After so many years of Leaping, Sam had thought he could no longer be surprised by where he found himself once the cold buzz from the Leap itself faded. He'd landed in the middle of making love, throwing a punch, performing on stage, officiating at a wedding, delivering a baby - and that was just what came readily to his Swiss-cheesed brain. There was no telling how many permutations he'd forgotten, and, if he were going to be honest with himself, it didn't really matter. Leaping into each new situation was always disconcerting and nerve-wracking until he had a chance to sort out what was going on.
But this was the first time he'd ever Leaped into total darkness: a dark so complete that it seemed to have a weight and presence about it that was nearly suffocating. Sam lay on his side, unmoving on a cold tile floor, trying to see some glimmer of light and listening intently for a clue as to where he was and what was going on. The silence was nearly as heavy as the blackness, though, and so pervasive he could hear the whoosh of his blood in his ears.
Oddly, it was scent that turned out to be the most useful. The smell of a locker room was as familiar to Sam as the aroma of his mother's cooking, and was one of those scents that never seemed to change, no matter when or where he was. That also explained the tiles, the silence, and the empty, empty darkness. Most locker rooms were in basements or the interiors of buildings, and if the lights had been turned out, there wouldn't be any windows or other sources of light for him to see.
That realization didn't go very far to explain why he had been left alone on the floor when they had been shut off, though, and he wasn't going to learn anything if he just stayed where he was. He leaned up on his elbow, intending to stand, and his brain exploded with pain so intense his stomach lurched, threatening to send his last meal back up. Collapsing, Sam clutched his head and curled in on himself, only then becoming aware that he was half-naked, wearing only a pair of unfastened jeans that were sagging low on his hips.
Though the pain was worst in his head, Sam realized it wasn't the only place he hurt. His ribs ached, the side of his face was hot and felt swollen, and there were too many aches in his back, chest and arms to count. Worst of all was how cold and shaky he felt; possible first symptoms of shock, the medically trained part of his mind warned him. Which, along with the beating that he had obviously taken, could mean he was in bad shape.
It also meant that he couldn't have just Leaped in. He had to have been here long enough to take the abuse in the place of whomever it had been intended for originally. Worried and confused, Sam tried to think back and was rewarded with disjointed flashes of memory that were very disconcerting.
He remembered being in the center of a circle of laughing, noisy boys, none more than a few years older or younger than sixteen, and being violently shoved from person to person. One young man shouted louder than the others, egging them on, with real, vicious hatred under his words and in his pushes. Slipping on the wet floor more than once, Sam had always been caught up and tossed to the next hurting hands, the insults inconsequential to the feeling of helplessness.
There was a strong impression of the room itself, created from glimpses as he staggered from person to person. He remembered two rows of lockers with a bench between them at one side of the circle, and empty showers at the other with a rack of towels at their entrance. The rest was nothing but blank whiteness, flickering subtly because of the fluorescent lights overhead.
Then he had fallen backwards, toward the lockers, and there had been a sharp, terrible pain in the back of his head, and he fell again, this time sideways, onto the bench. Frightened young voices raised in a babble were part of the semi-black agony that came with the fall, the hate-filled one riding over them, making demands, then threats. Sam had heard the hurried slamming of locker doors, people leaving in a rush, then quiet, deep quiet except for one voice in the distance.
"Everybody gone?" an older man had called.
Sam had tried to answer, but the darkness - weighty and solid, all too solid - smothered the words, smothered all thought, smothered him.
"Must have passed out," he murmured to himself, his words echoing strangely in the tiled room. Gingerly Sam touched the back of his head, not surprised to find it wet and tacky. He tried to sit up again, and at the sweep of dizziness and nausea, he added, "Probable concussion."
Naming the problem seemed to help in an obscure way, and he made it all the way up, though he swayed precariously. Cautiously putting out a hand, Sam found the end of the wooden bench and steadied himself, then carefully took a deep breath, changing his mind when a sharp pain stabbed him in the side. "And broken ribs." He touched his lips with his tongue, but didn't feel any cuts. "No blood taste, so I didn't puncture a lung. Yet anyway."
