Another Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes fic, posted in the Ashes to Ashes section this time. I do not own these characters. This is my first time outside of poetry using something other than third person narrative. Here's hoping I can pull it off! Constructive criticism is always welcome.

You had an accident, and woke up in another time. You weren't sure how you got there, or even if what was happening to you was real. You began searching for a way out, a way back home. But at the same time you were doing that, you gradually came to be friends with these people whom you saw and worked with everyday. You grew to love them. And as much as you still wanted to get back home, it grew harder and harder to convince yourself that these people---that this whole world---only existed in your mind.

Part of the problem was that this world, most of the time anyway, behaved in a perfectly logical fashion: night follows day, place your hand on a hot stove and it burns, and so forth. It's the messages from your former life that were out of place: the test card girl from the television, voices from the radio, phone rings but you're the only one who hears it. It kept you confused and uncertain. Were they proof that 1973 was the dream, or that 2006 was? You thought you knew, but you were never completely positive.

Then one day, a miracle occurred. A man showed up, offering you a way back home. Exactly what you had been looking for for so long. There was a catch, though. And an ugly one at that. You had to destroy Gene Hunt, betray the very people who had come to mean so much to you.

You forced yourself to do it. You convinced yourself that these people weren't real, that they couldn't feel pain. By the time you started to have second thoughts you were already in far too deep to stop it, and still wanting to go home, you continued on.

And it worked. You woke up in the hospital, back in 2006 where you had thought you belonged. All the clues seemed to point to your adventures being nothing more than a very long and vivid dream.

You should have been happy, but... you couldn't get the desperate cries of your friends out of your head. You could no longer be convinced that they were figments of your imagination.

Even if you hadn't left them in danger, you had been in '73 for so long that 2006 no longer felt like home. You didn't belong there anymore. In the end you were so desperate to get back to the very place you had tried so hard to leave in the first place that you leaped off of the roof, hoping it would take you back to your friends... and it worked, Sam.

Now I understand the desperation you had felt. From my perspective, I've been here almost a year now.

When I first arrived, I was convinced I knew exactly what was happening. This was all an elaborate dream. These people were constructs, most of them borrowed from you. Prior to my being shot I must have read your transcripts I don't know how many times, so they would have already been in my head.

Now, though, I'm not nearly as convinced. It's because of that uncertinty that I can't go along with Summers and his plan. Maybe he's right, maybe it would get me home(worked for you, after all) but I can't risk it.

Even though he shot and killed his younger self, I'm still not re-convinced this is a dream. I had thought that nothing could be changed when I failed to prevent my parents' deaths. Summers proved me wrong. Now I keep thinking that maybe some sort of alternate time line has now been created by his actions.

Perhaps part of it comes from something I remember you saying in your tapes: that you were in an accident, hit by a car after your girlfriend(ex-girlfriend?) was kidnapped.

Sam, there was no hit and run. You collapsed in the middle of the road from the brain tumor. Maya wasn't kidnapped either. You got into an argument with her and left--and were later found in the middle of the street. It's a miracle you weren't run over.

You said that in the seventies you stopped the man who would kidnap Maya in 2006. Maybe... maybe you did change things after all. But apparently for some reason you were still meant to be in that coma, so the cause of it was changed.

Listen to me! Last year I would have thought that was the most ridiculous notion ever invented by a human mind. But things have changed. I'm at the point where the idea that none of this is real is becoming the ridiculous theory.

I've been here for so long, Sam. Even longer than you had on your first visit, perhaps. Just like you, I find that there is far too much detail to this place. All the rules of the real world apply here. These people have come to matter to me. At Luigi's, when I told them I loved them, I meant it.

Chris' betrayal... God, that hurt. I could see the pain and anger in everyone's eyes. It was so raw and real. Shaz... Gene... even Ray. I'm so angry at Chris for doing this, for causing us so much pain. And at the same time, my heart aches for him because I can see that he knows what he did was wrong, and he feels horrible for doing it. This morning I was torn between wanting to comfort him and strangle him! Seeing these things, feeling these things, I just can't convince myself that these people are not real. Not anymore.

I don't know what to do, Sam. I want to go home---I need to go home. Molly needs me. But... I don't think I could betray Gene---betray the team---in order to do it. I want to be able to look my daughter in the eyes when I get back. And I won't be able to if real people's lives are destroyed.