Worlds Apart

A Magnum P.I. Fan-Fiction by Emachinescat

Summary: AU of 3x05 "The Day Danger Walked In." When Ethan tries to play the hero, he isn't the one who gets shot. Thomas is. And when Ethan has to cauterize the wound, Thomas finds himself lost between two worlds where the only common factor is the pain.


A/N: This little bugger was a MENACE to write. I have nearly 1500 words that I ended up scrapping (I did hang on to them, though, and may post the "deleted scenes" on Tumblr at some point). I wrote and rewrote and rewrote. First, I tried it from Rick's POV. Then Thomas's, switching to Juliet's. I finally realized what my muse needed all along - this is a Thomas POV fic, pure and simple. And despite the trouble it caused me, I'm really happy with the result.

Fair warning, if you haven't seen the episode this is an AU of, you may get a little lost near the end. I'm wrapping this up in the same way that the episode in question wraps up - with Booky saving the day by driving through the wall of the freezer. But since it's from Thomas's POV and he's, well, not the most reliable narrator at this point, it might be hard to know what's going on if you haven't seen the episode. Still, though, you're welcome to read whether you've seen it or not! :D

Spoilers for 1x01, 1x15, and 3x05 ahead. :)

Anyway, hope you enjoy! I'd love to know your thoughts!


Worlds Apart

Thomas Sullivan Magnum wasn't a stranger to gunshot wounds. He'd sustained his fair share of them during his time overseas and as a private investigator. That wasn't to say that he liked them – God, no – or even tolerated them, but he had experience. The last time he'd been shot, it was by the woman he had once planned to marry, and the psychological ramifications had ended up being far more distressing than the actual gunshot wound itself.

All that to say that Thomas wasn't thrilled when a hostage situation went sideways and he got shot in the leg, but he'd been down this road before. He knew he could survive as long as he got treatment soon, and – lucky for him – one of his fellow hostages was a doctor. And not just any doctor, but Dr. Ethan Shah, his partner's boyfriend, a good man and excellent physician – and, to be fair, the reason Thomas had a bullet in his leg in the first place.

It happened so quickly, it was over almost as soon as it had begun. One minute, the two killers who'd taken over La Mariana while a hurricane raged outside had their gun on Thomas. The next, Ethan lunged to his rescue, grabbing the gunman's hand and forcing it upwards, away from his friend – but too little too late. When the bullet pounded into his thigh, the pain had been enough to black out his vision and send him careening to the floor. Before he'd even had time to process what had just happened, their captors had forced the whole group of them – Thomas, upright only because of the support of Rick and T.C., Ethan, and Higgy – to the back of Rick's bar, into the freezer, and had locked the door behind them.

Pain was all Thomas knew as his friends half-carried, half-dragged him into the freezer and gently lowered him to the floor. Over the ringing in his ears, Thomas had heard one of the killers say something about lowering the temperature so they wouldn't freeze to death, but he honestly didn't even register the cold until he was lying on the freezer floor. The frigid metal immediately leached through his thin Hawaiian shirt and khakis, and he wondered wildly if he would freeze to the surface like a kid's tongue to a lamp post, and if the paramedics would have to peel him off the floor to get him on a stretcher. He imagined EMTs barging in with a giant squeegee and couldn't help but chuckle. The somewhat manic laugh changed to a cry of agony as someone jarred his leg.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, Thomas." Thomas frowned, trying to place the voice. Female, British accent. Sounded like Higgins, except Higgins would never sound this worried about him.

"Hey man," Rick's voice sounded from his right. Though his head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds and absolutely nothing at the same time, Thomas managed to loll it in the direction of his friend's voice. "You're gonna be okay." Even through his blurred vision, Thomas saw the deep lines of worry etched around Rick's eyes, the way his eyes glittered and lips pressed together in a thin, white line like he was trying not to cry.

"How… bad is it?" Thomas managed.

T.C.'s voice sounded from the left, and Thomas forced his head to turn toward it. "Don't you worry about that right now, brother. We got you, you're gonna be all right. That's what you need to focus on."

The corner of Thomas's mouth lifted in a tiny smirk. "That bad, huh?"

Rick spoke again, but Thomas was too tired to look the other way, so he just stared blearily at a point somewhere beyond T.C. and listened. "Okay, Ethan, what's the damage?" Even half-conscious and giddy with pain, Thomas detected a severity in Rick's voice that only surfaced when he was really pissed about something. He had the feeling that Rick was not going to let Ethan's involvement in this whole mess go easily, even if Ethan had just been trying to help. Thankfully, Rick had enough control to table any issues he had with Ethan until after the crisis had been averted.

