Title: The Price of Rest
Author: MissAnnThropic
Summary: It should have been a leap been like any other. Leap in, save someone in trouble, leap out. But on that last leap, the 'leap out' part hit a snag.
Disclaimer: Let's see... hmm... Sam, Al, Gushie, Ziggy... nope, none of the characters in here are mine.
Author's Note: Every once in a while, I write a fic that I don't walk away from feeling disappointed. This was one of those rare triumphs in my eyes.
"Al... Al, wake up..."
Admiral Calavicci grumbled and cracked open his eyes reluctantly. His internal clock told him it was god-awful o'clock or thereabouts. There better be a good reason for waking him. Then he remembered; he'd been woken by a woman's voice. Good reason, he decided at once, and he sought more information about his lovely midnight visitor. He peered up at the shadowed figure of a woman bending over him in bed, watching him with darkened-bedroom, pitch-black eyes and whispering his name. Her hand on his bare shoulder jostled again.
"Al..."
He knew then who it was.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm awake... shhh... don't wake Tina."
Sprawled in nude delight across his chest was Tina, a spirited little thing in bed and out. Smarter than she looked, but it didn't stop her from having fun. Or Al. Al's arm was curled around her, keeping her from wandering off and leaving his bed cold. There were few things Al hated more than he hated a cold bed.
Normally, Al would be happy as a clam to have one naked woman in his arms and another woman coming to him in the night... but Al looked up at Doctor Alessi and his stomach became a knot.
"What's wrong?" he asked in a low voice.
Alessi was very still and in the dark Al couldn't read what her expression might betray. Instead, it was the forlorn tone in her voice when she answered that settled like lead in his blood.
"He's awake."
And lost.
"Damn..." On instinct, he was moving before he could even think about it. It struck Al how much it sounded like he was a new father answering the wail of his newborn son. If only it were anything so joyous. But Al had long ago come to the realization that the broken man who needed him now was the closest thing to a son he might ever have.
And right now, Sam needed Al.
Al gently disentangled himself from Tina. She whimpered like a disturbed puppy. When her human pillow was gone she grabbed Al's pillow and hugged that instead, snuggling down with a content sigh. Al touched her hair softly once. It was kind of depressing to know his replacement was cotton and feather down.
Alessi disappeared while Al was groping in the dark for his clothes. She never stayed anymore; she knew she couldn't help. It was hard for her to watch someone else be the comfort and support to her own husband that she should be. Al didn't blame her. He knew it hurt her. He didn't ask her to suffer it, nor did he hold it against her when she left him to tend to Sam on his own.
Al found some black slacks and a wildly-patterned shirt in a pile on the floor. A pair of loafers made the ensemble utterly garish, but it would do. The admiral left his quarters inside the subterranean compound of Project Quantum Leap and went looking for his best friend.
The first place he always checked was the Control Room. Sam liked to sit on the floor, like a child in front of a television, and talk to Ziggy. Sam was always seeking answers, and Ziggy always had answers. Sometimes bad ones, but she never looked sadly at Sam, or pitied him, or coddled him with empty reassurances that everything would be okay. Ziggy told Sam the truth, as best as her supercomputer processor understood it.
And she was someone Sam remembered, better than his own wife.
Al met no one in the hallways on his trek, and when he entered the Control Room he was disheartened and relieved not to find Sam sitting on the floor, legs crossed and brow knit. Sam only had the one expression lately. Lost. Searching. Needing something he couldn't name.
"Good morning, Admiral Calavicci," Ziggy's haughty voice called out in greeting.
"Is it morning?"
"Exactly three nineteen a.m. Having trouble sleeping, Admiral?"
Al felt like the last good night's sleep he'd gotten was before Project Quantum Leap got off the ground. On the board room table, the chance to be the project observer (with a mental link to Doctor Samuel Beckett, certified genius and potential time-traveler extraordinaire) had seemed like an amazing opportunity. He would get to relive history in a way that would be second only to Sam's experiences.
