Message-Id: <9712152001.AA15949@arctos.bowdoin.edu>
Subject: Reverse Reflection pt 1
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 15:01:30 -0500 (EST)
From: "Emilie R. Karr" <ekarr@Bowdoin.EDU>

This is my first QL fanfic; it's my "solution" to MI, for like so
many Leapers I was disturbed and depressed by the final episode.
I've figured out a plot to "reverse" it, so to speak, and that's
what follows (at least the beginning).
I'd love to know if you like it at all--if anyone even reads this
fanfic, except for me.  Please, respond, I'd love to hear what
you think! E-mail ekarr@bowdoin.edu  :)

Summary: Post-MI, Sam is having problems with the difficulty of
the Leaps and doing them alone.  But he wouldn't change a thing,
except maybe he doesn't have a choice...  Meanwhile Project QL is
giving up hope of ever finding Dr. Beckett again, and Al may have
lost his best friend in time for good...

DISCLAIMER: They all belong to DBellisario & Co; I just wrote the
story, for no money!


                     Reverse Reflection
                           Part 1

                      Emilie Renee Karr


He awoke with a tiny gasp.

"Are you alright, Jack?" asked the woman in bed next to him.

Jack, he was Jack.  "Yes.  I'm fine." His name was Jack and hers
was...

It flowed from his mind, replaced, pushed out by another.  Sam.
Dr. Samuel Beckett.  He /truly/ was Sam Beckett.

"Was it a nightmare, Jack?" the woman asked Sam.

She was his wife.  He reached in the darkness and his hand closed
over the wedding band on one finger, moonlight glinting on the
ring on her hand. "Was it frightening?"

"No..." The dream was flowing from his mind as quickly as the
memories. "No, I don't think so.  I don't remember."

"Oh." The woman yawned and put her arms around him.  Sam tensed
for a second, relaxed before she could notice.  The familiarity
from a stranger no longer really bothered him.  After six
years...

It was comfortable.  The bed, the quiet night, a wife--if not one
he had married--surrounded him.  He hadn't felt such peace in so
long, too long...Like the dream, he couldn't quite remember.  It
seemed like forever, that he had been--but he couldn't remember
what.

He was slipping back into dreams, when his wife, Jack's wife,
drowsily asked, "Who's Al?"

"Who?" He tensed again.  Memories shuffled in his head, came up
blank.

"Al," repeated his wife patiently.

"I don't know.  Why?"

Her answer was mumbled, muffled by his back. "Just before you
woke up.  You said 'Al.'  A couple times.  You said, 'I don't
think I can make it without you, Al' right before you woke up.
Who were you talking to?"

"I don't remember.  I don't know anyone named Al," Sam told her.
"Maybe he was a dream character."

"Probably someone you knew a long time ago," murmured his wife.

"Maybe," Sam agreed.  She didn't reply; in a moment her breathing
told him she was asleep, but he couldn't join her.  Instead he
simply lay there, trying to remember the forgotten dream.


The following day Jack Taylor awoke with only the vaguest memory
that he had even dreamed.  He ate breakfast, kissed his wife and
daughter, and started on his way to work.

It was a commute, and at the subway station he picked up a
newspaper.  Nothing interesting on the front page except the
date.  October 8, 1974.  Looked right, except--

Except it was /wrong/.  Somehow it was incorrect.  Jack Taylor's
world spun on its ear.  "Your name is Jack Taylor, you're an
accountant in New York, 1974," intoned a voice in his head, only
it wasn't his voice.  A different voice, one he didn't know,
didn't recognize...another twist, same voice, different words.
"You're a physicist.  Named Sam Beckett...living little pieces of
other people's lives.../try/ to remember, Sam."

He still didn't know the voice, yet he heard it so clearly.  As
if it was a memory, a strong one.  "Time travel experiment
that...went a little ca-ca."

And then nothing, a blank, he was Jack Taylor and he was at his
office building, making a living for his family, he and his wife
and his daughter.

At one o'clock the call came from the hospital and his family was
reduced to he and his wife.

