Occasionally, someone will send me an idea for a story. Usually, I try not to dismiss such suggestions out of hand even though I find it much easier to write up my own ideas. But, sometimes...it's all too apparent the idea isn't workable, and instead of thinking of how I could possibly turn that idea into a story, I'm left trying to come up with a polite way of saying, "Are you absolutely crazy? That's the most insane idea for a story I've ever read!" This is definitely one of those ideas…the kind you read and shake your head and know you've crossed paths with someone who has been over-indulging in Doctor Who…and yet, for all its madness and despite its incredibly bad timing arriving only days before I was heading out on a cross-country adventure to visit my grandbaby, the crazy thing went ahead and turned into a story. And here it is…I've tried to keep it from traveling too far off course.

This one is set before Lewis was quite ready to turn over a new chapter…

Disclaimer: Purely for fan purposes; no copyright infringement intended.

Lost in the Mists of Time

Heading the Wrong Way on the One Way Street of Time

"Aside from velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe." Dave Barry

It shouldn't have happened. And, having never been one for taking flights of fancy, he was quite convinced it hadn't. His ale that night must have been off, or it was that Doctor Who he'd half-dozed through waiting for Lyn to arrive, or he'd eaten a slice or two more than he should have of the pizza she'd ordered as they'd sat up late talking of the old days…or it could have been the too–late night itself. Or just the memories their late night nattering had stirred up. Those of Val and Morse and days long gone. Days he would have happily called back and reveled in given a choice.

That was what, in the end, he convinced himself it had all been about…because he couldn't accept the alternative. That it really had happened even though it shouldn't have; couldn't have…

One moment he'd been tossing in his bed, his legs tangled in the blankets he'd half-thrown off in his restlessness. He'd been trapped in one of those endless nights where he felt like he'd been trying to fall asleep the entire night but every time he squinted at his clock he'd find instead of mere minutes it was exactly one hour since he'd last bothered. He'd decided the last time that he'd lain there long enough and he might as well get up and putter about, only, of course, he'd still been trapped there in the muddleness of waking and sleep, and only when his tossing sent his pillow falling to the floor and he had that heart-stopping sensation of falling along with it had he jerked awake…only, he hadn't really.

Couldn't have, because everything was wrong…or rather everything was right in a very wrong sort of way. Because when he sat up and looked around the moonlit room—only the night, and the day before it, had been shrouded in a deep, biting fog and besides, he had dark, heavy curtains that blocked out whatever light there was—only now he didn't, now he had the light, lacy things that had hung in their bedroom back when…and stirring behind him in the bed, her dark hair splayed out on her pillow and her arm lazily reaching out to touch his back was his wife.

"Robbie," she murmured…and he closed his eyes and let the sound of her voice fill him. She yawned and asked, "You getting it?" and only then did he hear the ringing of a phone, not his mobile which his sergeant had lately set to go off to the Ride of the Valkyries though Morse would surely have turned over in his grave if he'd known, but the phone that he could make out on the nightstand…Lyn had taken that particular stand when he'd cleared out the house after Val…

"Robbie! You'll wake the kids!" she cried coming fully awake and scrambling up and across the bed to grab the phone. He sat there feeling the bed shift as she moved and realizing it was not only the absence of her reassuring breathing beside him that made sleep so hard to come by now that she was gone, but that too. Those shifts as she'd turned or shifted in her sleep—without them he was like a sailor unable to sleep without the pitching and rolling of the sea.