For a long moment he just sat there, knees up, arms crossed over them and forehead resting on his wrists. The darkness threatened to seep into him, and while part of him welcomed it, wanting to escape his misery, he knew he didn't have that option if he wanted to stay alive. "Okay, okay, what do I do?" he mumbled, flogging himself into thinking. "Get out of here and get help?"
Slowly turning his head in every direction, he looked for any hint of light, no matter how small: the shine of a hall light from under the bottom of a door, an exit sign burning faintly over one, even the dim glow that might mark a clock in the coach's office. There was nothing, not even a ghostly after-image he had a chance of convincing himself was a guidepost to a door.
With no idea of where the exit was, he could fumble around for the rest of the night, endangering himself as he literally flailed about blindly trying to find it. Reluctantly he gave up the idea, and said to himself, "Al will be here in a while. He can get Ziggy to call up the layout of wherever this is. We can try to navigate me out then."
Just thinking about Al helped Sam focus, and he sat up straighter. "So if I'm going to stay put, what next?" As if in answer a hard shiver hit him, sending agonizing stabs all through already abused muscles. "Right. Getting warm would be a good idea." Keeping one hand on the bench to brace himself, he slowly stood, vaguely impressed by the fireworks shooting across his retina as his blood pressure did strange things. Swaying slightly, he carefully reached out in the direction he thought the lockers were in and was rewarded by the feel of cold metal against his fingertips.
Lockers were lockers, and he traced the edges to where he expected to find the handle, then tried it. It was locked, as were the next few, but then he hit pay dirt. Though he didn't find any shoes or other clothes, there was a coat hanging inside; a down-filled parka from the feel of it. It was a bit small, but better than nothing, and Sam shrugged into it, wincing at the protests from his bruised body.
Unfortunately, it was the only bit of luck he had. The rest of the lockers were either locked or empty, and he worked his way back to his original spot, sitting on the edge of the bench and trying not to throw up from the spinning in his brain. "Winter coat," he said tiredly. "Probably going to get even colder in here, since a school would only use enough heat to keep the pipes from freezing. Have to keep off this floor."
Reluctantly he reviewed the few memories he had from when he first arrived, trying not to let the hatred in that one young face distract him. Instinct, honed by so many wrongs set right, told him that whatever he was supposed to do while here, that particular teen was involved. The general air of jocularity from the other boys made Sam think they were just horsing around, maybe hazing a newcomer to their ranks. But not the one who had been hiding fury and disgust behind his laughter; he had intended for Sam - or whoever he was in this time and place - to be hurt.
"Or worse," Sam whispered, hardly caring that he spoke aloud, let alone how the sound of his words bounced eerily through the small room. It made the dark seem less oppressive, as if there was someone in it with him and he only had to listen carefully to hear an answer. "Maybe that's why I'm here, why I Leaped into the middle of things. I'm older, stronger, more knowledgeable. I can survive this. But then why didn't I Leap out once I'd been abandoned?"
Despite not having an answer to his last question, the rest felt right to Sam, and cheered a little by knowing what he needed to do was what he should do anyway, he tried assembling the fragments he had of what the room looked like. "Normal locker room. Lockers. Bench. Showers. Towel... that's right! Towel rack." He studied that mental image carefully, holding down a thrill of excitement when he realized that it had looked completely stocked with clean towels.
"Not as good as blankets," he murmured, standing cautiously and scooting a foot along the floor, waving through the space in front of him to make sure there were no obstacles. "But they'll do, if there's enough." With painstaking care he felt his way to where he remembered the showers being, aided, after a few steps, by the nearly inaudible plink! of drops of water falling from a leaky showerhead. A minute later there was a subtle change in the feel of the air on his face, and he stopped, puzzled, until he realized that it was a difference in air pressure, indicating the opening to another, larger, emptier room.
"That's not supposed to happen unless you've been blind a long time, and even then there's no guarantee you'll be that sensitive," he said to himself. But a wary grope found a doorframe, and he had to admit that this time, at least, he was right. The towels were right where he had thought they were, and he grabbed a handful, pondering exactly how he could use them best.
