(Author's notes: Project Quantum Leap and all associated characters – Al, Sam, Gooshie, Tina, Verbena, and Ziggy—are the property of Donald P. Bellisario Productions. I am only borrowing them. All other characters are my own. A clarification for QL fans:

This story presupposes that the events of "Mirror Image" did not take place. Therefore, Sam is still leaping and Al did not get back together with Beth. In the years since, both Al and Tina have married, but not to each other. It also contains references to events which were part of a non QL fiction list some years ago. Anyone having questions about that please feel free to contact me)

To Live and Die in LA

Chapter One

November 1, 2007

The Calavicci quarters

Project Quantum Leap

0320 hours/3:20 am, MST

The beeping from the intercom woke Al first. "Damn it, not now, Ziggy!" he murmured. Not only was it the middle of the night, but he'd wanted to spend the next day with Mary and his family. The fact that the alarm was going off at this hour, Al knew far too well, could mean only one thing.

"I cannot help it, Admiral," purred the computer. "The probability that Doctor Beckett will leap within the next hour has jumped to 95. In such a situation, I am programmed to inform you of..."

"Yes, yes, I know that!" Al waved an impatient hand to cut the computer off, even as he began scrambling out of bed. While he was doing that, Mary stirred, awakened by the conversation and Al's movement.

"Al?" she asked, sitting up as she watched him getting dressed. She had a pretty good idea what was happening. After all the years she'd lived here at the Project, she was quite well used to these interruptions coming at any hour of the day or night.

"Sorry, Mary. I didn't mean to wake you up. But Sam's about to leap, and you do know what that means," Al said.

Mary nodded. "I know. You go and take care of Sam now, and don't worry, I'll explain things to the children when they wake up later." She reached up and hugged him, a hug which he returned tenderly and added a kiss for good measure.

"I'll try to get back home as soon as I can, Mary. I promise. Would you please tell the kids that, too, all right?"

"I know you will, Al." she smiled. "We've done this how many times before, after all." she added, not in the least bit accusing, her words were merely a statement of the facts. "Trudy and Sammy both understand how important your helping Sam is." The only reason she didn't mention Austin, was that he was only two, and not old enough yet to have had his father's frequent absences explained to him.

Once he had finished getting ready, Al hurried down to the Control Room. When he got there, he found that Tina and Gooshie were already at their workstations, and Verbena also stood close by, waiting for her cue.

Then it was just a question of their monitoring until the leap actually occurred, which it did, less than an hour later.

Gooshie and Tina immediately set to work trying to get a fix on Sam's location, with Ziggy's help, while Al waited for their signal. When that came, Al knew he'd have to go into the Imaging Chamber and attempt to make contact with Sam. This was something he'd done so many times it had become a routine; though in another way, no leap was exactly like any other. Every situation, each set of circumstances, was different, and not every eventuality could always be predicted accurately, even with Ziggy's best efforts to supply Al with all the available data.

Elsewhere and Elsewhen...

The all too familiar blue haze enveloped Sam Beckett, and he found himself falling through the void. Then, it was gone, and once again he had solid ground under his feet. But where was he, and even more importantly, when?

He looked around, trying to orient himself, to get some idea of his surroundings, and of what, exactly, the situation was.

He was in an alley between two rather decayed looking, rundown, and quite probably abandoned buildings. The few windows he could see from where he stood were all boarded up, adding to the general air of seediness, as did the debris littering the ground.

He was in a city, then. But which one? Quite a few of the larger US cities had rundown areas such as this, Sam knew that only too well.

In front of him stood a dark haired boy. Sam guessed him to be in his mid,teens, and wearing blue jeans, sneakers, a t shirt, and a black leather jacket. "Shawn, look, don't give me a hard time about this, okay?"

A hard time about what? Sam wondered. He was supposed to be 'Shawn" that much was obvious, but there was, as usual in the first few minutes after a leap, still far too much he didn't know. He'd have to string along until Al showed up.

Trying to think of what he should say or do, he looked around again,,and that was when he saw what lay on the ground between himself and the other boy. A small plastic bag, containing some sort of white powder.

That couldn't be what he thought it was, could it? There may have been gaps in his swiss cheesed memory, but he hadn't forgotten his medical background. "Oh, boy." Sam muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. If that was, as he suspected, something illegal, this wasn't a good sign for this leap at all.

Not sure of what else he could do, Sam reached for the bag, intending to dispose of it somehow, but the other boy was too fast for him and snatched it up before he could get it. The boy quickly stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket..

However, Sam wasn't an MD for nothing, and the brief glimpse that he'd had of the bag's contents had been enough for him to make a good guess as to what it probably was. "If that's what I think it is, that stuff's no good for you." he said.

