Exploring the strange and wonderful world that is Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes yet again. This can either be a companion piece to More Things in Heaven and Earth or a stand alone.(Hopefully, anyway.) Future episodes of Ashes to Ashes may prove me wrong, but in the meantime here are my theories. As always, feedback is more than welcome.
Chris had been surprised that the funeral had turned out to be open casket, given the fact that Sam had leaped off of a building. He must have landed in just the right fashion, and the morticians had to have been quite skilled at their craft.
That blue suit though... that didn't look right at all. Of course that leather jacket that Sam(70's Sam?) had worn had disappeared along with Sam's body in the river all those years ago...
If Chris closed his eyes, he could see Sam, on his first day, looking so confused and out of place.
He supposed he couldn't really blame those people who were saying Sam was mad for jumping. Back in the 70s, people(including Chris himself) thought Sam was mad for insisting he was from the future, and that all of his surroundings were mere figments of his imagination.
Now it all made sense. Well, okay not all of it. How or why Sam was actually able to go to the seventies remained unclear, as well as how leaping off the roof had allowed him to return.
That's what Alex Drake had said. She made the same claims that Sam had made when he first showed up. She said that Sam's story had ended with him betraying his friends near a train tunnel, and that he had apparently leaped off of a roof out of guilt in her time.
When she was told that Sam had died in a river in '79, she came to the conclusion that Sam had returned to 1973 to save his friends, and had lived on for another six years there, while in 2006 his life drained out of him in seconds.
Chris wondered if there was any significance in the fact that there was no body for the seventies Sam. Maybe some sort of energy formed Sam's physical from in the 70s, powered by his life force?
Chris nearly groaned out loud. This really was like some sort of sci-fi drama. And the harder one tried to have it make sense, the more ridiculous it sounded.
But it had happened, there was no denying that, even if the reasons were unknown.
If Alex's theory was correct, though, then that meant that Sam was really and truly dead now. Perhaps sent off to the more traditional heaven of fluffy clouds and harp music. Maybe he was back with Annie, Gene, and Ray then. Chris hoped so at least. Sam deserved peace.
Chris looked down at the man in the casket, and touched Sam's face. It felt cold, like metal. There was the faintest hint of a smile, but whether that was the mortician's doing or not Chris couldn't be sure.
"Had to wait twenty-seven years for a proper burial," Chris muttered under his breath, his eyes stinging with tears. He wiped them away, not wanting any to fall on Sam's face.
Shaz had returned to her to seat to allow her husband to say goodbye to his friend in private. Chris looked over his shoulder at her, giving her a shaky smile to let her know he was all right.
What almost killed Chris was that Sam had known when he jumped that he'd only have seven years with his friends. That day he died, back in the seventies, he had seemed to sense it was going to happen. No one really put much thought into it at the time.
It wasn't until Chris saw Sam Tyler standing on his doorstep in 2006, looking exactly the same as he had back in 1979(ugly blue suit aside), that what Sam and Alex had kept going on about finally made sense. All of it.
Sam clearly hadn't expected Chris to remember him, so Chris' reaction(which was to scream "Holy fucking shit!" and grab Sam as if he were a long-lost son.) caught him quite off guard, to say the least.
Sam's memories of the seventies matched up with Alex's story. He only remembered up to the train tunnel, with his friends begging for his help.
He was almost in tears as he insisted, "I didn't want to abandon you, not in the end." He had to pause for a few moments, hands over his mouth as if he might vomit. After a few slow deep breaths through the nose, Sam finally continued. "After I woke up, I... I realized that for all my efforts to return home, it never occurred to me that I had been there already. With you."
Chris had tried so hard not to put the pieces of the puzzle together, Ray's voice repeating Alex's theory playing in his head. Sam had to remember saving them, he must.
"No," Sam whispered. "I'm sorry Chris, I don't."
In that moment Chris saw the idea strike Sam, saw that flicker in his eyes, and tried desperately to stop him.
"Sam, wait. Before you try anything, I want you to see this." Chris retrieved the scrapbook that Shaz had put together after Gene's death. Bringing it over to Sam, he flipped it open to the page that had the newspaper article describing the death of one DI Sam Tyler, complete with photograph.
"Six years later," Sam whispered, stunned.
"It's not worth it, Boss," Chris had insisted, and for an instant the years between them melted away. Chris felt young again, but in a helpless-no-idea-what-the-hell-he-should-do-next way. He already knew what the outcome was going to be though. His memories remained unchanged, there was nothing vague about them. Sam still came back to save the team, still drowned in 1979. The determination on the face of the Sam in front of him became steady again. There was no fighting fate, no matter how hard one tried.
Chris had pulled Sam to him again, holding him as tightly as he possibly could. He was well aware that this would be the last time he would see Sam alive.
As Chris pulled away, Sam glanced back down at the scrapbook. He flipped through the pages, studying them all carefully. Finally he had said, "Will you make sure my mum sees this?"
Sam had kept his promise, Chris owed it to him to return the favor.
Chris was brought back to the present by a hand on his arm. It was Shaz, and she looked as though she'd seen a ghost. He looked over her shoulder to see what had her spooked.
Alex Drake was sitting in the back pew. Chris wondered what she was doing there. She looked sad, guilty almost. It was then that Chris remembered that she was Sam's doctor. The guilt he saw might have been her belief that she had failed to help him.
She was another mystery. Alex, or rather the one that they had first met back in 1981, had just vanished one day. Chris didn't know if that meant she had returned to the present day like when Sam had awoken from his coma, or if, like Sam, her modern day body had died. She had a young daughter, so she really didn't have Sam's suicide option to return, even if she and the Guv had fallen for each other.
"Should we tell her?" Shaz whispered.
"She'd think we were mad. You remember how long it took for her to accept the fact that we were real? She's not our Alex, Shaz. If I remember right, she won't be shot until a year from now."
"What did happen to her? To our Alex?"
"Don't know, luv. We won't know for some time," Chris looked back and forth between Alex and Sam. "All we can do is wait. Unlike them, we can only go the slow way through time."