Author's note: This has probably been done millions of times before, but it wouldn't leave me alone. This series as a whole... my God, I love it so much. I love everything about it.
Spoilers for the finale.
Oh, and be prepared for some Sam and Gene bromance gushing. I love Sam/Annie, but... bromance!
I don't own anything, please review.
It wasn't that he suddenly felt nothing, he decided; it was that he'd never really felt anything.
No, that wasn't right. He had felt something – he'd been in love with Mia, at least for a time, he'd been happy when he'd arrested a criminal, when he'd saved someone – but he had never experienced feelings as intense as he had when he'd been in a coma, when he'd been lost in the Seventies, desperately trying to get home. He had been alive then, he had felt it every single minute he'd spent in the strange world he'd imagined.
And now... Now he didn't know why he'd wanted to come back in the first place, and that scared him. He'd always assumed that everything would get back to normal once he'd returned, that he'd accept that working under Gene Hunt, working with Annie, had just been a figment of his imagination, that he'd move on. He had only been imagining everything that had happened anyway; there was no reason to think about it after he'd returned to the real world, so he wouldn't.
He'd been wrong.
He missed them. He missed everything, more than he wanted to admit.
He missed Annie – how could he not? He had fallen in love with her (he would at least admit that to himself, if nothing else, you could still fall in love with someone you'd imagined), she had been his confidante, she had been the woman – she had been the woman he could have imagined to spend his life with, if she had been real. If the world he'd somehow imagined had been real. She had believed in him. Even when she'd explained to him that he must be mad, that he couldn't be from a different time, she had still believed in him, had still believed he could do his job. She had stood by him, despite everything. When he had tried to destroy Gene's world. When he'd worked for Frank Morgan. Even when he'd told her that he would come back, when he'd promised her that he wouldn't leave her alone, she'd believed him.
And he had broken his promise. He'd never broken a promise before, and he hated thinking about the one he'd given Annie, whether he'd imagined it or not. He'd let her down. And, despite the fact that he'd finally woken up, it gnawed on him.
He missed Chris - the young Constable who had constantly been torn between his loyalty to him and his loyalty to their boss. He had never really had someone look up to him like this before. He had taught Chris how to conduct a proper investigation, how to question a suspect, how to build radios. He caught himself at the thought who was doing it now when he realized that there was no one to do it, simply because he hadn't existed.
He missed Phyllis; her no-nonsense attitude had grown on him, and she had never been afraid to tell anyone her opinion.
He even missed Ray a little bit, though not much. But somehow, over time, he had come to like their fights; they made a dull day in the office (or as dull as it could get, with this team) much more fun.
Good God, he was starting to think like Gene Hunt.
Gene Hunt...
He missed Gene Hunt too. He couldn't pretend to himself that he didn't. He and Gene hadn't got on, at least not at first. But then... They had slowly formed a bond, something that not even they themselves would have been able to explain. They had worked well together, Sam trying (and sometimes managing) to control Gene, or at least the more brutal aspects of his personality, and Gene slowly drawing Sam out. He had lost his belief in gut feeling before he'd been hit by the car; Gene had helped him to understand that procedure and gut feeling weren't mutually exclusive. Both were an important part of the work as a detective. And he had become a friend.
Not at first. At first, Sam had been sure that Gene was nothing but a bent copper (aside from being an invention of his subconscious), trying to make everyone forget that he took bribes by being as loud, impolite and as politically incorrect as possible. But then – Gene had a good heart, Sam couldn't doubt it anymore. And, despite everything, he had trusted Sam. He had called him when being suspected of a murder, and been sure that Sam would clear it all up. He had trusted Sam, more than anyone else had ever trusted him. He had believed in him when everyone else had turned their backs on him, and in the end –
He'd been right. Sam had brushed aside his DCI'S exclamation of "You like it here", had thought it utterly impossible that he'd ever enjoy living in this mad world (while still liking Annie, she was the only one who listened to him, after all), and yet, he had to admit that he missed this mad world, missed Gene Hunt more than he'd ever thought he would.
Somehow, he had grown to trust Gene Hunt, the man he'd despised in the beginning, the man he'd been convinced was just a figment of his imagination. And yet, somehow, this man had also proved to be someone he could count on, someone who would listen while acting like he didn't, someone who has become the friend he had always searched for (perhaps unconsciously) but not found in his other life.
