InsaneJournal

Current mood:	worried
Current music:	Queen - Save Me
Entry tags:	crossover, doctor who, life on mars

The Hardest Part (Is Letting Go) IV/V
Title: The Hardest Part (Is Letting Go) IV
Author: windout
Genre: Gen (with undertones of het)
Fandoms: Life on Mars/Doctor Who
Characters/Pairings: Sam Tyler, "test card girl”
Ratings: PG
Disclaimer: Life on Mars is not mine (but I want a DVD), and I do own the Ninth Doctor on DVD
A/N: This is for rationalunatic because I owed her one. This is where it starts to get sticky.




“It’s not your fault, is it, Sam? After all, you’re just human. What can a silly human do in the face of evil? That’s what those men were, Sam: evil. Not your fault.”

Sam sat bolt upright in bed, looking around for the voice he’d heard. At first, the whispering had sounded like it had come from his dream, but that last statement, about being human, had come right next to his ear. Near as he could tell, neither doctors or nurses or night attendants were allowed to get a perverse pleasure from sneaking up on “disturbed persons.” It couldn’t have been the telly either—the BBC had a rather empty test card—New one, maybe?—in place and no sound.

“Gene Hunt, if that’s you, I will personally strangle you with my IV line and then call the actual police to come down and arrest you!” Sam snarled, trying not to wince from the electric sharp pain in his chest. The bastard had broken two of his ribs and a finger, and given him a shiner, and a split lip. No serious damage, but more than enough to get Sam’s hackles up.

He took a deep, careful breath to try to suss out the culprit again. “Whoever’s there had better speak up. You are dealing with a DCI, an upholder of the law!”

“No need to get you knickers in a bunch, Sammy. Can I call you Sammy?”

“No, you can’t. Who are you and why didn’t you answer before?”

“Because I’m not Gene Hunt. Seems as thought you’re being plagued with a considerable amount of mistaken identity today, aren’t you?”

Sam had to throw a hand up in front of his face as the lights flicked on. It almost felt as though he were waking up from the gun shot again: blinded from an excess of light and vulnerable. “Who are you then?”

“That is unimportant, Sam Tyler. Though, I would like to point out that Mr. Hunt did, in fact, have a very valid point. You are, actually, a sissy-face, uber-coward.” The figure came in close enough that finally, Sam could make out the defining features of the face.

“You’re—! You’re me! You’re Harold Saxon!”

The man wearing his face—God, he’s even eerier in person!—smiled creepily. It wasn’t even the fact that it was his face smiling so blandly back, it’s was the way the expression had shifted, altered just enough that the smile looked sardonic and unwelcoming. “Actually no, I’m neither.” The face scrunched up into an overly pitying expression. “You’re just you, and a failure at that.”

“What are you talking about? Listen, please leave my room now—”

“Aww…” That look again! The annoying “poor baby” look. “Look, you’re clearly tired; I’ll make this brief. You’re a loser and a failure. You did leave a lot of people to die. But that’s neither here nor there, is it?”

“…what? Listen! It is not 1980, I am not a murderer, and you have to leave now. Nurse!”

“Sam Tyler, you are so…very…alone. The lone point of sanity in a completely bonkers world.” Harold Saxon smiled a crocodile grin. “Why, I myself just came through the telly. But you haven’t the capacity to understand, do you? Simple, stupid ape. That’s why you have to wake up.”

“Get out of my room.”

“Tell me, Sam, are you a killer? Is Sam Tyler a murderer? Or is Harold Saxon lying comatose in a bed in 2007 because a mad man’s gonna and shot him in the kidney?”

“Get—what? Neither, you bleedin’ idiot! I’m Sam Tyler, I’ve been shot in the back, and I’m not a killer!”

Those shining, radioactive teeth peaking from behind a brilliant smile seemed to brighten and blind him again. “C’mon, Sam. You know the answer don’tcha? Right there in the back of your clever little brain. Put those pieces together, Sam.”

“What pieces? Who are you?”

But before he could get a proper answer, the apparition disappeared with a flash of white light. Sam sat bolt upright in bed, looking around for the voice he’d heard. The room was completely quiet and mostly dark, save for the BBC’s test card glowing dimly from the corner of the room. There, on the beat up telly, was the familiar sight of the little girl and her clown.

The clown winked.

“Time to wake up, Sam.”