They identified the corpse together, their beautiful girl no
longer pretty, body mangled by the careless automobile.  Staring
down at her death, a voice in the back of Jack's mind, his own
voice, whispered, Was this what I was here for? and answered its
own query--"Success has nothing to do with Leaping, you know
that."

Only the answer itself felt like a memory.

He didn't know *why* he was here.  It felt like there should be
someone telling him...but there wasn't, had there ever been? He
didn't think so.  He couldn't quite remember--but who could it
have been? "went a little ca-ca...I won't, Sam...it's against the
rules, but...it's Beckett.  You're Sam Beckett...a couple of tin
cans on a piece of string..."

No.  There wasn't anyone else, there never had been.

He didn't go to work the next day, but he did the day after, in a
dull grey haze.

One of his colleagues took him aside half an hour after he
arrived.  "Jack? God, man.  What are you doing here?"

"My job," Sam replied stiffly. "I was absent yesterday--"

He saw pity in the other's eyes.  "You're excused for the rest of
the week.  Boss's orders."

For some reason he couldn't remember the man's name.  It wasn't
Albert.  He didn't think it was.  But--"I need to work."

"No..." the other trailed off.  In a soft voice he said, "The
wake's tomorrow, right? Stay if you want, I understand."

His nod was all the thanks the man required.  He moved away.

Jack did his job with less than half a mind.  Part of his brain
knew nothing, it seemed; and the other half was not in a good
emotional state for work.  He did his best.

Until early afternoon, when he had an uncomfortable feeling in
the pit of his stomach.  He knew it wasn't hunger, though he had
skipped lunch.  One part, distant and buried inside him,
recognized it, and as the feeling grew, the louder the internal
voice became.

Until it was unavoidable, impossible to ignore.  Following it, he
left the office, ignoring the queries of his co-workers, drove
home accelerating as each mile passed too slowly.  Once home, he
charged up the stairs, found the bathroom door locked.

At the command of the inner scream he battered it down.  His wife
lay over the tub, shirt sleeves stained red from the blood
flowing from her wrists.

Ignoring the scarlet dying his own shirt he wrapped his arms
around her and closed his hands tightly over the slashes.  Her
skin was cool but she was conscious enough to moan in his arms.
She didn't struggle when he wrapped bandages around them and was
too weak to protest when he phoned the hospital.  "Jack," she
sobbed as they awaited the ambulance.  "I'm sorry I shouldn't
have, I'm sorry, how could she be gone--" and he stroked her
hair, whispered "It'll be all right, I promise..."

And then the world vanished into a brilliant blue glow.


When it faded he found himself outside a bar, and everything in
his lost and misted mind was clear.

He was Sam Beckett and no one but himself.  And he had just
Quantum Leaped.  To a place he had been before.

Through the door, a bell rang, announcing his entrance.

It wasn't a coal town this time.  The year looked the same--1953-
-but the area was more built up, sophisticated.

But the bar was the same, exactly, inside.  Little less dust,
perhaps.  But the same tables, stools, mirror behind it.

Same face reflecting as before, staring back.  Long, male,
handsome, brown hair streaked once with white.

But more lines still, in the face.  His face.  He was surprised,
shocked even, by the grooves etched around his eyes, his mouth.
Surely it hadn't been that long--

His hand crept up to touch the markings, feel their reality.  It
dropped suddenly when a voice said, "Are you sure it's yours?"

"What?" Sam turned to the bartender.

"Your face.  Checking to see if you're wearing a mask?"

"No." Sam shook his head.  "It's mine.  There's been some
changes, but..."

"I told you before, you should take time out now and again to
look at yourself.  If you ignore yourself--you run the risk of
losing that self."

"'Told me before.'" Sam latched onto it.  "I've been here before,
haven't I?"

Slowly the bartender nodded. "About a year ago, it was."

"What's the date? It's August 8, 1953, isn't it?"

"So says my calendar," and he pointed to the shabby one hanging
in back, days up to August 8 crossed off.

"But--I swear that was the same date I was here before."

"Maybe you have the dates confused.  It might've been '52."

