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The first thing Sam does when he gets home from the hospital is to make himself some tea.
The process has hardly changed from when he made it in his small and shitty flat in 1973, but it still feels uncanny. The motions and steps are the same, it’s the little things that throw him off– the breadth of the kitchen, the color of the walls, the smell of dust in the air. It doesn’t feel like home, and he begins to wonder if it ever has. The piercing screech of the kettle is what makes him realize he’s been staring at a wall for the past 5 minutes.
The first sip burns his tongue, the pain blooming sharp on the flesh before flickering away. He doesn't bother waiting before taking another.
In 1973, if people thought he was strange (and most of his coworkers did) they’d at least be obvious about it. He had long gotten used to the sneers, stares, and whispers behind his back when he was still settling into his position as DI. But as time went by, he noticed less and less of them.
The day he returned to work in 2006 - and he did as soon as could - his department threw a small welcome back party. Despite being surrounded by people he’d worked with for nearly a decade, Sam could only see strangers. Not a day goes by where he doesn’t think about who he left behind, even as he’s told over and over and over that they were never real. Ironic how figments of his imagination feel more real than the flesh and blood right in front of him.
Despite that, he can’t bring himself to look up any of their names on his mobile. He doesn’t want to know.
Sam’s mother calls more often than she did before his accident. He tries to talk more than she does to make up for all the one sided conversations they had in the hospital, but eventually, he can’t think of anything new to say.
He visits more often, and they eat dinner together, a reminder of how things used to be. His mother's face takes him aback, her long blond locks now gray, her bright, youthful face weathered by the passage of time. Her palm is soft on his face, her voice concerned, and he can’t bring himself to tell her what’s wrong because she wouldn’t understand, no one does. No one understood back then or back there, and no one understands now.
Everything about his childhood has soured, knowing what he knows now, someone who was once shrouded in mystery having since revealed itself to be a grotesque and deformed illusion. He feels sick looking at photos of himself with his father. His younger self’s innocent face smiles back at him through the picture frame, his father beside him with his own joyous expression. Sam doesn’t know if he’s ever hated and loved anyone more in his life. There’s a small voice in the back of his mind insisting it isn’t true, that he shouldn’t trust whatever fucked up scenario his damaged brain created, but deep in his heart, he knows it is. Vic Tyler is a dirty criminal, and Sam is his son.
He’d always had a sneaking suspicion that something was slightly off. In his head, in his life, maybe even in himself, but even now, he doesn’t know what it could be. Every day is dull and monotonous, and his nights aren’t much different, absent of both dreams and nightmares. Despite this, every morning it feels as though he’d never slept at all. He almost wants the little blond girl and her creepy clown back. At least, then, he’d feel the bolt of fear she induces lance across his soul.
It’s not like he feels this hollow every waking hour– there are small instances where he feels like the person he could have been, should have been. A small chuckle where a funny retort is made here, the sparks of joy when United wins the game there. He just wishes he wasn’t right when he thinks about how they won't last.
Sam wonders, not for the first time, if this is what being alive is meant to feel like.
He never smoked when he - or rather, his mind, the doctors say - was in 1973, declining whenever Gene or Chris offered him a fag. But that doesn’t mean he’s never smoked at all. Back when he was still a newly promoted DCI, they just helped relieve a bit of the stress. The negative health impacts are what got him to stop– he’d be a pretty terrible son if he croaked before 40 because of something like that.
Unlike the scalding tea, cigarette burns sting as bright as the glowing ends of the damned things. It’s the kind of pain you feel radiating from the point of contact, even after the offending item has been pulled away. Any faded blemishes on his forearm are soon covered by the small circle-shaped lesions, covered again by the long sleeve of his shirt. A fiery itchiness soon emerges, and it takes a bit of effort to pretend he doesn’t notice.
He’s ashamed to admit he’s slightly grateful for the lingering quality of the burns. He wants, no, he needs to feel every second of it, every prickle and stab of pain as the skin heals over and leaves a scar. It’s real. This is real. It has to be real.
Maybe that’s why his blood runs cold when he sees, not feels, the red dripping out of the cut on his thumb.
He’s going to die. The whistling of the wind feels like a fanfare in his ears, finally, finally, for once in his life he can do something right, for once in his life he knows what wants. The last thing he sees is the sun, blinding and bright, the same sun that shone its warmth into The Railway Arms, reflecting off the freshly cleaned counter and half-filled glasses after a job well done. The memory is sharp, sharper than anything about his life in 2006. It’s real, he’s going to die, and he’s never wanted anything more.