With the indistinct notion that there should be a bin or basket of some sort to put the dirty towels in, Sam fumbled along the side of the rack, thinking that he could fill with it with the towels, then bury his feet in it for warmth. To his surprise and considerable relief, the unmistakable shape of a rolled up gym mat filled the gap between the rack and the wall, and he yanked it out, listening with something very like glee to the slap of the heavy canvas as it hit the floor.
In moments he had a nice pile of towels heaped in the middle of it, and he crawled into them, spreading the coat over himself like a blanket. Despite how badly he was shivering by the time he was finished, it didn't take very long for him to start feeling warmer, thanks to his improvised nest. Once he stopped shaking from the cold, most of the pain faded into tolerable background discomfort, leaving only the headache and its accompanying stomach-twisting dizziness.
Lying very, very still helped that, and Sam started drifting off. "Not supposed to sleep when you have a head injury," he reminded himself. "Well, you can if there's someone to wake you and check for indications of inter-cranial bleeding or cerebral contusion. Since I'm by myself with no way out, that's a moot point. On the other hand, Al will have a cow if I don't answer him when he gets here. Couldn't be much longer. In fact, he should already be here, shouldn't he?"
Sam tried to add up how long he'd been stumbling around in the dark, but there was no way to measure the dragging passage of the minutes. Alarmed for no good reason that he could think of, he sat up, as if to go look for Al, and nearly passed out from renewed agony. Holding in a scream, he fell back into his makeshift bedding, tucking himself into a fetal position, arms protectively around his head.
"Why isn't he here?" Sam mumbled to himself. "Ziggy has to have had time to identify the boy in the Waiting Room, if he's too hurt or Swiss-cheesed to do it himself. One way or another, Al has to know what was happening when I Leaped in. It's not like him not to pop in, just to see if I'm hurt, even if he doesn't know what I need to change."
A horrible thought occurred to him, and, for the first time, he moaned in pain. "What if he's been in an accident? Or if he's sick? Ziggy wouldn't want me to know, not while I'm like this."
The panic he felt at the idea of Al in trouble was so overwhelming Sam hastily reassured himself. "Probably just off somewhere with a woman. Or maybe in the middle of a fight with Tina about one. I mean, he's got a life outside of the Imaging Chamber; I can't expect him to always be able to drop everything at a moment's notice. That's not right. Bad enough he has to pretty much be on call twenty-four/seven when I'm in the middle of a Leap."
As often as Sam had told himself the exact same thing, trying to summon the patience to wait for his friend to appear, he still felt a sharp pang of guilt at his selfishness. Admitting it had never stopped him from being irrationally irritated when Al was late, either, much to his chagrin. "I'm sorry, Al," he muttered guiltily, aware that his friend couldn't hear him, which was probably why the apology tasted so useless to him. "I know you do the best you can. And I know how frustrating it has to be that most of the time, all you can do to help me is be a channel for Ziggy to speak through."
He stirred restlessly in his makeshift nest. "Or at least, that's what it must seem like to you, but I couldn't do this without you. I know I've told you that before, and you just brushed me off. But it's the simple truth. Without you to keep me steady, give me something to hold onto, I think I would have given up a long time ago. Found myself a quiet spot somewhere and just gone quietly insane. Not that I'm so sure that I haven't and all my Leaps are simply delusion on my part."
Despite it all he snorted at himself in amusement. "If that's the case, I have to have a hell of an imagination to have dreamed you up, Al. You're more real to me than myself, sometimes. More important, too."
"Please be okay, Al. Please be okay," Sam sighed, his worry returning full-force. "Let this long wait be because Ziggy is being temperamental, or because there's a technical glitch with the equipment. Or because you were out having a good time and can't get back to the Project right away. Just be okay. Please. Please." The desperation ringing in his words and through the empty room was terrifying, and he had to fight with himself not to think the worst, succeeding only because he had no choice.