Instead, it had given Al an almost unbearable sense of responsibility that he came to both love and hate. He was the only link Sam had to his own time, to answers, while trapped in the past. Al felt guilty for every minute he was asleep, for every date he went on with Tina outside the complex, for every meal he didn't take in the crappy complex cafeteria one floor up from the Control Room, for every second of every day that he wasn't in the Imaging Chamber with Sam. He wanted to be there constantly for his friend. Often, Al felt like he was watching over Sam like a nervous mother, and he was sick with helplessness whenever something happened to Sam and Al could do nothing but stand by and call to him. That happened all too often. It was pure hell sometimes.
"Admiral?" Ziggy asked at his protracted silence.
"I was sleeping just fine; Donna came and got me. Have you seen Doctor Beckett?"
"I have seen Doctor Beckett on two thousand, six hundred and fifty-three occasions."
Al was too heartsick and tired for playing games with an egotistical, smart-mouth computer. "I meant tonight, Ziggy. Have you seen Doctor Beckett tonight?"
"No need to get testy, Admiral. No, I have not seen Doctor Beckett tonight."
Al closed his eyes.
"If I may say so, Admiral Calavicci... Doctor Beckett has been most dispassionate lately. He won't play extrapolations and scenarios with me anymore." Only the parallel hybrid computer could come across as whiny. When Sam programmed her, Al thought a lot of Sam's childlike qualities went into her, too. It wasn't a necessarily a good thing. While they were endearing in Sam, they were irritating in the supercomputer. While he'd been giving her human qualities, Sam might have thought to give her a little compassion and sympathy, too.
"He's just having a rough time right now."
"I believe I warned you of the odds of irreparable cerebral damage if the Beta Retrieval Program was activated." Ziggy was on her high-horse and defensive. Sam used to call it Ziggy's know-it-all tone. Or hell, maybe she felt just a tiny bit guilty; Sam was, after all, in some strange way Ziggy's father.
"We know you did, Ziggy. We knew the risks. There weren't a lot of options. It was Doctor Alessi's call." And she had tortured herself over the end result since the moment they got Sam back.
Sam's return should have been a happy event. A celebration.
Fate, it seemed, didn't take kindly to having its favorite toy snatched away.
Sam had been on a leap that should have been like any other. Leap in, save someone in trouble, leap out. But on that last leap, the 'leap out' part hit a snag.
Sam leaped into a forest ranger in Yosemite National Park, there to rescue a five-year-old girl from her deranged uncle. It had been a leap that made Al nearly physically ill. The uncle was nuts, completely loony tunes, and infatuated with his brother's wife. When she refused to have an affair with him, the wacko thought the daughter would be the next best thing. Like mother, like daughter, or close enough, was the only thing Al could figure must have been running through the pervert's mind.
Melody was her name. A girl with a name as beautiful as she was, with golden hair, bright blue eyes, and a dimpled smile. She seemed like the kind of kid who'd like to laugh a lot. But Al only watched her cry and cringe and shake like a leaf while her uncle kidnapped her from her home and took off into the woods with her.
In the original history, she was found raped and murdered.
Sam wasn't about to let history repeat itself.
Al still had nightmares about the final scene of that horrible leap. Sam came charging to the rescue on the razor edge of being too late. Uncle Sicko had little Melody down to her flower-print panties, the girl weeping uncontrollably, battered and bruised from times before when she'd tried to fight. She wasn't fighting anymore, just huddled into a ball helpless and defeated, reduced to just waiting and letting it happen.
Al didn't see Sam lose his cool often, but Sam took in the scene, realized what was about to happen to little Melody, and he lost it.
He should have used his gun. Sam was armed. He should have used his gun. But his rage at the plight of innocent Melody had driven him past the point of rationale thinking. Sam leapt on the guy, bodily dragged him from the child, and started hitting him.
Al watched it all happen, yelling at Sam. But now, in retrospect, Al couldn't really say if he'd been yelling at Sam to stop. He may have been yelling at Sam to kill the son of a bitch.
Sam beat that twisted man to within an inch of his life. Blood was everywhere. Al remembered a chill press tight around his chest at the look in Sam's eyes. He'd seen that look before, in other men. Al hadn't seen that look since Vietnam. It was a bloodthirsty desire to maim and murder that by all rights should never glimmer in the eyes of someone like Sam Beckett.