No, not his other life. His real life. His waking life. The only life he'd ever lived. Because living in the Seventies, meeting Annie, getting to know Gene – it hadn't been real.
Or, at least, that was what he told himself, in the dark hours of the night, not being able to sleep. When he desperately tried to forget how alive he'd felt. When he thought about how it would be to wake up and be back in the Seventies, to simply slip back into the life he'd known, like he'd never returned, like he'd never woken up. Or how about it would have been if he had really, truly belonged in the Seventies, been part of Gene Hunt's team, like the Frank Morgan he'd imagined had told him he was.
Would he have done what he had been sent out to do? Would he have betrayed Gene and Annie and the whole team? Would he have gone and destroyed Gene's career?
No. He wouldn't have. He couldn't have. He was sure of that now. Even as he'd run away from the train he'd realized he couldn't leave them. He wouldn't have left them there to die, no matter what Frank Morgan had said, and he wouldn't have helped him bring down the team.
Not that it mattered, not that any of those thoughts mattered –
But somehow he couldn't let his life in the Seventies go. While talking about it for the psychological evaluation helped, it didn't make the memories any less poignant. He walked through the streets and found himself looking for Nelson's pub; he spent the evening in his living room and found himself surprised that his telly had a remote control; he sat in his kitchen, stared at the table and remembered a body lying there; he went to interview a witness and found that he was introducing himself as "DI Tyler".
After a while, he tried to talk to his mother. Talking to his mother had helped a little bit, like he'd known it would, like it always did, but, at the same time, it had made him realize that he'd broken a promise for the first time in his life. Even an imagined one.
On the day he cut himself without realizing it, the day he sat in a meeting, stared at his hand and wondered why he couldn't feel any pain, he began to ask himself if all he'd seen and lived through had really just been a figment of his imagination.
Sam told himself that he shouldn't think about it, that it was madness to go down this road. Yet, somehow, he couldn't help it, because everything he had felt in this strange world had been so much more intense. So much more colourful.
And once he'd allowed the thought that it could have been real –
The desire to return made itself known.
It was ironic, really; how many times had he prayed to return to this world, the real world, while he'd been in a coma? How many times had he cried in front of the television, hearing his surgeon or his mother talking? And now, all he could think about was how to get back to the Seventies, to this team that had somehow become his team.
But, if he really wished to return, there was only one way this could happen, and, strangely, it didn't scare him. He didn't even ask himself why he was so sure that this was the only way to return to the Seventies, to Annie, to Gene; he simply was.
He didn't consider himself suicidal, but then again, that could be because he didn't consider what he thought about suicide. He considered it returning to the one place he'd felt alive.
Naturally, he thought about all he would lose, should he take this final step. There was his old life as a DCI, but his job didn't mean much to him nowadays anyway, or at least not as much as his job as a DI under Gene Hunt had meant to him. There was his mother, but, strangely, he felt that she would understand, like she had always understood him, that she had known as soon as he'd talked to her that he would return. There were his colleagues – but they had never been friends anyway, not in the way Gene or Chris had been. And his relationship with Mia had been over before he'd got hit by the car, he admitted to himself.
So, in the end, choosing one of his two lives was surprisingly simple, more simple than he'd ever have supposed the choice to be, and the question wasn't anymore if, but when.
And considering that his colleagues seemed to think him crazy ever since he'd hurt himself without noticing it and he was becoming more and more withdrawn, rather sooner than later.
And, frankly, a life that he was so easy to leave probably couldn't be called a life to begin with.
He hadn't felt as alive since he'd woken up as he did when he slowly walked up to the roof. Once he was there, he took a moment to feel the wind and the sunlight on his skin and smiled, because he was sure he was doing the right thing. Nelson had been right all along; if you didn't feel you were alive, you weren't. But if you did...
It didn't matter whether you were or not. As long as you felt you were alive you were. And at the moment, Sam wasn't alive.
But he would be alive again soon.
So it was with a light heart that he started walking towards the edge; soon he was running, a smile on his face.
It was time to return. It was time to feel alive again.
And if that meant he had to die first, he considered it a fair price.
Author's note: Did I mention I love this series? Anyway, I couldn't resist this story. It demanded to be written. And it was rather interesting to explore Sam's character. And Life on Mars needs more fanfiction, because frankly, it deserves it.
I hope you liked it, please review.