"Maybe Ziggy's right not to tell me if you are injured. I don't know if I could handle it. You're not only the reason I keep going; you're the only reason I stepped into the accelerator to start with." For a moment he was horrified that secret had popped out, but the relief of saying the truth out loud for once was so tremendous, the fear died quickly. After all, this was one time when Al couldn't sneak up on him; he didn't have to watch what he said or hide what he felt.
"You are, you know," he whispered, wishing with all his heart that he dared say that to his friend's face. "There's no question that if the committee had shut down Quantum Leap because we weren't producing results fast enough, the Navy would have transferred you. God knows where, but it's not likely that it would have been someplace where they would have a use for a quantum physicist. Or they might have made you retire. Without something useful to do, you would have wound up back on the bottle. I think we both know that, too, which is why you fight so hard to stay in that uniform.
"The way I had it figured, if it worked, well, then, good. We'd have enough to keep us busy for years, even from just one Leap. If it didn't, I wouldn't have lost anything that I wasn't going to lose already. And if it killed me...." He trailed off, not sure he could admit that particular truth, even to himself.
"Maybe it's time I faced why it was such a relief to decide to risk the accelerator. Maybe that bit of self-flagellation will be penance enough to keep you safe." Deep in his own mind, Sam knew that his last thought wasn't strictly rational, but it didn't matter. He was so used to dealing with seemingly crazy ideas that just about anything could make sense if he let it.
Gingerly scrubbing his hands over his face, not surprised to find his cheeks wet, he said out loud, simply to hear himself say it, "And if it killed me, at least I wouldn't have to constantly worry about you finding out that I'd fallen in love with you." Sighing, Sam tucked a fist under his cheek, considering the few and scattered memories he had of those last days at Stallion's Gate. "It was getting so hard to hide how I felt.
"No question that I had to, either. Funny, I never really thought about myself as straight or gay or bi or anything specific. I knew that I was more comfortable socially with men than with women, but it was always women who came on to me, women I went to bed with. Go to bed with. Never so much as kissed a man, and now I won't because it won't be you.
"You, on the other hand, made it more than clear that you were definitely heterosexual. With a capital S, E, X. And that you didn't have a very good opinion of gays.
"Which left me being painfully careful about how close I stood to you, how long I met your eyes, how often I touched you. Especially how often I touched you." Sam gently stroked his own cheek with a thumb, as he had longed to do to Al so many times. "As difficult as it is for you not to be able to touch me, it's the one thing I'm grateful for. I can't slip and do the unforgivable."
Alone in the crushing dark without the distraction of his other senses, the simple self-caress was magnified into something so pleasurable that a tremor of need blossomed unexpectedly in his middle. It was also a blessed diversion from his general misery, and Sam did it again, this time lightly tracing his lips. It was almost as good as a real kiss, and for the tiniest of seconds, he let himself pretend it was a kiss, one bestowed on him by his missing friend.
"Al!" he groaned. "God... Al!"
Sturdy fingers brushed over his cheek, barely making contact, scaring Sam into sitting bolt upright, then scrambling into the corner where the gym mat had been, despite the punishing wave of pain and dizziness from his injured head. "Is someone there?" he demanded, relieved his voice was steady, if overly loud. He reached out in front of him, grabbing in the general area where someone would have to be standing in order to touch him, but found nothing but thin air. A little more uncertainly he said, "Hello? Is anyone there?"
Listening intently, straining to make out the slightest variation in the blackness surrounding him, Sam slumped into the cold walls, already half sure he'd imagined it all. But a moment later he felt the same ghostly touch, this time tenderly brushing at the silver forelock hanging down over his forehead. "Hello?" He stretched out a hand, tentatively offering to whoever was with him. "I can't see you. I thought the lights were out, but something must be wrong with my eyes instead."
His unseen companion cupped Sam's left cheek, and a palm met his own, flattening against it so that both were aligned, fingers to fingers and palm to palm. It was a strangely reassuring gesture, and even more strangely, familiar in a way Sam couldn't explain. "Who are you?" he asked quietly. "Can't you talk to me?"
