Fic: i'M a Sentinel, Yipee (The Sentinel/iCarly PG gen XO)
Title: i'M a Sentinel, Yipee
Fandoms: The Sentinel, iCarly
Rating: PG, just because; as gen as the shows (post Freddie/Sam)
Length: ~1,800 words
Written for the April Amnesty challenge on hc_bingo.
Note: A number of years ago, I started a series of Sentinel stories, beginning with Chiefly, in which Blair finds himself working full-time with people, especially children and teens, with highly acute senses. In the first story, I wrote:
Almost as soon as the cameras had stopped clicking in Jim's face, Blair had started to get letters, calls, emails, people on their doorstep. "My little girl won't eat anything but fruit, and won't wear anything but pajamas." "They say my son is autistic, but he's very social. What do I do with him?" "My brother can't even go into a supermarket." "My parents don't know where I am, but I just couldn't live in that house anymore." "Why do I notice the fog so much, when nobody else is blinded by it?" "I can read things nobody else can and pick out individual voices in a stadium. Surely there's something useful I can do with this?" "The nursing facility says my mother is delusional, but she's always been able to see and hear things nobody else can. It's never been a problem. Can you write a note saying she's sane?" "Can you help my child?" "Can you help my friend?" "Can you help me?"
This is the story of the first kids to land on his doorstep.
(Not familiar with The Sentinel? It’s one of the best fandoms for h/c ever; give it a whirl!)
Prompts: Fighting, hospital stay, pandemics and epidemics, first transformation.
Shortly after TSbyBS…
Having your world be turned upside-down was enough to make a guy miss little things. Still, Blair couldn’t help thinking that Jim waving a box of surgical masks in his face like it was a winning lottery ticket came with a backstory that he really should’ve already been hip to.
“Um, the blue will make your eyes pop?” was the best he could come up with.
“You don’t want to know what I paid for these!” Jim said, “But now we can go outside.”
“You just were outside,” Blair said. He’d been avoiding going out, himself; the reporters had gotten bored and gone away after a day or two, but Blair just hadn’t been in the mood to do much, and Jim’d kept the loft stocked with bean sprouts and craft beer, so there’d been no need.
“Yeah, mask is in my pocket,” said Jim. “I hate wearing it longer than I absolutely have to.”
“Who are you planning to operate on?”
Jim’s usual pre-diatribe brow-wrinkling was halted by a knock at the door. He quickly drew out his mask, but was still fiddling with the elastic as Blair went to check things out.
The boy in the hall was also wearing a mask - a much more impressive deal than what Jim was sporting (or trying to sport). The sort a cute Medecins Sans Frontières nurse heading into a tuberculosis hotspot had once shown Blair on a trans-Pacific overnight. Somebody didn’t want this kid breathing in anything but air.
“Are you Blair Sandberg?” the kid asked when Blair let him in. “You’ve got to help my friend.”
- - - - -
The kid’s name was Fredward Benson, “Call me Freddie,” age 17, a high school junior from Seattle. He’d hopped an intercity bus that morning after finding out that “this girl I hate, Sam Puckett,” had been institutionalized “again” by her mother.
“I haven’t seen her for about a week - school’s been optional, you know, because of the flu epidemic, and Sam’s not someone who goes to school when there’s an out. And I didn’t call at first because, you know, I hate her. Anyway, I called last night and her mom told me Sam’d gone crazy, started tearing her clothes off, and hearing things, and accusing her mom of trying to kill her by poisoning the Fritos… so I went to the hospital, but they wouldn’t let me in, because of what happened last time…”
Blair started to ask about “last time” but Jim seemed engrossed in Freddie’s story so Blair just grabbed a pad of paper and started taking notes, old habits dying hard.
“Then I realized that what Mrs. Puckett was saying about Sam sounded just like what it would be like if her senses had gone all super-wonky on her. So here I am. Dr. Sandburg, can you override Sam’s mom and get her out of Troubled Waters?”
“I’m not a Doctor…” Blair protested, but Jim was grabbing his jacket and readjusting his mask, so Blair shrugged and followed.
- - - - - -
“I can’t believe this place is actually called Troubled Waters,” Blair said as Jim pulled up outside the grim-looking brown-brick edifice.
“I know, right?” said Freddie. “I looked it up; half its endowment comes from a huge Simon & Garfunkel fan.”
Ten minutes later, Jim’s badge had gotten them onto a wing of the building that looked like every hospital Blair had ever been in. (Blair thought the masks all three of them were now wearing also might have helped.) A minute later, they followed the boy into a room just large enough for a bed; and in the bed was a terrified little blond girl; Sam Puckett, Blair presumed.
