"Sam? Sam!" Al tried a different tack, as his friend was now humming to himself and staring into Al's eyes with a goofy smile on his face.
"Hey Al," Sam slurred. "Have a drink with me."
"My name's not Al." Both Leaper and Hologram jumped as the bartender, punching a washcloth into a used beer mug with a meaty fist, barked gruffly. "I don't drink on duty, neither."
"Either!" barked back the graying man, now inspecting a framed photograph of the mayor hanging on the wall near the jukebox. "Didn't they teach you English in bartending school?"
"I was sick that day," came the weak, albeit tense, reply. The bartender glared at Sam. "You think you and your pal had enough?"
Al stood helplessly next to his friend, watching the exchange as well as Sam's muted and dulled reactions. "My friend?" Sam asked finally. "Which one? This guy looking about to hump your jukebox or the guy next to me in the cheap suit?"
"Hey!" Al took great offense at the remark and looked down at his bright melon jacket, matching pants and eggplant purple shirt. He looked good enough to eat, at least according to Tina back at HQ. "This is a Versace suit! Cost me seven hundred bucks."
"Where'd you get seven hundred bucks, Al? Not on your salary." Sam's hand quivered as he raised his glass to his lips. One last drop of booze slid down to the rim and Sam lapped it up with his tongue.
"Put that down, will ya?" Al swatted his friend's hand, frustrated as his own arm passed straight through Sam's body. "And stop talking to me so loudly. This bartender already thinks you're some kind of drunken nozzle, don't give him any more reasons to believe it."
Al straightened the lapels of his coat. In actuality it was a Versace knock-off, and he chalked it up to hurt pride when he said different to his friend. Sam did not have to know, anyway, and who was he going to impress in this place?
"Order some coffee," Al commanded Sam. "Get sober. Ziggy says we're in a bind."
"Coffee!" Sam shouted jubilantly, waving his arms as if cheering for the Yankees. A few equally smashed bar patrons at a back table returned his sudden enthusiasm.
The bartender smirked and snatched a mug from a shelf under the bar. "That's the smartest thing you said all night. How about your friend?"
The man at the jukebox, however, was not paying attention to Sam or the bartender. He was studying his watch.
"That, Sam, is Jack McCoy," Al informed him after consulting his handlink. "He's an executive assistant district attorney for the city of New York. You," Al blinked at the scrolling information on the remote's miniscule screen, "are Lennie Briscoe. You're a detective with the 27th precinct here and you -- or rather Lennie -- and Jack witnessed an execution today."
Al gestured to Jack as he stumbled around in place. "That could explain all this...abundance." He felt a pang in his heart and sighed, quietly recalling his own days as an alcoholic, and thinking how, if not for Sam pulling him out of his own black hole, his life would have ended up had he stayed on the sauce. Further information on Lennie Briscoe revealed that he, too, was an alumni of AA, though the detective clearly had not been true to his school when Sam leaped into him. Witnessing the earlier execution, plus experiencing a later fallout with one of his children, really had an affect on the poor guy.
Sam glanced over to Jack McCoy with a smirk left over from Lennie Briscoe's conciousness. The "Swiss-Cheese" effect on Sam's mind with each leap often caused him to say or do things more in character with his host body. Most times these things were done involuntary, as if Sam were a marionette pulled by the fingers of distant memory.
"Forget it, she's not coming. Whoever she is," Sam told him. In his mind an image of a woman flickered like a grainy black and white film. She had shoulder-length dark hair and a healthy complexion, and clearly looked to be much younger than both Lennie and Jack. Sam smiled at the impromptu thought, even though it was soaked to the synapses with alcohol. The woman in question was clearly someone for whom Lennie Briscoe cared. His daughter, perhaps, Sam guessed, or the woman Jack had been expecting.
"No, no, Sam!" Al cried, momentarily bursting through the wooden bar to get Sam's attention. The bartender put his hand through the hologram's chest to set down a mug of black coffee. "Don't say that! Why did you say that? Take it back now, Sam!"
Sam only blinked, his eyes irritated by the glare of Al's suit underneath the bar's lighting. He turned back to Jack, who, though not his first choice of people to ogle, wore clothing easier on the eyes.
"Then to hell with her," Jack replied smugly in a sotto voice before stumbling toward the exit.
Al gasped, powerless and frustrated that he could do nothing himself to stop Jack from retreating. "Sam, stop him! Quickly! It's because of him leaving that starts what we need to fix here."
