A Fair Distance: Running on Empty. Chapter Six

Aug 28, 2007 07:54

Challenge 201  Gratitude
Title: A Fair Distance:Running on Empty. Chapter Six
Author: Laurie
Type: Slash
Rating: Pg-13 for language
Warning: none
Disclaimer:  These guys ain’t mine. This story is transformative in nature. Permission to archive given.
Picture by slipperieslopeBeta’ed by the excellent, and overworked recently by me,
t_verano
Summary:  Blair no longer lives in Cascade with Jim, and he’s in trouble with the law.
The beginning of this story




A Fair Distance:Running on Empty. Chapter Six

It was happening again, although I’d never remembered anything once I’d returned to consciousness.  And how unfair was it that I kept getting pulled into Jim’s dreamscape instead of strolling through my very own spiritual plane?  Instead of the blue, blue jungle scene before me, why couldn’t it be a nice tropical beach with a coral reef where I could go snorkeling and check out all the marine life?  Why couldn’t I have a hammock that I could swing in while I read books I couldn’t afford to buy in real life?

My subconscious was chiding me now by singing that old Stones song that exclaims, ‘you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.’  I guess I need some resolution from the spirit world, or I wouldn’t keep coming back here to Blue Jungle Land.  This has been occurring since I left Cascade; I would be the wolf or my own naked form - and how come Jim got clothes to wear when he was in human form in the jungle and I didn’t? - and I would be doing what I was now, running and hiding from the dark panther or Jungle Jim.

I was losing any anthropologist - observer - researcher perspective now, falling deeper into a state of something like a trance.  Soon I would be lost in the experience and unable to control what was taking place…

I was the wolf now, and I was running, running, dodging around fallen logs and crashing through underbrush.  I found a path upwards and followed it, listening behind me to the sounds of the panther’s big paws thudding against the ground.  So far, I had managed to elude the big cat during my sojourns into the spirit plane.  I didn’t know why the dark panther was coming after me now; in earlier visits to Blue Jungle Land, Jim’s spirit animal had padded past my hiding places, ignoring my wolf-form or my naked appearance.  The panther had to have known I was there by smelling my scent, but he would act disdainful and stalk haughtily away from me.  He wasn’t ignoring me now, though; the large spirit animal was angry with me, roaring as he chased me; adrenaline was flooding through my body as I hurled myself up the trail.  I was panting and exhausted and I needed to rest.

A rock formation caught my eye and I veered off the trail to investigate.   There was a small cave and I dropped into it, feeling safe for the moment because this cave was too small for the panther to get inside.  I changed to human form as I laid there, heaving great breaths of air into my lungs.  My naked self was too thin and bled from places I’d injured while trying to get away from the big cat.  I didn’t understand the dark panther’s anger and was afraid of the large spirit figure, afraid that the panther would catch me and tear my heart out.  What could Jim’s spirit form want from me now?  Hadn’t I done what Jim wanted by leaving him alone?  The dark panther should have been looking for a new mate, a mate he was content with and didn’t try to hide from other’s eyes.   Instead, my ex-mate’s spirit kept pulling my spirit into a form of contact, even if it was just the wolf observing the panther from a distance, or Jim in his jungle camouflage walking past where naked me hid in the bushes.

I curled myself into a ball and started rocking back and forth; I was so tired and miserable.  Every time I made a new den, I would return from secretly watching the panther to find it ripped apart, and I would feel compelled to run away and find another hiding place.  It disheartened me and confused me because why had the panther done that, why did he care if I had a place to rest?  How had he managed to destroy my respite places despite my covert observations of him?  Maybe it would be better to let the panther catch me and end my existence.   I heard the panther roaring in the distance and felt tears start to slip down my face; I grieved for the loss of the love the panther had once felt for me, for the loss of the love that Jim had once felt for me, as the air started changing from blue to normal…

~oo~oo~oo~oo~

I woke up slowly, pulled out of sleep by a voice that kept calling my name, feeling a remnant of sadness from my muddled dream, but I couldn’t remember why I felt sad or what I had cried about in my sleep.  The sticky trails of tears on my face were my proof, though, and I wiped my hand over my cheeks to get rid of the evidence.  I didn’t want anybody to know I sometimes cried in my sleep. Hey, your subconscious does its own thing; and when you’re asleep, man, you’re hostage to it, and it can do anything it wants.  Make you feel like you can fly, have an orgasm, cry…

It was Dave who was trying to get my attention.  He came over closer to the bunk and reached down to feel my forehead.  Why do people do that to me?  Can’t they just ask if I’m running a fever?  Simon and Jim used to do it, too.  You’d think nobody trusted me to tell the truth about the fever thing.