Afraid for his life, Uncle Sick Bastard struggled against Sam. Somehow, he managed to get the gun holstered at Sam's hip.
Before Al knew what was coming, just as Ziggy was screaming at him through the handlink about a catastrophic change in time, a gunshot sounded.
Al had watched more than his fair share of comrades take a bullet in his days, but at that moment somehow it was like the slug burrowed into him instead. Sam froze, and then he slumped to the ground.
Melody was curled in a ball next to a tree, rocking back and forth and clutching her own legs to her chest so tight her little fingers had turned white. Uncle Asshole crawled away a few feet. Painstakingly, he fought to his knees and began to stumble and lurch away. Blood dripped after him from the hell Sam had rained upon him.
But Al saw only the blood pooling beneath Sam's body.
Al couldn't do anything. Sam was hit in the chest. Faster than Al could think, blood was spilling out of Sam.
It was Doctor Alessi at Project Quantum Leap, watching the report of her husband dying, who made the dreaded call. It was a last resort they had avoided for years, but there was no one coming to rescue Sam this time. The only one close enough to even try to help was traumatized, scared little five-year-old Melody.
The Beta Retrieval Program was dangerous. They all knew that. It used atomic energy differently... Al didn't really understand the finer workings, only that it had more chance of killing Sam than it did of bringing him home.
But at that point, any chance was better than Sam's chances of survival where he was.
They activated the Beta Retrieval Program and brought Sam Beckett home and left Ranger Jeff Anderson to die on the forest floor ten seconds later, bled to death from a point-blank gunshot wound to the chest.
On that end of things, at least, there was some justice. Ranger Anderson died when he shouldn't have, but Melody lived. And a week after Melody was returned to her family after being found by search and rescue dogs, the mauled remains of Uncle Demented were found. It seemed all that blood on him had drawn the attention of a hungry bear.
Al hoped it hurt like hell.
But Sam...
He leapt back into his own time, in the place of the ranger in the Waiting Room, and collapsed. His heart had stopped. Ziggy thought that Sam's body remembered being on the verge of death, and that the psychosomatic power of that sensation sent him into cardiac arrest. He believed his heart into stopping. Al didn't want to think that was true; he didn't want to think it would be possible to think oneself to death.
But if anyone could do it, Sam Beckett could.
The doctor on staff got Sam's heart going again, got the kid breathing again. By then, the Waiting Room was crowded. Al, Donna, Tina, Beaks, Gushie... they were all watching with bated breath. When Sam inhaled that first time, Donna ran to him. She fell to her knees beside her husband, gathered his head and shoulders into her lap, and clung to him. She cried. Donna had always been so strong with Sam off putting right the wrongs of time, but that day she wept and rocked not unlike Melody had in the forest. She pleaded for Sam to open his eyes.
When he did, he blinked, gazed up at her... and frowned.
Al's heart broke for Donna just remembering that moment. Sam's look had not been a 'how did I get here?' or 'what happened?'... it was 'who are you?'
Donna's fingers caressing Sam's cheek had not brought back his memory of his own wife. When Donna croaked, "Sam..." the quantum physicist took his eyes away from her and searched the room for someone else.
"Al?" Sam called hoarsely.
Donna was barely holding herself together. She looked up at Al, her expression utterly lost.
Al knelt down next to his best friend where he lay sprawled on the floor. "I'm here, Sam."
Sam reached out to Al. He closed his hand around solid flesh and bone. Sam's grip turned iron-strong, and the shaken time-traveler pulled himself out of Donna's embrace and locked his arms around Al.
"Admiral Calavicci... you are unusually quiet tonight," Ziggy said, drawing Al back from his memory of that fateful day.
"Just thinking, Ziggy."
"I could greatly facilitate that task if you would like."
Al snorted wearily. "You sound lonely."
"I was not programmed to function without human interaction. I am an interactive computer. No one comes to see me anymore. Except Doctor Beckett, and he has been most unlike himself since his return."
