Start Again

[tamcranver]

So, this was the story I wrote for yuletide. There were a lot of awesome stories, so I highly recommend checking it out, if you're into that sort of thing.



Start Again
Fandom: The Fugitive (1993 movie)
Written for: Mojave Dragonfly in the Yuletide 2005 Challenge


It seemed like it had been an eternity since Richard Kimble had last been
able to catch his breath. Between his constant flight from the police, the
bewildering path of investigation he'd been following, and the final fight
with a man he'd called a friend for over twenty years, he could barely
remember what it felt like to relax. But something in the way the marshal
had grinned at him as he'd put the cuffs on made Richard feel like for
once, he could take a break.

He avoided looking at the reporters as he walked out among a little crowd
of marshals. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to respond to them, and he
didn't feel like making the effort anyway. It was almost a relief when
they reached the police car and the head marshal ushered him in.

The head marshal got in next to him and looked him over with sharp eyes.
"Hey, Poole, you got that thing?" he said. The black woman sitting shotgun
answered in the affirmative, handing the marshal an icepack. The marshal
turned again towards Richard and said, "Give me your hands."

Too tired to wonder why the man would want his hands, Richard extended
them. To his great surprise, the marshal unlocked the handcuffs, set
Richard's hands back in his lap and put the icepack on them. The cold was
almost painful, against his bruised and bleeding hands, but it was a good
kind of pain.

"I thought you didn't care," he said to the head marshal.

"I don't." The marshal's solemn face held still for a moment before
breaking out into another of those roguish grins. "Don't tell anyone."

Richard smiled, too weak to really laugh, and leaned back into the seat.
But before he could let himself slip into unconsciousness, the marshal was
reaching for his hand again. "I'm sorry, where are my manners? I don't
believe we've been properly introduced. I'm Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard, up
there sitting shotgun is Deputy Marshal Grace Poole, and driving this
thing's Deputy Marshal Noah Newman."

The two marshals up front turned for a moment to look at him, and Richard
felt distinctly uncomfortable. "Pleased to meet you," he said uncertainly.
"I guess you probably know who I am."

Marshal Gerard snorted. "You could say that. Gotta tell you, Doctor, it's
a good thing you turned out to be innocent. Be a damn shame to put you
back in prison after all this."

"Oh, I don't know," Poole said. "I'd kind of like to put him back in
prison for being such a pain in the ass."

"Aw, she's just joking," Gerard said, obviously noting the horrified
expression Richard couldn't quite suppress. "But damn, Richard! I've been
doing this twenty-two years and I have never had such a tough time
catching a fugitive. Where'd a vascular surgeon learn so much about
running from the law?"

Truth be told, Richard hadn't been thinking about that at the time. There
had only been room in his mind for two objectives: to catch Helen's killer
and to avoid being caught himself. He'd never had the time or the
inclination to rest on his laurels and congratulate himself on evading
capture. He tried to think of a witty response to Gerard's question,
finally saying, "I watch a lot of TV."

Gerard chuckled. "That's clever. But seriously, Richard, how'd you do it?
I know you had a little help from Dr. Nichols there, but how much? And who
else helped you? What did you do for money?" Under this onslaught of
questions, Richard could only stare dumbly at Gerard. At this point, he
could barely remember how he had gotten from the wreckage of that prison
bus to the back of this car. In a gentler tone, Gerard added, "You'd be
doing me a big favor by telling me the whole story. It'd help a lot in
this fugitive-catching business. Why don't you start from the beginning?"

So he did. He started with the party on that fateful night, when Chuck
had borrowed his car and he'd been called away to operate on Lentz's
patient. If he covered his wife's murder rather quickly, the marshals
didn't comment. He told about his part in the bus crash, how he'd managed
by various means and disguises to make it back to Chicago, and how he had
made those first investigations into the one-armed man. Sometimes there
were parts he couldn't explain; often Gerard or one of the other marshals
could fill in the blanks, telling him about their own investigations into
Sykes. Richard was impressed--not only had they been one step behind him,
physically, but they'd figured out everything he had and gotten the
evidence to prove it, too.

Richard finished his story with a wry grin. "And here we are."

There was silence for a moment, and then Marshal Newman whistled from the
front seat, a low, long, impressed sound.

"Goddamn," said Gerard. "You are one persistent man, Dr. Richard Kimble."
He shook his head, but he was smiling.