He looked back to Sam, now slurping his coffee carefully and wincing at the liquid heat. "Sam!" Al hollered. "Get off your duff! Jack's leaving."
"He is?" Sam twisted back to Jack's fading form. "'Bye, Jack," he called.
"Sam," Al countered angrily. "We don't want Jack to leave. Call him back."
"But you told me to drink coffee," was Sam's slurred retort.
The bartender glanced up from a book of receipts. "I didn't tell you nothing."
"Anyth--"
The bartender held up his palm to Sam. "Okay, whatever. I'll go to night school if you'll shut up about it."
Al exhaled a heavy sigh. The throbbing in his temples, compounded by frustration from Sam's inebriation and Ziggy's persistance that the mission get back on track, accelerated and brought on a blinding pain behind Al eyes. He squeezed them shut momentarily, thinking of a way to salvage the Leap in Jack's absence.
As if reading Al's mind, Sam threw him a calm wink. "He'll be back, friend," he said, gesturing to an adjacent glass. "He didn't finish his drink."
"You are useless like this, Sam, you know that?" Al barked. "A man with nine college degrees can't hold his liquor long enough to prevent...wait a sec." Al checked the handlink to find out exactly how much alcohol Lennie Briscoe had consumed that day, and winced suddenly at the number flashing before him. "Oh, man! Sam, it's a wonder you're still alive. The Incredible Hulk would've passed out by now."
Sam tottered over to the jukebox. "Hey, Al, got a quarter?"
"My name's not Al," the bartender insisted, fed up with this pest of a customer.
"Uh, sure, Sam, wait up." Al approached his friend and directed his complete attention toward him. "Okay, now shut up and listen," he began authoritatively. "It is May 26, 1996. In just a few seconds a very pretty girl named Claire Kincaid is going to walk through that door."
Sam's face lit up at this. He liked pretty girls, and so did Lennie Briscoe.
"Lennie knows Claire from work, she's an assistant district attorney," Al continued, speaking rapidly with clipped tones in the event Sam's conciousness drifted away. If that happened, Al knew, the mission was over. "Claire works for Jack, and Ziggy has it that the two of them do more than work together, if you catch my drift. Enough about that, though."
"Claire comes here looking for Jack after she receives a page." Al followed Sam back to his stool, the jukebox now forgotten. "She winds up taking Lennie -- you -- home instead and is t-boned by a drunk driver. Lennie lives, but Claire is killed instantly. Ziggy says there's a ninety percent chance you're here to prevent that."
Al sized up his friend, who slouched in the stool with a death grip on the coffee mug. "Of course," Al added solemnly, "Ziggy also says that if you don't sober up in the next two seconds there's a chance Lennie might end up getting killed too."
The words alone seemed to help in Sam's drying out process, and Al detected a faint glimmer of sobriety in Sam's serious expression. "Okay," Sam finally whispered, and Al's heart beat normally again. Sam -- Dr. Sam Beckett of Elk Ridge, Indiana, who never so much as sipped in beer in college -- was going to fight this obstacle.
Claire arrived on cue, stepping cautiously into the dimly lit bar and glancing with uncertainty from side to side, hopeful for a glimpse of Jack McCoy. Sam recognized her instantly, deciding that she looked more beautiful in living color, and the leather jacket she wore seemed to suit her.
Her gaze fell to Sam at the bar and she quickly approached. "Hey, good lookin'," Sam greeted her. "Buy you a drink?"
"Uh, no thanks." Claire's voice was deep yet still feminine, Sam noticed, seeing that his hologram friend also appeared quite taken with the young lawyer.
"Buy me a drink, then?" Sam raised his eyebrows.
"No!" Claire and Al answered in unison. Then Claire added, "I think you've had more than your share."
"If you didn't come to drink, then, what brings you here?"
Al protested. "Sam, I told you that already..."
"I was looking for...well, never mind. You need to get home." Claire pulled a bill from her jeans pocket and slapped it on the counter, unsure if it was enough to cover the damage done to Lennie Briscoe's liver. When the bartender did not press her for more, Claire hooked her arm around Sam's and pulled him to his feet.
"Claire still thinks her relationship with Jack is a secret, Sam," Al warned, "even though it's old news with everyone in the DA's office. Seems Jack McCoy has a reputation with bedding female assistants."
Sam threw Al a look that said, "Sounds familiar, doesn't it?", unaware that since Sam had changed Al's personal history in a previous Leap, the old memories no longer existed.
