Al cares too.
No doubt caring and helping is Sam’s whole being, it’s like who Sam is.
But Al cares too, so much.
Soldier, pilot, astronout – always working with a team or crew, always working for this idea of greater good.
And marrying five times - this is how much he craves connection and longs for companionship and love (and also this is how much he foolishly, desperately hopes for not being abandoned this time around, god not this time again please but alas that’s another story).
So each time during the leaps a person is in danger of physical harm? Al is frantic to help, to get Sam there, he’s beeping and jumping there and back, shouting at Sam to do something. He can't help himself.
Al’s years as a soldier (in that wrong wrong war) and then those cursed years being a POW – he’s seen horrors every single of these days and couldn’t do anything about it.
Months and months in that damned cage, listening to the constant pained screams around him, seeing figures being carried, draged, and worse, and there was nothing he could do. Tearing on his shakles, shaking, wrenching, screaming himself at some point only to overtune the pain around him, and there was nothing he could do.
More often than not he’s in sheer panic when someone needs help during the leaps, because he cares so much, and because it’s Vietnam all over again, and because again he can’t do anything.
So he beeps and jumps and shouts and begs and panics, feeling darn helpless, and the only thing getting him through this mind fuck is his unwavering, endless trust in Sam to do what he himself can’t do. (And knowing he’ll never ever be disappointed, gosh Sam.)
So each time Sam saves a person, especially from physical harm? He’s saving a bit of Al, too.
This common need to help and do what must be done besides the personal cost - Sam and Al must have found it in each other early on and this profound value bound them together, made them so intensively compatible (in brain waves, minds, and hearts).