"I guess I am," said Richard, feeling vaguely pleased with himself. "But
I had help, from Bones and Kath and...well, Chuck. I'm not sure I
understand that one, actually."

"What's that?"

"Well, if he wanted to discredit me, or kill me, why'd he help me?
Why...why didn't he tell you where I was, and why'd he get me those tests
at the hospital? Obviously I wouldn't be much of a threat to him on death
row. I don't understand why he'd deliberately run the risk that I'd figure
him out."

Gerard was shaking his head again. "I've seen that before, Richard. When
a man feels like he can't be caught, he likes to be a little daring. Gives
him a bit of an adrenaline rush. It's arrogance, that's what it is."

"Arrogance," Richard repeated softly to himself. Chuck had always taken
himself pretty seriously. He would never have thought him capable of that
level of stupid pride, though. Of course, he would never have thought him
capable of having Helen murdered, either. He felt himself scowl; as if it
hadn't been enough, having Helen taken from him, having his life
stolen--the culprit just had to be his best friend.

"Hey." Marshal Gerard laid a hand on his knee and patted it like one
might a dog. "Don't waste your time thinking about him. You did good,
Richard. You did real good."

His mood still bitter, Richard muttered, "I wish you'd tell a judge
that."

"I'm planning on it."

Startled out of his melancholy for a moment, Richard stared at the
marshal open-mouthed. Gerard sighed.

"You have got to be shittin' me! And here I thought you were a pretty
smart fellow! You think I'm in the habit of keeping my mouth shut while
innocent men get locked up? And don't answer that!" he said with a grin.
"Like I've been telling you, the U.S. Marshal's Office has been conducting
its own investigation, and I intend to hassle every judge and pull every
string I can to get your sentence overturned." He moved the hand from
Richard's knee to his shoulder and patted him reassuringly again. "It's
gonna take a while. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, or fast, but we're
gonna do it."

There wasn't much Richard could say to that, and the conversation sort of
died, but the silence as they rode to the Justice Department was
comfortable and, for the first time in months for Richard, happy.

As it turned out, Gerard had been right--it wasn't easy or fast. Though
Richard's celebrity speeded up the proceedings of justice considerably,
the month and a half he spent waiting for his appeal to go through felt
like an eternity. If it weren't for his friends' constant visits and the
perpetual reassurances of Gerard--or Sam, as he'd asked Richard to call
him--Richard felt he might have sunk into despair.

Richard was a little surprised to discover how much he liked and
respected Sam. While on the run, he'd feared him, which he supposed was a
sort of respect. He'd thought of him as morally bankrupt, at the time,
though--it was the "I don't care," that did it. But now that Sam wasn't
chasing Richard, now that he was visiting him in prison weekly and
bringing unbiased, matter-of-fact reports of how the appeal was going,
Richard found that Sam really was the kind of guy Richard wouldn't mind
being friends with. Far from being morally bankrupt, he frequently seemed
disgusted with the uneven application of justice in Richard's case and in
others he worked on. While his rude remarks about the incompetence he
encountered made Richard laugh, Sam seemed to take all the incompetence
and bias and underhandedness as a personal insult. And that was definitely
something Richard could respect.

Finally, it happened. At long last, Richard's sentence was overturned and
he was a free man. He felt like crying when Walter told him the news, but
he wasn't about to cry in front of Walter. The bastard had told him to
turn himself in.

The day of his release, Sam was waiting outside the prison with a beat-up
pick-up truck. Somehow, Richard felt he should have known that Sam would
drive such a truck. Sam sometimes seemed like he'd come out of a cigarette
ad or a Clint Eastwood movie. The thought of this made him return Sam's
congratulatory grin, and for a moment he was happy as he stepped into the
truck with his duffle bag full of dirty clothes that didn't fit him
anymore.

His happiness soon faded into discomfort. Sam kept up a steady stream of
chatter as they drove, but Richard had nothing to say, or rather he had
nothing he felt like saying. Obviously he could tell Sam about the guards
who had glared at him as he left, still sure he was guilty, which would
have made Sam mad, or about the nice letter he had gotten from the guard
whose life he saved, who was now working as a security guard for some
gated community in Massachusetts. He could have told him about the
numerous requests he'd received from prisoners to help them escape, too,
which Sam would have gotten a kick out of. But strangely enough, Richard
felt as if he lacked the energy to say anything at all.