"And I just told you, don't give me a hard time about it!" the other boy retorted. "Now, I said you could stay at my place, and you can, but I don't need lecturing. You don't know anything about this till you've tried it, you got that?"

"I don't need to try it to know what it is, that it's no good at all for anybody." Sam replied with a sigh. Every medical instinct he had was screaming at him to get that stuff away from the kid,,but he also knew pushing now would only drive the boy away and cost Sam any chance whatsoever of helping him. Besides, he still didn't know enough about what was going on here, but since Al hadn't yet appeared, he decided the best thing to do for now was stay with this boy. It'd at least give him a chance to try again to get through to him. Somehow he simply had to stop this boy from doing this to himself.

November 1, 2007

Project Quantum Leap Control Room

0445 hours/4:45 am

Al paced back and forth, while Gooshie and Tina continued working busily to get the information on Sam's location.

"We've got Sam's location." Gooshie finally said. "He's in 1988. June 15, to be exact. Los Angeles, California. But..." He broke off, and a strange expression came over his face. He looked from Al to Tina, back to Al, to the computer screen, then back to Tina, and then to Al again. "There's, um, a, a complication..."

"What?" Tina demanded. She had noticed Gooshie's staring at her, and wondered what could have gotten into the man all of a sudden.

"Out with it, Gooshie, now. Is Sam all right?" Al asked.

"I...that is..." Gooshie fumbled, "I mean, yes, he's all right. We don't show that he's in any danger, if that's what you mean." those words came out in a rush, then he broke off again. "It's just that...well..." his eyes once again darted between Al and Tina. "Um...that is...he's.."

That wasn't like Gooshie at all, Al thought. What could possibly have happened? "Come on," Al growled, starting to worry that Sam was in some sort of trouble already. Gooshie suddenly seeming to have developed a speech impediment just in the last five minutes, didn't strike Al as a good sign at all.

"What he is trying to keep from telling you, Admiral," Ziggy cut in, "is that I have identified the person my father has leaped into. And that is a thirteen year old boy named..." She paused.

"Come on, you collection of junked spare parts!" Al growled. Ziggy had a tendency to be dramatic at the most annoying times!

"Really, Admiral, there is no need to be insulting." the parallel hybrid computer replied reprovingly, a faintly miffed tone entering 'her' voice.

For a computer which claimed not to experience emotion, Ziggy could behave quite emotionally, Al thought exasperatedly. Why Sam had ever programmed her with Barbara Streisand's ego he never would understand. "Just tell us, damn it!" Al snapped.

"Oh, very well, Admiral, since you insist." came the reply. "It is Shawn Catlin."

On hearing that name, Tina's mouth fell open. She stared up at the blue sphere that was Ziggy, with an expression of shock on her face.

"Oh, boy." murmured Al. Leaps that involved anyone who was connected to the Project were always complicated. "Beeks!"

"I'm on my way." Verbena replied, hurrying towards the exit to the Waiting Room. If that was a teenaged Shawn in there...she shook her head. She'd really have to be doubly careful to not reveal too much, she told herself as the Control Room door closed behind her.

"Shawn??" Tina cried out, as she came out of her momentary freeze and raced to follow Verbena out.

"Tina, no! Wait!" But she was already out the door, running towards the Waiting Room, before Al could stop her. Damn it, the problems were starting already! "Gooshie, you and Ziggy get as much information as you can. I'll go to Sam as soon as I make sure Tina's okay." He hoped he'd be able to stop her before she got into the Waiting Room and caused potential complications with the newly arrived Visitor.

"Yes, Admiral." Gooshie said, and he bent over his console as Al hurried out after Tina.

The Waiting Room, Project Quantum Leap

Shawn sat up, shaking his head to try and clear out the fog. Where was he?

A room, with plain white walls, floor, ceiling, and he was on a metal table. Could this be a hospital? If it was, why was he here? He moved, felt himself, but didn't feel any pain or see any signs that he'd been hurt.

Wait, he wasn't alone. There was a woman sitting in a chair beside him, but she was not his mother. This woman was black and looked, he guessed thirtyish.

"Who're you? And is this a hospital?" he asked. Maybe she was a doctor or a nurse; but no, she wasn't wearing white or even blue scrubs.

"No, this isn't a hospital. I'm a doctor, but I'm not an MD." she said. "You're all right, okay? No one's going to hurt you, that's not why you're here." she added reassuringly.

"Then why am I here, wherever here is?"

"I'm hoping that between us both, we can figure that out," she replied. "What we need from you is some information. There's a friend of ours who's..." Verbena paused, thinking out how she could best explain things to Shawn without giving away too much, "in trouble and you can help him, and us, at the same time."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Shawn demanded.

"What's the last thing you can remember?"