Project Quantum Leap was in a stall. Analysts and statisticians and number-crunchers were working overtime to try and decide what Sam's return, and condition, meant for the future of the program. Al could care less. Quantum Leap had been his dream once, when Sam shared it with him, but now the only thing Al cared about was his shattered partner.
"Ziggy... why hasn't Sam's memory improved since he got back?"
"His memory has improved."
"His memory of other people's lives that he's leapt into!" Al countered sharply.
"That is an improvement over the 'swiss cheese' phenomenon when he first returned to us."
"But the holes should be filling in with the life of Sam Beckett, not all the other people he's been."
"That is a result of the Beta Retrieval Program that was used to bring him home. I told you-"
"I'm not blaming you, Ziggy." Al paused and took a deep breath.
"It could be worse," Ziggy pointed out cheerfully. "At least he remembers me. And you."
"Oh, great. An arrogant artificial intelligence and a sleep-deprived Navy admiral... yeah, he's got a lot to be thankful for. It's not fair. Damnit, it's just not fair. Donna... he should remember her. After everything Sam did, all the lives he's saved and people he's helped... Sam deserves better."
"I have encountered many references in my data archives that illustrate quite thoroughly that life is not always fair."
Al felt a great weight settle over his shoulders. He sagged. "I better go find Sam."
"Come back later and talk to me, Admiral... I am tired of being alone with my data banks. Millions of bits of human history are useless without a human to share them with."
Al smiled feebly. 'I'm not your equal, Ziggy,' Al thought sadly, 'you were made to be an equal to a man far greater than I.'
"I'll stop by tomorrow, Ziggy, I promise."
Al tried Sam's old office next. Doctor Alessi had been using it since Sam vanished the first time he stepped into the accelerator, so it still had that lived-in feel to it, but not quite lived in by Sam. Sam's office was as packed as his brain, and Donna was much neater and cleaner. Anyone who knew Sam like Al did would know that the office had long since stopped being Sam's.
But Al tried there anyway.
The office was empty, though a half-eaten bagel and drained cup of coffee on the table was proof Donna had been burning the midnight oil. She used to work late to keep her mind off Sam trapped in time... now she worked to keep her mind off Sam only a few doors away.
Al tried the cafeteria, thinking Sam might have gotten hungry. Still no joy.
Al headed toward the rec room, a small enough television room that Sam had insisted also be packed with books. Literature. Sam's idea of a break from brain-numbing physics and theory application research was more reading, just of a different brand. The kid really needed to learn how to relax properly.
Halfway there, Al saw a slant of light coming from underneath the bottom of the door to the men's room.
Al pushed open the door and found Sam standing in front of the sink staring at himself in the mirror.
"Sam?"
Sam looked at Al's reflection in the mirror then back at himself.
"Feeling all right, kid?"
"Yeah."
Al came up alongside Sam. He considered Sam, his attention to his own image, then asked, "Whatcha doing?"
Sam frowned. "Trying to... who am I, Al?"
Al flinched. "You're Sam Beckett."
Sam looked dubious. "Sam." He seemed to be trying out the name on his tongue. He leaned slightly closer to his reflection and peered intently at it.
Al had watched Sam puzzle at his reflection for years... it had been a long time since the face looking back at him was actually his own. Sam wasn't sure anymore what he looked like. Didn't know himself when he caught sight of himself in a mirror. Damn the retrieval program, and damn fate or time or whatever for sending Sam back scrambled.
Al tried to make light. "I know you're a good-looking guy, Sam, but you keep staring at yourself and people will start to think you're vain."
Sam frowned but eventually stepped back away from the sink and looked at Al. He was waiting. He did that a lot; looked to Al for something. Guidance. The details on this latest leap. Help. Al didn't know anymore.
It was almost easier when Sam was leaping. At least there was always an objective, a goal, something to fix.
"You're up pretty late," Al noted with a tentative smile.
Sam nodded. "Yeah... the riot woke me."
Al tried not to look too baffled. "Did you scream?" Sam woke up screaming sometimes. That was usually when Donna came and got Al, even out of bed naked with his lady friend. She couldn't stand to hear Sam's nightmares and be helpless to comfort him. She needed Al with Sam then nearly as much as Sam needed Al.