“Blair, you were havin’ a nightmare when I did my prisoner check, that’s why I woke you up; but now that you’re really awake this time, I want to take your temperature.  You can drink some more liquids, too, like Maddie lectured us both about doing religiously.”

“Dave, you sure you’re a cop and not some overgrown mother hen?”

“Come along now, my cranky lil’ chick, and drink your juice.  I’m not goin’ to cuff you right now, as long as you behave, so don’t make me regret dropping procedure.”

Dropping procedure or not, he still took my arm as he walked me back to the Chief’s office and his ever-so-comfortable couch.  I was handed a bottle of grape juice and submitted to having my temperature taken again.  Not as high this time; it was 101.2.  We’d had some arguments over taking fever-reducing meds and compromised that if my temp were over 102, I would take some Tylenol.  I opened my mouth to explain again about the benefits of a fever cooking the bad germs in your body, but Dave pointed his finger at me and said, “Hush up, Blair.  I still remember the lecture from the last time you gave it.”

It made me sad, in a way, to be talking to him tonight because our banter reminded me of how Jim and I used to talk to each other, when we were still talking to each other.

There was an old guitar leaning against the wall in the Chief’s office, and Dave spotted me looking it over.

“You play?” he asked me, while he leaned against the wall by the door.  When I nodded, he walked over to the beat-up instrument and handed it to me to look over.  “This was my kid brother’s guitar and I’m supposed to put it with the rummage sale stuff for our next fundraiser, but you can bang around on it if you want.”

I ran my hands over the frets and tried out a few notes.  This baby was pretty much out of tune, and I started tightening up strings and trying out a few strums.  It wasn’t a work of art, but it was serviceable.

“I used to have a really nice electric guitar that my mom had given me, but it was stolen a while ago.  Now, nobody believes me about this, but this guitar my mom gave me, Jimi Hendrix gave it to her, and he even signed it for her.  It was given to him by a musical instrument company and he gave it away. To Mom. Cool, Huh?  Mom gave it to me on my twelfth birthday.  I did like to play but there never seemed to be enough time to really get into it much, so mostly I’d just plunk around on it for my own amusement.  I never really played in a band or anything, except for fooling around with the cover bands that were booked at a place I worked at in Cascade.  During their breaks, or after hours, sometimes the guys would jam a little, and they would let me sit in with them.”

Dave had raised his eyebrows at this torrent of probably unwanted information, and I felt a little stupid for getting carried away.  I generally didn’t babble as much these days as I used to, although I did talk to people.  I’d meant it when I’d told Jim and Brother Marcus, up at St. Sebastian’s monastery, that I couldn’t take a vow of silence.  Not unless somebody cut out my tongue, and wasn’t that a gruesome thought.

“That’s a right interestin’ story.  Jimi Hendrix, you say.  Well, if you stay on the couch and drink some more juice and water, then you can sit up with me and entertain me while I do some paperwork. It gets pretty quiet here in the middle of the night unless we’ve got domestics to deal with or fool kids acting up.”

“Okay.”  I wasn’t that eager to go back to sleep yet, and I didn’t want to spend any more time working myself up about my upcoming date with whoever was coming from Cascade.  Dave had said he couldn’t get confirmation on who they sent, but he should be here in the morning. Probably Dave was told not to tell me.  I had to really clamp down on my impulse to bug him about it.  I just had a strong feeling it was going to be Jim and that he was not going to be happy to see me.  I was grateful to have a distraction from my thoughts, so I finished tuning his brother’s guitar and started playing some blues tunes.  Hey, I was a walking, talking blues lyric myself, totally so; with no job, no money, no home, no lover; sick, and in jail.  Might as well express the muse in a fitting manner, so the blues were perfect.

I played till I got so sleepy that I just kind of slid down on the couch and felt myself falling back into sleep…

~oo~oo~oo~oo~

Slowly the air around me darkened down into the familiar blue of Jim’s spirit plane jungle.  I looked down at my naked self and felt a compulsion to run and find a safe place to hide.  I took off through the jungle, batting away vines and leaping over fallen logs.   The jungle seemed to be denser, closing in on me, the vines trying to snarl around my ankles, the branches holding me back as I pushed frantically through them, looking wildly around for a place to hide.  I couldn’t hear or see the panther, but I knew he was coming.  He was coming, and I sensed his determination to find me.   I altered form, dropping to all fours as I changed into my wolf-self, moving faster than I could as a human.  I ran and ran and ran but never saw any place where I could hide from my pursuer.