The hand on his own withdrew, then a single finger drew a line in his palm, then another, until Sam could clearly make out a capital 'A' from the feel of it. Before the 'L' was even half formed, he said disbelievingly, "Al?"
Al leaned his forehead into Sam's and nodded so that he could feel the 'yes.'
"How? I mean... the imaging process...."
The bleeding lump on the back of his head was cupped and cautious pressure applied, just enough to make Sam think. "Head injury - damage to brain cells from bruising or bleeding, maybe affecting the visual and audio centers... redirecting the muon stream to the tactile?"
Another nod, and a 'Z' drawn on his cheek was his answer, and Sam said, "According to Ziggy?" Al nodded yet again, then brought captured both of Sam's hands, holding them to his face so that his smile was apparent.
"I know why I'm here. The boy I Leaped into died in the original history, didn't he?"
More letters were drawn on his skin. "M, a, r, k, - Mark. S, o, u, t, h, e, r, n. – Southern. He's okay?" At the 'yes,' Sam asked, "Then why don't I Leap?"
"I.D... W, h, o," Al wrote.
"Of course!" Shaking his head at his own stupidity and wincing at the resultant wave of dizziness, Sam went on. "If I'm not here when they find Mark, they won't have any medical evidence of the attack, since I took the brunt of it. The authorities won't have any reason to charge those boys; it'll be their word against Mark's." Uneasily recalling the hatred burning in the one teen, he added, "And it'll happen again. Next time it might not be possible to save him. But how do I identify who did it? I don't know their names."
"T, a, l, k, - t, o, - m, e."
"Talk to you... describe them to you?" At Al's silent agreement, Sam thought, then said slowly, shifting uncomfortably to lean back against the wall, "The ringleader was about seventeen, good-looking in the way that girls call cute; blue eyes." Involuntarily he shuddered at the memory of the emotion in that hard, hard stare. "His hair's so blond it's almost white, and he wears it a little bit longer than the crew-cut everybody else had. Bet he's vain about it."
"T, o, d, d – W, e, a, t, h, e, r, s," Al spelled out promptly. "S, u, s, p, e, c, t."
"No conviction, though, right? The other boys all covered up what happened, maybe said it was an accident that had to have happened after they all left."
Al nodded, expression a little sad, Sam thought, though he was certainly no expert on reading faces by Braille. Other names followed, and he memorized them, fairly sure that all he would have to do at first was give names. As he did, he couldn't help but see the ring of laughing, teasing boys again, hopelessly wondering what living with a murder on their conscience would do to them.
As if in answer, a new memory came to the fore: a fair, freckled, redheaded boy with stormy gray eyes too big for his face bending over Sam, his guilt and fear almost palpable. "Al," he said slowly. "What was the redhead's name? I think he might break if the police get to him before his friends have a chance to work on him."
"A, a, r, o, n – C, o, r, n, e, l, l."
"Aaron Cornell," Sam repeated to himself, intuition rising again. "Al, could I be here to save him, too?"
There was a momentary hesitation and strange motions that took Sam a second to interpret: Al getting data from the hand link. Positive he could feel surprised agreement, he crowed softly, "I was right, wasn't I?"
"Suicide; note said guilt," Al laboriously spelled out.
His slight elation at being right faded quickly. Sam shivered, as much in reaction as from the cold, trying not to imagine what torments Aaron had gone through before he'd been so weakened by remorse and pressure to protect his friends that death had seemed more inviting than life. There was something he could do to stop that from happening now, and he asked quickly, "Okay, let's get me out of here, then."
Shaking his head 'no,' Al spelled, "Locked."
"Locked, as in I'm locked in? No phone, no way to get help at all? Well, that explains why his parents didn't look for him here."
At Al's uneasy shrug, Sam asked tiredly. "Now what, then?"
Al pressed gently on his shoulders to nudge him back into his nest, spelling, 'warm.' Automatically Sam did as he was told, practically hearing the fond scolding tone of his friend's voice.