When had Al signed on to be needed so badly by so many people?
Sam looked down shame-faced. "I... I might have."
Al wanted to rage. Not at Sam... for Sam.
"You know," Al said in a far more chipper tone than he felt, "I could use some fresh air. Let's go topside, whatd'ya say?"
Sam nodded and followed Al mutely.
It was chilly outside. That was the curse of a desert outpost, the surprisingly cold nights. But the skies were clear and the stars amazingly brilliant against an ink-black sky. That was definitely the perk.
Sam and Al walked side by side, silent as two sentries on the watch. They'd made this trip, at all hours of the day and night, enough times that they both knew where they were going. They didn't need to discuss it.
It was a boulder that was just the right size to serve as a place to sit. Al used to call Sam The Thinker when he found the brilliant young scientist perched on the rock and lost in his thoughts. Sam would smile every time, because he was cultured enough to appreciate the reference. If the quip Al tossed out had been anything of a sexual nature, it would have gone over Sam's head or been the recipient of a glower.
The moon that night was enough to see the ground and their favorite stone by as they neared The Thinker Rock.
When they reached the spot, Al sat down first.
Sam sat down beside his old friend, closer than necessary... close enough that their thighs touched. Sam had never been the kind of person who craved physical contact. He always lived more in his head than his body, or so it seemed to Al. Sometimes, Al thought Sam would be content to be Ziggy, pure thought and computing power and intellectual energy without a frail body to hold him back.
Since his leap home, Sam had taken to touching Al. A lot. Al thought it was Sam's way of reminding himself that his best friend wasn't a hologram. It was Sam's way of reassuring himself that he wasn't alone anymore.
"They want to put me in a hospital," Sam said as way of breaking their mutual silence.
Al looked sharply at Sam. "Who told you that?"
"Beaks."
"Beaks?" She wanted to pawn Sam off on a bunch of lab coats? Sam was a little mixed up and she wanted to dump him? It was hard to believe that she, of all people, would abandon Sam to an institution. Which is what it would be. Sam's trouble wasn't an ailment of the body. It was a malady of the mind. 'Hospitals' for those kinds of afflictions were not kind, Al knew that far, far too well. It made his blood boil to think of Sam ending up like his sister. Sam couldn't end up like Trudy. Not Sam. "Beaks wants to... of all the rotten, under-handed, traitorous-"
"She said they want to... but they can't." Sam shrugged. "Said my knowledge of the Project means I can't be trusted with anyone without clearance. They're afraid of what I'll tell them."
"Good," Al said vehemently. "Let them be afraid; at least they won't put you in an institution."
Sam gave Al a vulnerable and questioning look.
Al clasped Sam protectively by the nape of the neck with one hand. "I'll shoot anyone who tries to put you in a mental hospital."
Sam smiled thinly. "No, you won't."
Al smiled in return and took back his hand, but thought bitterly 'if you only knew, Sam.' Better he not, though. "Well, even if I don't shoot anybody, you can bet your ass I won't let them do it. Not going to happen... not unless it's over my dead body."
"It might be easier for everyone. For... Donna."
Al winced and thanked the darkness that it could be missed.
"I... I know I'm supposed to be in love with her. I wish I could be. I know she's really hurt that I don't remember her."
"You don't remember her at all?"
"I remember driving to D.C. with her."
Al frowned. "That wasn't you, Sam."
Sam seemed puzzled. "But... I remember that." He thought a moment. "Another leap?"
"Yeah."
"Oh." Sam scuffed the toe of his shoe against the dirt, building up a miniature berm that, though small, cast a heavy shadow in the moonlight. "Don't blame her, Al. She means well. The doctor, I mean. She's trying to do what she thinks is best for me. Beaks doesn't think she can give me the treatment I need."
"Who says you need any? And just what kind of 'treatment' could the lab coats give? You're not exactly a textbook case."
"That's a kind way of saying hopeless."
"I didn't say hopeless, Sam. You know I don't think you're hopeless. I believe in you. Always have."
Sam looked at Al then. "Why?"
"Why?" Al parroted.