Shawn paused, trying to think. The fuzziness he'd woken up to was still there. "I,,I'm not sure," he said after a moment. "I think...I'd left school and..." he tried to concentrate, to fill in the gap...but the information wouldn't come. "I don't remember anything after that!" he cried.

"It's all right," the woman said reassuringly. "Don't try to force it, it'll come back to you eventually. Just tell me anything you can easily remember. Anything you're comfortable with telling me about yourself, that is."

"I don't understand this. Who's this friend of yours, and how can I help him??"

Verbena paused, thinking of how best she could come up with an answer to that question. She couldn't give him too much information, but she also knew he'd be more cooperative if she could tell him something. "I'll tell you as much as I'm allowed to, all right?" she said after a moment. "What I can tell you, to begin with, is that the sooner you can tell us something about you, the sooner he'll be able to do what he needs to do there, and the sooner you'll be able to go back."

"Um, okay..." Shawn murmured, still very confused by this entire situation.

Before he could think of what he could ask next, though, there was an interruption. The door slid open and another woman entered. This one was thirtyish also, but white, with reddish,blonde hair and green eyes. "Shawn??" she cried out, staring at him with the weirdest look on her face. "Darling!"

Shawn just stared back at her. He'd never seen this woman before in his life, he was sure of that, even with the scramble his memories seemed to be in right now. Yet, here she was acting like she knew him.

"Tina, no!" the dark skinned woman said, standing up and moving to get between Shawn and the new arrival. "You shouldn't be in here, you know that."

The redhead, whose name Shawn now knew was Tina, stared at Shawn for a moment longer, then sighed, her cheeks turning as red as her hair. She was quite clearly embarrassed, Shawn could guess that much. "I know, but when Ziggy said...I just had to see..." she broke off, looking down at the floor, unable to meet Verbena's eyes.

"It's all right, Tina, but you ought to go now, before anythiing else happens. You know I'll have to mention this to Al, and you also know that Al is going to have a fit about this."

Shawn watched this exchange and understood none of it. But now that he'd gotten a good look at "Tina", he found himself smiling in spite of everything he still didn't know about what was going on here.

Tina nodded and left. The other woman smiled and turned back to Shawn as the door closed behind Tina.

After a moment, Shawn found himself smiling back at her. "She's cute for an old lady," he said.

Verbena chuckled. Oh, she'd have to be sure to tell Tina about that later, she thought. It'd definitely be something that would make her laugh. For now, though, she had to concentrate on Shawn, and getting as much information from him as she could.

"But how did she know my name?" Shawn asked.

Verbena had to quickly scramble to come up with a plausible answer. "Maybe you, um, reminded her of someone she knows." That wasn't exactly a lie, but it was as close as she could risk coming to what was really going on, here without revealing too much.

"If you say so," Shawn murmured, nodding. He had to admit that that at least made some sense. He supposed it was possible.

In the corridor outside the Waiting Room...

Al reached the Waiting Room just in time to see Tina coming out. He wasted no time with pleasantries, but hurried over to her. "What were you thinking, Tina?" he demanded. "You know the rules better than this."

Tina nodded, "I know. I just heard Ziggy say Shawn and I just..." she shook her head.

"That's not Shawn in there, Tina. He's not the one you, we, know, anyway." Al said firmly. "That's a thirteen year old boy who doesn't know you, or any of us. We're all thirteen years in his future. It's only 1988 for him, and he didn't meet any of us until 2001, remember?"

"I, I know that..." she said contritely, wiping a tear away. "I'm sorry, Al, this isn't going to happen again. I promise."

Al put a hand on her arm. "It's all right, Tina." He found himself chuckling in spite of the seriousness of the entire situation. "I don't really know if I could've kept my cool either, if Ziggy had told us that that was Mary in there."

Tina managed a weak smile too. "I knew you'd understand." she said.

Al looked at her for a moment, a concerned expression on his face. "Do you think you'll be up to going back to work right now, or do you want to take a break? Gooshie can handle things for a little while, if you need a few minutes."

"I...I'm going to be okay." Tina smiled again, "really."

"If you're sure." Al said, "There's one more thing, Tina. And that is, you can't tell Shawn about this either. Your Shawn, I mean."

Tina shook her head. "I know that. He won't ask, though, he knows there's things about my work I can't discuss with anyone who isn't Project staff."

"I'm sure he does know that, Tina. After all, he's been around you and this place for how many years now? But I had to say it anyway." Al replied. "I'm going in to see Sam now, and hopefully we'll sort this out, and get teenaged Shawn back to his life as soon as we can."

"OK," Tina said. "And Al...thanks." With that, she hurried off to return to the Control Room.

Al waited a moment, until she was out of sight, then stepped into the Imaging Chamber.

"Gooshie...center me on Sam."