"Lewis residence," she said into the old-fashioned phone receiver as a sound made him look up and see she'd been right; the phone had woken the kids—Lyn anyway. But not the Lyn he'd kissed lightly on the cheek and sent off to bed with a 'good night, pet'. The Lyn he'd long ago tucked up into bed with the Jumblies, a kiss on the forehead, and a 'good night, pet—and not a peep till morning!" She stood there a moment, shivering in her thin nightgown in the cool, night air and he couldn't help himself. He cocked his head and she scurried over and climbed into the bed beside him. He breathed in her little girl smell as Val shifted over to let her wiggle under the blankets. He wanted nothing more than to lie down beside her, feel her cold little feet against him, and grin happily over her head at his wife…

But, his wife was dead, and his daughter grown, and at any rate, Val was holding the phone out to him, and he knew Hathaway was calling him out to a murder scene. He was up starting across to grab his clothes even as he took the phone from his dead wife's hand. Only…it wasn't Hathaway, but the duty sarge from the old Kidlington station, and he was to pick Morse up on the way—the chief inspector must have been hitting the sauce a bit hard that evening…only the drink had sent Morse into his grave long ago.

Lewis shook his head and sat back down on the bed.

Val groaned and said, "Robbie Lewis, if you come back to bed, and they have to call you out a second time…get on with you!"

"It's just a dream, Pet," he told her, turning so he could see her better. Because a dream or not, tussled with sleep or not, she was beautiful.

"Morse will have your hide if you're late turning up," she warned, and he sniffed and thought 'why not?' What would it hurt to ride this dream out to see his old chief inspector? He'd dreamed frequently of Val, good dreams that never, ever managed to stay that way throughout, but Morse…had he ever dreamt of Morse? A time or two when he'd first taken Hathaway on and his subconscious must have struggled to accept the shift in loyalties, but in them Morse had been only vague images melding into Hathaway and not really Morse himself. This was a different sort of dream altogether, and maybe…

Only, as much as he'd like to see Morse again, he'd much rather curl up beside his wife and daughter and—the phone rang out again, and this time he snatched it up.

"Lewis! Where are you? I could have walked to the scene by now!" Morse's voice came loud and disgruntled over the phone, and Lewis almost laughed to hear it.

But Val pulled her pillow over her head, and Lyn said, "Daddy! I'm trying to sleep!", and Lewis stifled his laugh, assured his dead boss he was on the way, pulled on his clothes—ones he'd folded and laid over the chair in the corner at the ready for just such a call all those years ago, ones that shouldn't have fit him any longer but did all the same. He made a hurried trip down the hall to relieve himself and make sure Morse would have nothing to complain about in the way of his hair…and the face peering back at him from the mirror wasn't the face he'd climbed into bed with, but the one he'd worn a good number of years before, one that matched the young dad he'd been when Lyn had still been small enough to squeeze into their bed in the night.

He laughed looking at that face in the mirror. As far as dreams went, this one was a corker.

Even so, he felt the old, familiar urgency hurrying him along. Morse was a demanding boss, and Lewis had already taken far too long in getting out the door. Still, Morse was dead and so was Val and if he had to go out on a call, he wasn't leaving without seeing her one more time. He crept into the room and knelt quietly by her side of the bed. He lightly stroked the side of her face, and she blinked her eyes open and frowned up at him.

"Robbie, is something wrong?" she asked.

He smiled at her and said, "Nope. Everything's just right." He kissed her then, a light, quick kiss because Morse was waiting for him, and because…she was dead and he wasn't going to go there. She reached up her hand to gently push him away.

"Get on, you…or you won't have a job to go to," she warned.

"Right, then," he said, "I'm off." But even then he knelt there a moment longer just taking her in.

"Robbie?"

"I love you. You know that? I…"

"Of course, I do…now go!" It was just a dream, but leaving her was harder than it had ever been back in the days he'd lived for a call out to a murder scene. Behind him, he heard her turn in the bed, and then she said what he'd been waiting for, longing for, though he hadn't known that was what he was doing.

"I love you, Robbie Lewis." It was enough. Tears filled his eyes and shut off his throat, but hearing those words from that voice was more than worth it.

He hesitated outside his son's door, wanting to open it and see the little boy Ken had been, to take in his smell and kiss his soft hair. And it was just a dream; time would be its usual wonky dreamself and those few moments could stretch to hours or pass in a blink of an eye and make no difference at all to the already fuming Morse…but, he hurried out into the thick, night mist to collect his dead boss all the same.