Terrified? In half an eye blink, she’d become enraged, straining against leather straps around her wrists. “Fredward, get me out of here!” she screamed. “They’re trying to kill me.”
“I wish,” said Freddie, perching on the side of her bed; she kicked him off, and Freddie looked like he was now casing the room for something to poke her with.
“You’re never going to get homeward bound that way,” said Jim. The kids stopped and stared at him.
“Who the hell are you?” Sam asked.
“I am a rock,” said Jim. “But you don’t have to be. Do you understand me?”
“He’s as crazy as Spencer,” said Sam. “Fredward, you brought me crazy people!”
“He’s a cop; he’s packing,” said Freddie. “He was the best I can do until Spencer gets back from visiting Carly and their dad.”
- - - - - -
It was ridiculously easy to spring Sam; figuring out what to do next was harder. It had been blindingly obvious that Troubled Waters wasn’t where she belonged, but delivering her home to her mother didn’t seem like a viable option either.
“She could stay with me, but my mom’s crazy,” said Freddie from the back seat of Jim’s king cab.
“And I hate her,” said Sam.
Jim lowered his mask and mouthed, “Has that word changed meaning?” to Blair; Blair shrugged.
Then, as one, the kids said, “The Shays!” Blair had no idea what that meant, but soon they were in the thick of downtown Seattle, Freddie and Sam calling conflicting directions to Jim, who was ignoring them. Then they were parked, sneaking past the doorman, up the elevator, and, with a brief pause so that Sam could pick the lock, into a surprisingly-coolly-decorated apartment. Like, artist cool. Cool.
“I’d feel better if you’d had a key,” said Jim.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “I lose keys.” Then, “Would you idiots take off those masks?” So they did.
She plopped onto the sofa, then said, “Feed me, Fredward. I haven’t had anything but lime jello in days.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m betting there’s spaghetti taco fixings…”
As the boy started cooking in the kitchen area, Jim and Blair both settled into mismatched chairs. “Okay, start at the beginning,” Jim directed; Blair thought that that might be dangerously open-ended, but Sam, after seeming to weigh her options, opted not to be a smart-ass.
“It started about a week ago,” she said. “My mom was off somewhere, half my friends were sick, the other half were afraid of getting sick, we haven’t paid the cable bill so the TV and internet have been out… So last Saturday I was just home all day messing with stuff and it was fine, but by Sunday it was feeling creepy, like I could hear what nothing sounded like…”
“There’s her period of isolation,” said Blair to Jim. “Textbook sentinel ability trigger. Well, if there was a textbook.”
Jim nodded and waved him quiet. “The sound of silence?” he suggested to Sam.
“Yeah,” she said, “Um…” she seemed to be singing the song through in her head, “Actually, nothing like that, except neon’s always cheesed up my eyes….
“Anyway, I almost went to school Monday, even though they’d made it optional… By Tuesday, I couldn’t. Then my mom finally came home and I guess we had a fight. I don’t really remember. And now it’s…”
“Thursday!” called Freddie from the kitchen.
“Thursday, and here I am. A fugitive from the mental health system. I’d be more freaked, but I don’t want to scare Fredward.”
She took a deep breath, then continued. “I’m figuring Freddie hunted you down for a reason. You can make me normal again?”
“You’d hate normal!” Freddie called.
“You can help me pass for normal again?” Sam corrected.
“I think so,” said Blair. “I’m betting you’ve always had pretty good senses; you probably have tools you don’t even know you use. We just have to figure out which of those work now that your senses are enhanced, which are just getting in the way, and maybe come up with some new tricks. Okay?”
- - - - - -
Sam took to the notion of mental ‘dials,’ which could be used to increase and decrease sensory acuity, as quickly as Jim had, though Blair could see that actually being able to use them under normal conditions would take work. The first real challenge came when Freddie plopped a platter of spaghetti tacos on the coffee table; Sam took a bite and declared them poisoned. Slowly, they worked through her response - helped her filter and modulate her sense of taste, texture, smell, even hearing.
She could only eat two, compared to the three or four the rest of them ate. After, Freddie cleared away the dishes, then sat next to Sam on the sofa and pulled her toward him; she leaned in and put her head on his shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked, and she nodded. “Can you keep from biting everyone’s head off long enough to let us help you?” he asked, and she nodded again.
