000 Disclaimer, I own nothing sadly enough 000 This was a response to a challenge set by freefalling85 on livejournal, the paragraph in bold is the paragraph she wrote challenging us to continue it. 000
The envelope landed on her desk with a thump. Turning away from her pile of paperwork, she acknowledged the person who had delivered the package and then slid her thumb along the seal. Before she opened it, she checked the front of the envelope.
"From DCI Sam Tyler"
She sighed. She wasn't sure he'd actually go through with sending her this, and now it was on her desk, she wasn't entirely sure whether she wanted to know what he had to say for himself.
When she'd first approached him he'd been reluctant and fobbed her off with empty promises of doing it later – oh he'd been infinitely polite but she could see his reluctance to say anything about his experience, something in his haunted gaze suggested it had been intensely personal.
She set the package down and leant back in her chair staring out the window.
For the first time that week it wasn't raining and the sky was bright behind the scattered clouds. A feeling of unease settled in the pit of her stomach as she watched the world go by outside.
Turning her attention back to the package she finally tipped it upside down to have a cassette tape fall with a clatter onto her desk. She threw the empty envelope aside and examined the tape; someone – DCI Tyler she assumed – had carefully labeled it 'Life in 1973'.
Frowning she rose to her feet turning to the CD and Cassette player balanced on the filing cabinet behind her and slotted the tape into the player. She pressed play and waited.
DCI Tyler's voice drifted across her office as he relayed his experiences and she settled into her chair, spellbound. The level of detail in his memories, she could almost see it all happening as he spoke, and she could hear the frustration and regret in his voice.
He trailed off towards the end; there was a gap of at least five seconds before he spoke again, a couple of simple statements to end his story.
He hadn't told her everything, that much she knew, he trailed off halfway through describing a man named Frank Morgan leaving so much open-ended, no word of how he'd gotten back, no explanation for what happened after he'd helped Gene Hunt clear his name of murder.
He wanted to go back, she realized with sudden clarity. Something else had happened, something he couldn't say on the tape. But he wanted to go back.
"I wonder what happened after," she whispered softly, moving to rewind the tape.
Suddenly making a decision she reached for her coat and left her office. She had to talk to him, in person, there was something else going on and she had to know what it was. It was a story that wasn't quite finished, with so many tantalizing threads left unanswered, she needed a resolution if only for peace of mind.
"Hello, I'm looking for DCI Sam Tyler; do you know where I can find him?"
"Oh… I'm sorry but he, err, he's dead."
"Dead? How?!"
"They say it was suicide."
She returned later to her office feeling oddly disappointed and hollow all at once.
Sam Tyler was dead, by all accounts he'd jumped from the roof, from what they said he'd died with a smile on his face.
So many questions left unanswered, a story that felt only half told ending in a suicide. So much that they'd never know.
"What happened to you Sam Tyler," she sighed. "What didn't you tell me?" She paused, crossed the room to the tape player and pressed play.
His voice wafted across the room.
"Did you go home, Sam?" she asked softly.
000 Please review :) 000