Someone touched his leg, lightly, and lightning arced up his thigh. A strangled cry forced its way out of his throat, and he gritted his teeth around it. Black spots splashed across his vision, and the ringing in his ears reached a high-pitched crescendo. Vaguely, he felt a hand card through his hair, another squeeze his shoulder. Soft voices, reassurances, though he couldn't make out the words. He recognized the voices, though – his brothers.

The pain receded the tiniest bit, and the fog in his mind cleared just in time to hear Ethan outlining his emergency treatment plan.

"The bullet's still in there," the doctor explained, his voice strangely soothing. His words, however, were anything but. "Worse, it's near the femoral artery. We have to get it out. And then we have to cauterize the wound–"

"No." Thomas's voice, though weak from pain and blood-loss, rang clearly through the freezer.

A hand rested gently on the shin of his good leg. Perhaps it was meant to comfort, but to Thomas it was a demon's claw, preparing to drag him into hell. "I'm sorry, Thomas. I won't lie; it's going to hurt, but it'll keep you from bleeding out until we can get you to a hospital."

Sick dread mingled with the scent of blood and sweat and human waste, and the smooth, icy floor under his back turned to rock and dust. The cold air turned hot and oppressive, scorching his lungs; his throat ached from lack of water – or was it the screaming? A voice, one he'd thought had left him forever, shook the world around him, Brooklyn accent thick with worry but hard with resolve. "I've got an idea… but it's gonna hurt."

"Nuzo…" Thomas breathed, and then he descended into hell.


The next stretch of time could have been hours, or it could have been seconds. Thomas found himself floating, suspended between two worlds. One was hot and arid, dark and damp, the other freezing and sterile, with harsh white lights overhead. In one world, low murmured voices echoed against stone and metal clanked; in the other, the voices were louder, familiar – he knew those voices. Rick, T.C. Higgins. In one world, Nuzo was alive. In the other, he was dead.

The one thing that connected the two worlds was the pain. Funny, but it felt like in the hot world, the pain was in the wrong place. But hot and cold, dark and light, the agony in his leg burned like acid, crept along his skin and down every nerve like he'd been lit on fire from the inside out. At one point, someone pressed something to his lips. He drank, expecting warm, stagnant water and gagged and coughed as the alcohol burned on its way down. Distantly, he heard a guilty, "Sorry, buddy," and felt a calloused hand skating through his hair. Another voice, deep and warm and safe, echoed from miles away: "Hang in there, T.M." Yet another, uncharacteristically desperate: "It's okay, Thomas. It's all right. Just breathe. You'll be back to making my life difficult before you know it."

And then the air began to simmer and the earth gritted beneath his back, and a thick Brooklyn accent cursed, "Son-of-a-bitch must have hit a blood vessel."

A chill nipped the air. "Let's get this bullet out."

Heat. "I'm… I'm gonna bleed out," Thomas gasped. A phantom hand grasped his forearm, rough and caked in grime and becoming more real every moment.

"Hey, that's not gonna happen," the voice said. "You're not leaving me alone with those two idiots next door."

Then a pain, a ripping, screaming agony, searing through his leg, shooting through every nerve in his body, his stomach curdling, lips chattering. A terrible groan was dragged up from the deepest part of him.

Frost trickled down his spine and ice nipped at his chest. "Thomas? Thomas? C'mon, stay with me, bud!"

"Nuzo…"

But the heat continued to recede, and as it did, he heard a voice, a steady stream, not Nuzo's – Rick's. "Hey, man. You're here, okay, Thomas? Breathe for me, man. Deep breath in, deep breath out." Rick sounded so broken that Thomas knew he had to at least try to do what he said. His lungs, spasming in panic, nearly choked on the air as he gulped it in. Something warm dripped on his cheek. Rick kept talking, his tone soothing but choked and scared. "That's it, bud, you're doing great. Hey, remember the exercises we learned in Germany? Five senses? Tell me something you see, Thomas."

The ceiling flashed between LED lights and rough-hewn stone, the air shimmered between hot and cold. Straining his eyes against the sea of memories come alive, Thomas finally focused on Rick's face, streaked with tears. He shifted his gaze. On the other side, leaning over him, jaw set and eyes shining, was T.C. Beside him, Higgins. Her eyes looked red and puffy, but the rest of her face was bone white, her brown eyes almost black against the pallor of her skin.