Sam nodded. "Why did you help me get funding for Project Quantum Leap in the first place? You're not a scientist... why did you fight so hard to help me get the project off the ground?"
"Under the ground," Al pointed out with a witty smile.
Sam almost rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean, Al."
Al shrugged. "Well, you're right about the science. I don't get it. It makes my head hurt to try. Brains like you handle the heavy-duty thinking."
"So what was it about Quantum Leap that captivated you?"
"Honestly... you."
Sam cocked his head.
"Sam... people like you don't come along but once in a lifetime." Al chuckled, "Once in many lifetimes, as it turns out. You're so... true. Before I met you..." Al dropped his eyes to the ground. "I hadn't believed in people like that since before I went to Vietnam. And I don't know if anyone has ever believed in me like you did."
"Do."
Al smiled, and for the first time that night it was genuine. "See?"
"So it was never about the project?"
"Not at first... but when I got to know you, you really gave me a gift, Sam. You lent me your dream. I'd forgotten how to dream for myself, so I borrowed yours. And boy, what a dream."
Sam smiled a little wistfully. "Yeah..."
"I fell in love with the idea of what you were doing, in my own way. I've had my fair share of times I wished I could go back in time and change history. I needed to believe you could do it."
Sam smirked. "Mission accomplished."
Al laughed. "Yeah... mission accomplished."
Sam went quiet a moment. "What's going to happen to me, Al?"
Al almost reached into his pocket for the handlink on reflex. But there was no handy time-defying supercomputer to help him answer this one. "I wish I knew, Sam. Maybe you should invent a way to see into the future this time so we can get the answer."
"No more traveling through time," Sam said gravely. "You know what I like most about being back?" To Al's encouraging head tick, Sam said. "The peace. I may not remember everything I should, but I'm not supposed to save the world anymore. I can relax. I don't have to worry anymore. I don't know what's going to happen to me, but at least no one is counting on me."
'That's not true,' Al thought, but he didn't try to heap burdens atop Sam's back again when he had only just believed himself shed of them. Let Atlas catch his breath.
"The way I see it, Sam, you have enough good karma stockpiled to get you a front row seat to that mud-wrestling match in the sky."
Sam gave him a dour look. "You think heaven's two scantily-clad women covered in mud grappling with each other?"
"If that isn't heaven, I don't know what is."
Sam shook his head but at the same time reached out and wrapped an arm around Al, his hand coming to rest on the admiral's far shoulder and squeezing. Al could get used to touchy Sam. After so many years reaching out for him and finding only air, it was a comfort to him, too.
"You'll be okay, Sam. You'll see. Whether you remember them or not, you have people who love you. And you'll always have me."
Sam smiled softly. "I'm glad I remember you."
"So am I."
Sam dropped his hands back to his lap and tilted his head back to look up at the stars.
Al stood and turned to his friend before Sam could fill his head with another dream. He wanted Sam to dream, but Al couldn't stand for Sam to chase another dream just yet. Al needed rest, too. And any adventure Sam found himself in, Al would be there. He was Sam's wingman and always would be. "Come on, let's get back inside; it's freezing out here."
Sam nodded absently, pushed himself up off The Thinker Rock, and followed Al's lead. The two men fell in step for the walk back through the desert, side by side.
The sky looked more indigo than black and the air wasn't nearly as cold as it had been when they'd first come topside. Donna would be worried; as soon as Al put Sam to bed, he'd have to find her and let her know Sam was okay.
Sam would be okay. Al believed that, believed it the way he believed in the sun rising and the tides turning. Men as remarkable as Sam Beckett weren't made to fade away into the background.
Maybe Beaks and Donna Alessi and Ziggy had given up on Sam, but Al wasn't ready to throw in the towel yet. Al owed a debt to Sam that he could never repay.
Whatever it took, he'd see to it that Sam was okay. Sam wasn't done doing great things.
As Doctor Beckett and Admiral Calavicci strolled, unrushed, back toward the project complex entrance, Sam began to sing softly.
"And the world will be better for this,
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable stars..."
Al listened to his friend singing and thought somberly 'you reached the stars, kid... now the question is how do you get back down?'
Al reached up and put a hand on Sam's shoulder.
END