"No.  It couldn't have been, I can't Leap beyond my own lifetime,
that's the base of the whole theory--" he broke off, aware of how
mad he sounded.

But the bartender seemed to accept everything calmly, as if he
understood.  The same way he had before-- "I have been here," Sam
said with great conviction. "And I remember you."

"It's nice to be remembered," remarked the bartender.  His calm
words were belied by the intense look he subjected Sam to.

"I do.  You're Al--" and he was drowned under a flood of memory.
The confusion, the fog, the Swiss cheese all washed away.  Al.
Not a bartender, an admiral.  Who never dressed as one.  Who
pursued women like a sailor, though; who puffed on a cigar, who
had a thousand comments, most of them vulgar, for every
situation....who was Sam's best friend.

Had been.  "They're that close?--Just like you and me." "How long
have we known each other?" "How many times has he saved my life?"
"I'm your buddy"--all blown away by Time.  Gone and never had
been.

His doing, he remembered Beth and helping true love and putting
right the wrong he had missed before.  The right he owed more
than any other.

"I shouldn't--I shouldn't remember that," he whispered to
himself.

But the bartender, the other Al heard. "Why shouldn't you?"

"My...I had a friend named Al--"

This Al nodded. "You chose to help him."

"But..." Sam's speech slowed as he assimilated it. "I changed
history.  I kept Al with Beth, and he never met me...but it'd be
worth it, if I knew it worked, if I made him happy..."

"He should be happy," Al agreed. "You succeeded." His penetrating
gaze didn't let up.  "He might have been happy before, you know."

"He wasn't." Sam shook his head, reveling in the clarity of his
memories yet mystified by their origins.  He had never
experienced them in this timeline, so how could he..?

But he did, recall his first meeting with Al, the hammer and the
alcohol and the vending machine and the anger; recall the time,
the long time, before Al would call him a friend.  Recall Al's
half-joking, half-angry tone when speaking of his series of
wives; and then the anguish in his voice, his eyes, when thinking
of Beth, the only woman he ever loved...

Sam had given her back to him.  None of that pain had occurred.

And he had never met or known Sam Beckett.  Maybe that wasn't
such a terrible thing, either.  What good was a friend who
stepped into an Accelerator and lost himself in time, perhaps
forever?

A wrong had ben righted, and now able to remember it, Sam
recaptured some of the prideful ecstasy of a successful Leap, and
that overpowered the pain of losing his closest--in some ways now
his only--friend.

"And how do you fare? Are you happy?" inquired the bartender,
breaking his thoughts.

"I'm happy that I chose the right way," Sam asserted.

"So you're pleased with your life now?" Al pushed.

"I still..."  Sam studied the grain of the wooden counter. "I'd
like to go home still, but I have so much left..."

"How are you doing with it?"

"I'm managing." He met Al's eyes momentarily.  "You were right,
they did get harder, the Leaps."  So much harder.  So much more
painful.

Of no consequence, the difficulties.  Mostly he succeeded all the
same, and that was all that mattered. "I'm doing fine, I just
wish--" and broke himself off.

"What?" As if it was a random, incurious inquiry, just something
to keep the conversation going.

Sam shrugged.  "I wish I knew what I was doing.  I wish I had
someone to tell me what I was Leaped to do, some assistance the
way I had before--" and he found he had to clamp his jaw tightly
to keep the grief from welling out.

He had been caught mostly unprepared for his own reaction and the
bartender noticed it. "So you're getting lonely?"

"I'm managing," Sam repeated.

"But not as well as before."

"The Leaps are harder..."

"Sounds like there's more to it than just the job."

"It is--the 'job,'" Sam explained slowly. "It's the Leaps.  All
these later ones, I've been...melding with the person I Leap
into.  Sometimes it makes it easier, but other times..." He
suppressed a sigh. "I need--it helps to have an anchor, to remind
me who I am.  What I'm doing.  Because I'm losing myself, every
time I Leap another bit is lost for good it feels like sometimes.
As I fall into other people, and I'm helpless, trapped deep
somewhere--" Dispassionately he observed that he couldn't stop
shaking.