All at once it came rushing back – the hurricane, the two killers who had taken everyone in La Mariana hostage, being held at gunpoint, Ethan trying to help, getting shot…

His leg boiled, bile rushed to his throat at the memory of what had happened next. What Ethan had planned to do. Then he remembered the terrible pain from moments before, and a sick relief spread through his veins. That had been unbearable, but it hadn't been anything compared to what he remembered from the POW camp. Maybe cauterizing with a cooking torch wasn't as painful as it was with gunpowder?

"Is… is it over?" Thomas gasped, eyes traveling hazily from one friend's face to the next. He watched as all three exchanged troubled looks and terror assaulted him anew. He glanced around again. "Where's… where's Ethan?"

Juliet looked sick. "Thomas, I … I'm sorry, but we just got the bullet out. Ethan still has to ca– to stop the bleeding."

Panic tore its claws deep into his flesh, piercing his heart, fogging his mind and stealing his breath. Hot tears collected at the corners of his eyes and his surroundings flickered, becoming bars and stone before he forced his way back into the present. "Whiskey?" he rasped, eliciting a couple of weak chuckles that were a lot closer to sobs.

"You got it, Tommy," said Rick's voice. Someone cupped the back of his head and pressed the bottle to his lips. This time he was ready for the burn and took several stinging swallows before pulling back. The alcohol didn't dim the pain much, but it took the edge off of his nerves, at least.

"Okay," Thomas said, heart thudding so frantically that he was sure everyone in the freezer could hear it. "Okay," he repeated, steeling himself the best he could. "I'm ready."

"Bite on this," someone instructed, and something wooden was pressed between his teeth. Inspecting it with his tongue, he deduced it was the handle of a wooden spoon. The cold thawed and heat burned the back of his eyelids as he closed his eyes and waited for the torment to begin. For a moment, the smooth handle became a rough piece of wood, and Nuzo's breath, warm and real, hit his cheek as he was held down. The chill returned, and instead of Nuzo, Rick and T.C. leaned over him, and Juliet knelt above his head. Her slender fingers skirted across his sweaty forehead, into his hair, and back again, grounding him.

At once, the world lit itself on fire – hot, cold, dark, light, past present, none of it existed in the new world forged in flames. He felt hands on him, holding him down, but they were nothing as he thrashed, desperate to escape the torture. Who did the hands belong to? His friends? Weren't they supposed to protect him? Why were they hurting him?

The pain crested, and Thomas's back arched completely off the floor – hot and cold at the same time, hands everywhere, just Nuzo, all alone, screaming darkness and fire so hot it could out-burn the sun. His leg was exploding, voices yelled from a very long way, and someone was screaming. It was perhaps the worst scream Thomas had ever heard.

Well, except maybe for one. He'd heard another scream, a long time ago, in a place that was hot and dry and stone and dark. That cry sounded a lot like the one he heard now.

Someone called his name, hands loosening their grip now that the torture was waning, voices, hushed, something about a bookie and moving out of the way…

Hands under his armpits, someone dragging him. Oh God, he thought, the metal becoming sand beneath his body, they're taking me away again. They're going to hurt me.

But the world was spinning darkness now, cascading over itself and crashing into his body with the force of a tsunami. A crash, a shout, cries of relief, and with them new sounds, wind and rain and water rushing –

Hot tumbled over cold and dark faded into light and back again. Heat seared and frost bit and both worlds orbited around the one in which only pain existed. He felt a hand on his cheek, the pad of a small, soft thumb tracing his cheekbone. "Hold on, Thomas," the voice said. "We've got you."

Thomas tried to open his eyes, but couldn't find the strength. A large hand, warm, familiar, squeezed his shoulder. Someone pulled him close against their body in an awkward embrace, the scratch of a beard tickling his neck.

Then he was being lifted, and the pain finally ebbed, and the voices receded, and both worlds, past and present, faded – leaving darkness and quiet in their stead.


A/N: So, can you tell I like my episode AUs? There's just so much whump potential in this show that goes to waste, either by resolving far too quickly or happening to someone else. And the Ethan thing in this episode? Just shameful. That SHOULD have been Magnum. Also, I tried a new thing here by having the comfort happen alongside the hurt instead of after. I liked the result; hopefully you did too!

Hope you enjoyed this little fic! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

~Emachinescat ^..^