For a month and a half, the strange half-life he'd lived since the death
of his wife had continued. He'd put all thoughts of house payments or
tennis or surgeries out of his mind, focusing completely on the struggle
to get himself out of prison. But now that he'd won, now that freedom was
his, he felt completely lost. His days as a surgeon seemed like a dream.
His bank had unfrozen his assets again, and he was shocked when he looked
at the balance and remembered that he'd been rich, once. He couldn't
imagine how he'd live without looking over his shoulder for cops or
without pursuing something. He'd gotten his revenge, but his life was
still gone.

The truck pulled up in front of Richard's house. It was as beautiful as
ever, but it looked like a stranger's home. Sam walked him to the door,
and he stood in the foyer for a moment looking around. His house looked
haunted. All the furniture was covered and dust was gathering everywhere.
The socially acceptable thing to do would be to offer Sam a drink, but
Richard didn't have a fucking clue what he'd find in his refrigerator. Did
he still have a refrigerator, even? Had anyone bothered to clean it out?

"Hmm." Sam looked around thoughtfully. "What a mess. Tell you what--you
call somebody to clean this stuff up, and you and I'll go somewhere. Get a
cup of coffee or something."

"I--yeah. That...sounds like a plan." Richard felt like a schmuck, but he
had bigger problems. Such as, how in the hell was he going to live in this
house he'd shared with Helen when she was gone and he wasn't who he'd
been?

He called a cleaning service. They weren't very happy when he told them
what shape the house was in, but when he told them his name, they perked
up considerably and said they'd have it all ready for him by that evening.
He and Sam got back into the truck.

Before they could get to a place that actually served any sort of
beverage, Sam's cell phone rang. While he talked, a solemn and exasperated
conversation full of exclamations of "Goddammit!" and "I don't care how
many strings you have to pull, just do it!" Richard thought of how he'd
been called away the night Helen died. He turned away and stared out the
window at the gray and rainy city.

Finally Sam hung up. "Sorry about this, Richard," he said, "but my kids
need me at work. You want me to drop you back off at your house, or you
want to come hang out at the marshals' office? It won't take long. It
better not take long."

The thought of lounging around in his dead house while people dusted it
and pulled sheets off the furniture wasn't really Richard's idea of a good
time. "If I wouldn't be in the way..."

Sam grinned. "No, no. Matter of fact, I bet the kids'd love to see you."

Frankly, Richard had long since given up wondering if the other marshals
ever got irritated about Sam calling them "kids." He could actually see
Sam as the patriarch of a little family of U.S. Marshals, and the thought
made him smile.

On the way to the marshals' office, Richard finally mustered the good
mood to say, "What's the problem?"

"At work, you mean?" Sam turned his weathered face towards Richard, but
his eyes were still on the road ahead. Without waiting for an answer, he
said, "Our fugitive--guy named Pierce--has stolen himself a car, which
seems to have vanished off the face of the earth."

"He's probably parked it somewhere, in a garage or something," Richard
said, thinking about what he would be doing if he were Pierce. "Maybe
he'll get another car there."

"Could be," Sam said, turning onto the road of the office. "For a while
we were getting reports on the stolen car, and we were about to send a
helicopter after him, but then--whoops! Man disappeared!"

Richard felt vaguely flattered that Sam had taken the time to pick him
up, because from what he knew of Sam, a helicopter chase was just his idea
of an afternoon pastime.

Someone had put a little sign over one of the parking spaces--a crudely
drawn dog and the words "Big Dog's Spot." Richard wasn't at all surprised
when Sam pulled into this space and got out. "You coming?" he asked
Richard over his shoulder.

They were met at the door by a vaguely familiar-looking little man. "Oh,
good, Sammy, you're here--hey! Dr. Kimble! Good to see you again!" The man
had introduced himself as Cosmo Renfro and was shaking his hand before
Richard realized it was the marshal who'd been carted off to the hospital
after Chuck had hit him in the head. Richard had only seen him a couple of
times, but the man acted as if they were old friends. He probably knew a
hell of a lot more about Richard than Richard knew about him.