He lay down on his good side, then went very, very still, heat rising up to his face in defiance of how icy the room was. There was only one way the other man could have known he had a way to get warm and where it was. "Al? You can see me? Not just hear me?"
Body language told him instantly that Al understood why he asked the question, and that the answer was 'yes.' Humiliation and fear turned him even redder, and Sam fought the urge to pull his borrowed coat up over his head and hide. "How long have you been here?" he had to ask.
Thankfully Al didn't try to dodge that bullet, but spelled out hesitantly, "Long enough."
"Oh, God." Sam had never felt more naked or exposed in his entire life, or in any of the lives he had lived as other people. He gave into the need to hide and dropped his chin to his chest, painfully hunkering in on himself as if he expected another beating. "I swear, Al, I swear I will never, ever...."
Not sure exactly what he needed to promise to un-do the damage he'd just done, he fell silent, half-hoping that his friend would decide to pretend it never happened. After all, with the next Leap, Sam would probably forget about this one and his stupidity in blurting out a truth that should have never gotten past his own gray matter. He could hope, anyway.
To his shock, he felt Al lie down next to him, face to face, hands moving soothingly over his back and shoulders until he was able to coax Sam into relaxing. Hesitantly, not sure if he was being patronized because he was hurt and in the middle of a Leap, or simply being indulged because of their long-standing friendship, Sam unfolded from his defensive hunch. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean to."
Al chuckled, to judge by the minor shaking in the chest under Sam's hands, and pulled him even closer, so that Sam's head was pillowed on his upper arm. It was as comforting and reassuring as it was intended to be, as he'd wished for too many long nights. Against his better judgment he sighed and surrendered to what was offered, not really caring any longer what the reason behind it was.
It was good to be held, but weird too. Not because Al was a man, but because of small things that hadn't been very noticeable when it had only been hands on him. For one thing, there was no sensation of body heat, or any specific tactile information like hard or soft, just the steady pressure of weight against his flesh. Even that faded in the places where they had clothes between them, a fact that Sam was grateful for as his body tried sluggishly to respond to the nearness.
Between physical injury and emotional crisis, he was exhausted, though, and a few pleasant twinges were all he had to worry about. He started drifting toward sleep, vaguely sure that he shouldn't, but unable to figure out why. With Al watching over him, he was safe, and apparently he had been forgiven for his confession. If his heart ached emptily because Al had treated it so casually, at least he didn't have to worry about it being ripped out by angry rejection or out-and-out revulsion.
He mumbled a sleepy thank-you for that, ready to nod off, but Al tucked a forefinger under his chin, and forced Sam to lift his head. For a split second, the world spun sickly, then his lips were covered in the softest, gentlest kiss he'd ever been blessed with. Shocked completely awake and beyond the complaints of his body, he didn't move - couldn't move, not even to return it.
A heartbeat later, Al slowly broke away, though his chest was heaving from an obvious need for air. He rested his forehead on Sam's again, this time carding his fingers deeply into the hair over Sam's ear, as if to keep him from bolting. Then Al waited, and Sam didn't have to be told for what.
Nervously he licked his lips, afraid to accept the promise in that simple touch and more afraid to believe in the possibilities that went with it. But he couldn't pass up the chance to have what he longed for, either. With the faith and trust in Al that had led him through so many crises and so many Leaps, Sam moved through the darkness enshrouding him and sealed his mouth to Al's.
He wasn't gentle or timid, though maybe he should have been given how new they were to each other this way. That wouldn't have felt right because he knew what he wanted and needed, and had to be sure Al could deal with that. Giving back as good as he got, Al opened to him when the first loving stroke from his tongue asked permission to deepen their kiss.
Sam slipped inside, moaning from the jolt of pure desire that wracked him from head to toe. Savoring the sensuality in the glide of tongue over tongue, he put everything he had into pleasuring Al, hoping to drive thoughts of anyone else far from his companion's mind. Sliding an arm around his new lover's waist to hold him tighter, he tucked a leg between both of Al's, bringing their groins into contact, making both of them groan in frustration at the lack of feeling in it.