I was so tired now and I had to rest, even if it wasn’t in a hidden spot, so I threw myself down on the jungle grass and concentrated on getting oxygen into my lungs.  My four legs were trembling from exhaustion, my throat parched, and I longed for water to drink and to cool off my body.  I was so hot, and the air had stilled and it was stifling me, but I knew I had to get up and run again because I could hear the panther screaming in the not too far away distance.

I pushed myself up and started moving again, loping down a path that twisted and turned as it wound through the jungle.  I couldn’t run any faster and my limbs were heavy and difficult to move.   I felt scared but determined to get away, hoping that the panther would forget about me and leave me alone.  I heard the panther roar again, and he was so, so close now.  I had put on a burst of speed, fear powering my muscles, when I heard the rhythmic beat of the dark panther’s paws as it closed in behind me.  The trail twisted; I chanced a look behind me and saw that the big cat had dropped away from the chase.  I kept going, and I dared to think that I had escaped him, once again.

I was running with difficulty, breathing erratically, looking for a new hiding place… and the big cat jumped out in front of me.  I tried to stop my momentum and turn and run in a different direction but as I skidded and twisted, the panther leaped toward me, and then he was on me, rolling me over and over till I felt dizzy and sick.  I lay on my back, the dark panther’s weight across my body; held immobile and trembling with fear.  The panther’s eyes were locked with mine; his paws were holding my wolf’s head still as he lowered his head towards my neck, and I -- a brilliant white flash dazzled my eyes.

I found myself abruptly wide-awake on the couch -- I was awake, and burning up again; so thirsty. And I remembered.  I remembered my time in the blue jungle; I remembered all the times I had spent there, running and hiding.  Holy Krishna, I’d been in contact with Jim the whole time I was gone, on the spirit plane!  When we’d touched I’d been afraid the big cat would tear out my throat.  Instead, something must have connected, because I had never remembered any of my other times in Blue Jungle Land before that white light blitzed me.  Oh man, oh man, oh fuck!  I gave an involuntary moan and Dave came in to investigate.  He frowned at me and felt my forehead, then reached for the thermometer again as I struggled to sit up.

“I think your fever’s gone up again,” he said as he stuck the thermometer in my mouth.

I pulled it out and looked up at Dave, feeling apprehension and resignation emanating from every fiber of my body.

“Jim’s here, somewhere close by.  He’s going to be the one to question me, probably very soon.”

“Know that, do you?  Well, if he’s here or not, you’re still sick; and you just put that right back in your mouth.  Whatever comes, comes; and -- who is he to you, Blair?  Is he still your friend, or was he more than a friend to you?  No, don’t bother trying to talk.  Judging by the look on your face, you’ll probably not be tellin’ me the truth now anyway.”  He took the thermometer out of my hand and slid it back in my mouth.

I sat there as Dave twisted open a bottle of water, feeling stunned to go along with feeling sick. Jim was here and he was coming for me.  Jim was coming for me.  Oh, man!  Oh, shit!  I cannot believe how my Karma  keeps getting sucked down to the eighth level of hell, the one intended for liars and frauds.  Man, I see Karma’s effect in my life again; the punishment for fraud on the eighth level is disease.

‘Calm down,’ I told myself.  This was no time to go off on half-baked existential tangents.

Well, I’d just have to deal.  I could do it.  I’ve been dealing with shit my whole life by myself, and I can handle seeing Jim.  Although part of me just wants to bolt for the door, the other, more sensible part wants to get this confrontation over with so we both can get some closure.  And oh, yeah, there are some questions to get cleared up about Chancellor Edwards.  Maybe all this will be over in a couple of hours and I can still get to North Carolina before my deadline is up.  I have till Monday late afternoon to show up at the trucking office, before they take the hold off that position and go with another applicant.  Yeah, I can do this.

And maybe seeing Jim won’t be as bad as my spirit animal seems to think it will be.

Maybe…

Hopefully…

‘Think positive thoughts, Blair, think positive thoughts…’

A Fair Distance:Running on Empty. Chapter Seven

challenge 201, slash, sentinel thursday, a fair distance, the sentinel

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