As soon as Renfro let him go, he was set upon by Poole and Newman, who
were eager to hear how he was doing and to complain about their jobs. At
least, Newman was--Poole mostly stood around with an expression of amused
exasperation, occasionally making sharp remarks about Newman. In the midst
of this chaos, Sam walked away into an office, chuckling. Richard would
have followed him, but Renfro had come back with another marshal, a big
man named, appropriately, Biggs, who actually wanted Richard's medical
advice. He had high cholesterol and blood pressure, which came as no shock
to Richard. He tried to remember what he would have said to a patient four
months ago and wondered at all these people who had been chasing him down
to put him in prison but now sought him out as they might a friend.

"People!" Sam's roar carried across the whole building, and Renfro and
Biggs, who had been squabbling, fell silent. "We got a sighting.
Apparently Pierce dropped the stolen car by a convenience store in
Bloomington and hitched a ride. He's heading north, boys and girls!"

The office erupted in frenzied action. Richard watched with bemusement as
the marshals scurried around grabbing guns, files, and other assorted
equipment. Sam met his eyes over the chaos. "Dr. Kimble!" he called. "You
wanna come in my office for a minute?"

Richard pushed his way through and grinned. "I thought you'd never ask."

Sam chuckled. "Yeah, they can be pains in the ass sometimes." He raised
his voice and said, "Especially Renfro!"

"Aw, fuck you, Sammy!" Renfro said, shaking a fist at Sam.

"Come on in, Richard," Sam said, still laughing. He shut the door behind
them and leaned against his desk. "I guess I'm gonna have to take a rain
check on the coffee thing. You mind?"

"No. Good luck," Richard offered, a touch awkwardly, hoping Pierce had
actually committed the crime he'd been convicted for.

Sam nodded his thanks. "So, you going back to work at the hospital?"
Richard scratched his head. The truth was...he hadn't thought about it too
much. Every time one of his friends visited in prison, they'd assured him
that just as soon as he got out, they'd get him his old job back in no
time. But he didn't really have any idea how they'd do that. After all,
they must have hired another surgeon after Richard's conviction, and it
wouldn't be fair to waltz in and take the job back. Maybe he could have
Chuck's job, but he'd never been that interested in administration. And he
was so out of practice....He realized that Sam was still waiting for an
answer, so he shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I guess I'd have to talk
to the hospital."

"Oh, they'd be morons if they didn't hire back Dr. Richard Kimble," Sam
said. "I wouldn't worry about that if I were you. Have a lot of free time,
being a surgeon?"

"Not especially," Richard said. Although with Helen gone, he certainly
had more time than he had had before, more time than he knew what to do
with. He still couldn't stand the thought of going back to that house.

"Ah. Yeah, I thought that would probably be the case." Sam scratched
awkwardly at the back of his head.

"Why?" asked Richard.

"Well...on the off chance that you ever do have free time, would you mind
coming down here and doing a consult or two?"

Richard frowned, confused. "You mean a medical consult? Because I'm not
exactly an expert in criminal behavior...."

"Well, no. And the truth is, I could catch most of these schmucks without
really giving it too much thought. But, supposing we did get a
particularly clever fugitive, would you mind--Hell, I don't know, just
telling us what you'd do in his shoes?"

What was he supposed to say to that? No? "Sure."

"Ah. Thanks." Sam scratched his head once more and then stuck his hand in
his pocket. "Uh, Richard, don't get too big for your britches here,
but...well, you're a good guy to have around. Glad to see you don't let a
little thing like, eh..."

"You hunting me down like a rabid dog?"

"Precisely. Took the words right out of my mouth. Glad to see you don't
let that prejudice you against me."

Richard laughed out loud, and it felt great. Of all the things that had
happened to him over the last few months, meeting Sam Gerard had probably
been the best. "Yeah, well, I'll forgive it this once," he said, keeping
his voice light. "See that it doesn't happen again."

"Well, try not to get framed for any more crimes and I'll see what I can
do."

They grinned at each other for a moment, and then Sam had to go hunt down
the next fugitive. Renfro, who apparently was still out of the field due
to his earlier injuries, was willing--hell, eager--to drive Richard home,
chattering all the way. To think, he'd once jumped off a dam to avoid this
man. The cleaning people were still there when he got home, so Richard
took a walk. The air felt good on his face, even if it was still drizzling
a bit. He let his hair get wet and breathed deeply and felt like maybe
everything was going to be okay.