When he absolutely, positively had to breathe again, he tore his lips away, panting harshly and achingly hard. Al was as rampant, and his chest was vibrating from silent words and love cries. The disappointment of not being able to hear his lover's voice cooled Sam's lust, dropping him unpleasantly back into a body that was too damaged to sustain the level of passion he was straining toward. Pulling back enough to be able to bring a hand up between them, he laid it over Al's features as if to capture by touch the meaning of the sounds his lover made.
The reminder of their circumstances seemed to calm Al, too; he urged Sam's head back down to his shoulder, fingertips restlessly petting and stroking the hair under them. Sam went willingly, nuzzling into his lover's chest, belatedly realizing that it was bare, the shirt hanging open on either side. A little timidly he explored, pleased that he could make out details such as the light dusting of hair and the pebbled nipples.
"Love you," he whispered, pressing a tiny kiss onto one tight bud. "Love you so much."
Al caught Sam's hand and used one finger from it to draw a heart in the center of his own chest. Then he pressed the palm flat over the same spot, holding it in place as he brushed a kiss over Sam's forehead.
"Al?" Sam said uncertainly, sure that there was a message in the gesture.
"L, o, v, e – U – 2," Al spelled out slowly inside the heart, still using Sam's finger to write.
"God, Al!" Hardly able to believe it, but convinced by the arms around him, Sam curled his hand into Al's. "Really?"
Soft, soft kisses on his eyelids were his answer, and Sam chuckled, yawned, then slipped away into sleep.
* * *
"Oh, my, god, oh, my, god, oh, my god...."
The frantic half-prayer, half-curse pulled Sam back to consciousness, and he tried to open his eyes to see who was talking. It took far more effort than it should have; his eyelids seemed to weigh more than he did, and were loaded down with sand as well. Finally he managed to crack them open, and was immediately grateful that was all he'd done. Light as sharp as knives stabbed into his head, and he moaned, turning his head away in an instinctive bid to find shadow.
"My god - Mark! Are you awake? Help's coming. Who did this to you, son?"
A careful, weary blink brought an older man's face into focus. He was leaning over Sam, hands hovering over him as if he wanted to touch but was afraid to. There was nothing but honest concern in the gray eyes, but they were the wrong eyes in the wrong face, and Sam nearly whimpered, clutching at his own chest to keep from reaching out to someone who wasn't there.
Must have been a dream or hallucination, he thought wretchedly. I created it out of my own head to help me get through the night.
"Mark," the man said urgently. "Who did this to you?"
Not knowing what else to say, clinging to the hope that at least some of last night had been real, Sam said, "Todd... Todd Weathers. Ask Aaron, he'll tell you."
Sam repeated that over and over as he drifted in and out of awareness during the arrival of the EMT's and the ambulance ride, not sure sometimes if he was saying it aloud. At one point during the agony of the doctor's exam, he thought he said it to a police officer, but if that were the case, wouldn't he have Leaped?
Finally he was alone in a hospital room, with the doctors speaking quietly to a couple in the hallway Sam thought was probably Mark's parents. He sincerely hoped so because if he didn't think he was up to pretending to be someone else; he was having trouble enough not collapsing into a tearful mass of sorrow as it was. Not to mention that the doctors would think his injuries were worse than they were if he seemed too incoherent or confused.
At least he was warm, and he tried to focus on that, letting himself fall back toward sleep and not really caring if he ever woke again. Just as he thought he might nod off, he heard the sound of the Imaging Chamber door open, and, expression hidden in the curve of his arm, Sam braced himself to deal with the real Al and not the one of his dreams.
"Sammy, please tell me you can hear me now."
Plastering a false smile on, Sam reluctantly came out of hiding, then broke into the real thing. Al was dressed in a loosely cut, glaringly purple suit, complete with silver buttons and piping around the collar and sleeve. But instead of a dress shirt, he had on a simple white tee-shirt under the jacket – a tee shirt on which he had drawn a heart on in red-magic marker.
Al laid his hand over the cartoon heart and smiled just as Sam Leaped.
*finis