* * *
Al perched in the back seat of Claire's compact Toyota. Sam, strapped in front, could only look at him with wonder. Even when sober, he thought it amazing that Al, really standing stationary in the tight translucent tube that was the Imaging Chamber, could appear to be moving right along with the car as it turned corners along dark Manhattan streets. Even Al's feet appeared to touch the car floor!It bothered Sam, too, because he invented the Chamber, and thanks to the "Swiss-Cheese" effect on his mind he could not remember how he did it.
"Sam, you gotta listen to me. This is important," Al said to the back of Sam's bobbing head. "This car gets hit in exactly four minutes and thirty-nine seconds."
Sam giggled and started counting backward from thirty-eight.
"Why are you doing that?" Claire wanted to know, not expecting a sane answer.
"Just guessing your age."
Now Claire was laughing. "Stop it." Then, seriously, "Why were you in there, drinking?"
A heavy sigh from Sam fogged the passenger side window. "You won't believe it, but, it really wasn't me in there. It was somebody else drinking."
"Sam," Al whined. "Focus."
Claire signalled to turn off of Fifth Avenue when a movement surprised her. Sam had clasped Claire's wrist. "No, go straight."
"But it's quicker to get to your apartment this way," Claire argued. "As much as I love spending time with you, Lennie, I won't have you throwing up in my car."
"Not ready to go home," Sam managed to gasp.
"Yeah, and as messy as your car is, vomit might be an improvement," Al muttered, shaking his head at the array of loose paper and balled-up fast food bags at his feet.
"Well, we're not going to another bar." Claire was firm.
"Go that way." Sam pointed at random. "Please?"
Persuaded by a blaring horn from behind her, Claire drove forward, then protested at Sam's directions. "What? We'll end up on the FDR if we do that!"
"You don't like FDR? You're not a New Dealer?"
Claire frowned, then conceded as she steered the car toward the freeway. Cars sped up alongside her, and there was nowhere else to go. "That was before my time."
"Lots of women say that."
They drove on silently for the next few minutes, with Al in back keeping time with the link to Ziggy and Sam singing to a song on the radio using made-up, and in Claire's mind questionable, lyrics.
"Okay, that's enough." Claire switched off the radio and sighed, taking in the scenery bordering the FDR and wondering why she let a drunken, middle-aged man talk her into such a lengthy detour.
Al tried to shake Sam's shoulder, but his hand passed through the car seat like it was nothing. "Looking good, Sam. We're far out of the range of that drunk driver. Ziggy says he gets picked up driving on the wrong side of Park Avenue before he can do any real damage. Claire's gonna live!"
Sam smiled. His head still tingled, and the taste of coffee soured in his mouth, but he was lucid enough to know that his work was done. Soon he could leap, hopefully into somebody more stable whose biggest vice was corn flakes.
"Lennie gets his butt to AA, thanks to his co-workers," Al added as an aside, "and Jack...uh oh."
"Uh oh?" questioned Sam.
"Uh oh?" repeated Claire. "Lennie, you didn't have an accident, did you? Please say you didn't."
Sam's gaze shot upward to the rear-view mirror. Al's grim face filled the small rectangle. "We've changed history, Sam. Claire doesn't die, but after she drops Lennie off Jack calls her at home, and he's still drunk as a skunk. They fight, and she breaks up with him. Ziggy has her now working in some highbrow firm in California. Seems the entire East Coast was too small to fit the both of them."
"And Jack?" Sam wriggled his torso underneath the constricting seatbelt. He noticed Claire's hands stiffen on the steering wheel.
"I don't want to talk about Jack," she said coldly.
Al did, however. "Jack is found eight months from now in his apartment with enough booze in him to fill up Lake Michigan. Alcohol poisoning."
"That's bad," Sam stated the obvious.
"Why is it bad?" Claire asked. "I...er, just don't want to talk about him, is all." Her discretion in check, she turned to Sam as if to say, "Where to now?"
"Okay," Sam nodded, tranfixed by the light of passing lampposts. "I'm ready to go home now."
"Well, get comfortable. We're at the ferry now, and it's a long drive back." Claire craned her neck to see behind her before easing off the exit, clueless as to which route she would take to get back to Lennie's apartment. After a few false starts, she managed to get the Toyota back on the FDR going the other direction. Sam attempted a few times to speak was but put off by Claire's growing irritation.