A small shot glass was placed between his hands.  Automatically
he downed the liquid inside, coughing as it burned his throat.
"Thanks."

"Free of charge.  Looked like you needed it.  So you are being
affected."

"I can't help but be," Sam admitted, then hastened to assure Al,
"but I can survive, I'm handling it."

"For how much longer?" the bartender demanded.

"As long as it takes."

"That's probably longer than you have," Al commented.

Sam concentrated on the flat bar under his hands, the shot glass
he was holding. "As long as I can, then."

"You could have done it longer before."

"I could have," he agreed. "That was before.  I'll make it
alone."

Al looked almost pensive. "Are you positive of that?"

"What do you mean?"

"You tell me.  You said yourself you need an anchor.  That you
might be losing yourself."

"So?"

"So." The bartender shrugged.  You figure it out.

Sam did. "So...you're saying this job is too big for one person."

"/You/ said it," Al replied.

"So /you/," Sam stressed the pronoun, "think I still need help."

"The way you talked, it sounds as if that's what you think."

"I'd like assistance," Sam said after a pause.  "You're right, I
could use it.  Maybe I have limits..."

"You are human," Al answered.  Sam wasn't sure if he heard irony
in his voice.

"But who could help me?" Sam wonder aloud. "Scientifically
speaking, who could flip through time after me?" He paused, went
on, "And even if you," he had no doubts that the bartender could
but knew better than to push him on the subject, "could arrange
someone, who would do it?  It's a sacrifice, it's too much to ask
someone to simply follow me around when I can't do anything for
them in return--I couldn't ask anyone for that."

"You have many friends, Dr. Beckett," he was told in a voice that
sounded little like the calm bartender's.

"Yes, but--" Even if he could ask them, he didn't want them.
Somehow he couldn't imagine anyone else helping him, guiding him.
Joking with him and teasing him and causing trouble and calming
him at the worst times.  He didn't want an Observer; he didn't
want a replacement best friend--

The thought was so selfish he didn't attempt to articulate it.
"But I don't think it's possible," he finished, rather lamely.

"You had help before."

"I changed that." He was shocked by the near bitterness in his
own tone.

"You know, you're unique," mentioned the bartender off-hand.
"You're one of the very few people who's choices are never
permanent."

"Except the one I made to step into the Accelerator," Sam
retorted, and then realized the other's point.  "No!" he snapped,
rising.  "I'm not going to change that! I won't do it!"

"Why not?" If Al's expression had been intense before, now it was
beyond words, piercing through Sam's heart and mind and soul with
one sharp gaze.

"Because--" Sam groped for the proper words to make him
understand, "it was the one thing I could do for him.  He was my
friend, my best friend, and he helped me in so many ways, so many
times, and that was the only way I could repay him."

"Friendship isn't like a bartab," Al remarked.  "It doesn't
necessarily require repayment.  Sometimes the friendship itself
is enough."

"I did what I could.  I wanted to, I had to.  I was his friend.
And I did what was right, I fixed a wrong."

"Hard to say sometimes what's right, or what's wrong."

"Are you saying," Sam demanded, "that I did the wrong thing? I
wasn't supposed to repair that?" Al of course didn't answer. "Is
this because I need help? I can survive by myself; leave Al--
leave my friend alone!" He's not your friend, not now, his brain
reminded him.  He ignored it.  "He deserves it.  I won't help
him, and I won't change that back!"

"It's not because of you," Al said.

"I don't care what it's because.  I won't do it."

"I'm sorry, Sam," and the bartender shook his head, "but in this,
you don't have any choice."

Sam opened his mouth, but a dazzling light cut off his words...

...and he was sitting at a table across from a man.

"See, Greg, it's like this.  I truly, honestly feel as if I love
her.  Hell, I keep running into her, I feel as if I was fated to
fall for her.  And when I look into her eyes...something sparks
there.  She feels it too, I think.  But..." and the man trailed
off.


End Part 1

Do you want any more? want to finally get to the /real/ Al?
interested at all? e-mail me, please! =D
Emilie RK
ekarr@bowdoin.edu