Finally, he decided to risk incurring her wrath. If she punched him in the shoulder, perhaps he would leap first and Lennie would receive the blow. "You meant it when you said you love spending time with me?" he asked, his voice suddenly boyish.
"Lennie," Claire sighed, casting a sideways glance at Sam and smiling like a disappointed mother. "You know I do, and I'm sorry I don't get to say it as often. This job..." her eyes rolled and fluttered, and Al sensed she was thinking of the earlier execution, as Ziggy had revealed via the handlink that Claire was also present along with Jack and Lennie and Lennie's work partner.
"Sometimes it takes so much out of you, and today, well!" She slapped her palm against the wheel and unconciously tapped the gas pedal. "I don't consider this day the high point of my career."
"Or your life in general?" Sam prodded. "Look at me, you found me about to melt into a pool of my own puke and self-loathing. I won't be putting any pictures of this in my scrapbook."
Claire laughed quietly, and Sam smiled. Meanwhile, Al watched silently from the back seat, curious to know where Sam was leading the conversation. He did not have to wait long.
"Jack waited for now, you know," Sam admitted.
"I know. I was a bit late, I guess."
"You were right on time. You saved my life."
"And he yours," Al pointed out, despite the fact that Claire could not hear him.
"I'm driving you home, Lennie. It's not like I pulled you from that bar as it burned to the ground."
"He's in love with you."
Screech.
Al looked around at the road through the filmy, small windows. Cars flew past at top speed, horns blaring obnoxiously at the party inside Claire's Toyota. "Uh, why have we stopped on the FDR?" he asked aloud.
"Are we out of gas?" Sam asked innocently.
"What did you say?" Claire was suddenly angry.
"About what?"
"Cut the idiot act, Lennie."
"I said that Jack's in love with you."
Claire glared straight ahead into the night, heaving deep, furious breaths for about half a minute before easing the gas pedal and moving the car again. Al, informed by Ziggy that the chances of a rather large truck plowing into Claire's car would accelerate if the car did not do so first, sighed with relief.
Both Sam and Claire were silent for the rest of the drive to Lennie's apartment. It was not until Claire eased the car along the curb of Lennie's street that she spoke again.
"How did you know?" She was looking down at her lap. "Nobody was supposed to know."
Sam reached for Claire's shoulder, but thought better of it and instead clasped her headrest. "The way you talk, it sounds as if you didn't know yourself."
That prompted a light grin. "Jack and I had...er, have something, but until now I wouldn't have called it love."
"What was it then?" Sam asked.
"And give us details," Al added.
Claire looked out her window. "I just thought we were having a good time, is all. I already knew about Jack and his other assistants, as I'm sure everybody else in New York did, too. You know, I remember thinking to myself that it wouldn't happen to me, but it did."
"He never told me," she added, and Sam noticed a single tear threatening to trickled from the corner of her right eye. "Why would he tell you first?"
"He didn't have to. I was there when love was invented. I know what it looks like."
"It's working, Sam." Al's voice swelled with excitement.
"You going to be all right?" Sam asked Claire. She nodded, and Sam leaned over for an awkward hug. "Go home, get some rest. If Jack calls, go easy on him, will ya? I gotta work with him too."
"I will," Claire promised between sniffles. She saw Sam out of her car and gently steered away as he ascended the steps to his building. Al pushed a button and simply vanished from the backseat.
His legs still felt like they were filled with jelly, and Sam stepped carefully upward, turning once to watch Claire's Toyota disappear into the night. Al waited for him at the door.
"How'd we do, Al?"
Al consulted the handlink. "It's going to be okay, Sam. Jack and Claire still have their tiff, but it's not as bad as before."
"And California?"
"Doesn't happen," Al said, shaking his head. "But Claire leaves the DA's office in a year or so, something about a conflict of interest with married couples working together." He caught Sam's smile as he said that.
"She's now an associate professor of law at NYU," Al continued, "and...holy cow!"
"What?" Sam, now worried, asked.
"Professor McCoy, I should have known. Claire Gina's major professor," Al shouted, referring to his second oldest daughter. "She's giving my girl a hard time, too."
Sam shrugged, breathing in the muggy New York air. Al's rambunctious children were among the few things he did remember from his present time. "Knowing Gina, that doesn't surprise me in the least," he said with a chuckle.
Before Al could protest, Sam leaped, leaving Lennie Briscoe back in his own body to fumble for his keys and wonder how he managed to get home.