“Picking that lock… it’s always been easy, but I didn’t even have to think about it today,” she said. “The difference between seeing through fog and through clear air.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell these particular adults that you want to become a master thief,” said Freddie.
Jim looked at his watch, and Blair remembered that Jim, at least, had things he had to do that afternoon back in Cascade. Freddie assured them they’d be okay - turns out, he lived directly across the hall - and Blair promised to call that evening and then come back the next afternoon to work more with Sam, with Freddie observing.
- - - - -
Once they were back in Jim’s truck (masks back in place, per Jim’s order) and on the road, Blair asked, “Was that legal? Can we really leave them there?”
“She’s 17; it’s a grey area. Plenty of culpability to go around, if it comes to that, but I ran a check on her and her family before we left Cascade and I really don’t think it will.”
“Okay, morally and ethically, what are we getting ourselves into?”
“Hell if I know, chief,” said Jim. “I think they’re set up okay. Sam’s a quick study; both of them are. Unfortunately, there’s something huge they’re missing.”
“Huh?”
“You.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow.”
“No, I mean what-you-do you, not what-you-know. I mean, a partner. A guide.”
“You don’t think Freddie’s up to it?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. They’re 17. He might not even be remotely interested. It’s a hell of a commitment.”
Commitment? Had Blair, at some point, made a commitment to Jim?
And would Jim freak out when he realized he was making Blair freak out?
But Jim was laughing now, behind his mask. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start singing ‘Cecilia’ to you,” he said, “as long as you don’t start singing ‘Fifty ways to leave your sentinel.’”
* * * THE END * * *
Fandoms: The Sentinel, iCarly
Rating: PG, just because; as gen as the shows (post Freddie/Sam)
Length: ~1,800 words
Written for the April Amnesty challenge on hc_bingo.
Note: A number of years ago, I started a series of Sentinel stories, beginning with Chiefly, in which Blair finds himself working full-time with people, especially children and teens, with highly acute senses. In the first story, I wrote:
Almost as soon as the cameras had stopped clicking in Jim's face, Blair had started to get letters, calls, emails, people on their doorstep. "My little girl won't eat anything but fruit, and won't wear anything but pajamas." "They say my son is autistic, but he's very social. What do I do with him?" "My brother can't even go into a supermarket." "My parents don't know where I am, but I just couldn't live in that house anymore." "Why do I notice the fog so much, when nobody else is blinded by it?" "I can read things nobody else can and pick out individual voices in a stadium. Surely there's something useful I can do with this?" "The nursing facility says my mother is delusional, but she's always been able to see and hear things nobody else can. It's never been a problem. Can you write a note saying she's sane?" "Can you help my child?" "Can you help my friend?" "Can you help me?"
This is the story of the first kids to land on his doorstep.
(Not familiar with The Sentinel? It’s one of the best fandoms for h/c ever; give it a whirl!)
Prompts: Fighting, hospital stay, pandemics and epidemics, first transformation.
Shortly after TSbyBS…
Having your world be turned upside-down was enough to make a guy miss little things. Still, Blair couldn’t help thinking that Jim waving a box of surgical masks in his face like it was a winning lottery ticket came with a backstory that he really should’ve already been hip to.
“Um, the blue will make your eyes pop?” was the best he could come up with.
“You don’t want to know what I paid for these!” Jim said, “But now we can go outside.”
“You just were outside,” Blair said. He’d been avoiding going out, himself; the reporters had gotten bored and gone away after a day or two, but Blair just hadn’t been in the mood to do much, and Jim’d kept the loft stocked with bean sprouts and craft beer, so there’d been no need.
“Yeah, mask is in my pocket,” said Jim. “I hate wearing it longer than I absolutely have to.”
“Who are you planning to operate on?”
Jim’s usual pre-diatribe brow-wrinkling was halted by a knock at the door. He quickly drew out his mask, but was still fiddling with the elastic as Blair went to check things out.
The boy in the hall was also wearing a mask - a much more impressive deal than what Jim was sporting (or trying to sport). The sort a cute Medecins Sans Frontières nurse heading into a tuberculosis hotspot had once shown Blair on a trans-Pacific overnight. Somebody didn’t want this kid breathing in anything but air.
“Are you Blair Sandberg?” the kid asked when Blair let him in. “You’ve got to help my friend.”
- - - - -
The kid’s name was Fredward Benson, “Call me Freddie,” age 17, a high school junior from Seattle. He’d hopped an intercity bus that morning after finding out that “this girl I hate, Sam Puckett,” had been institutionalized “again” by her mother.
“I haven’t seen her for about a week - school’s been optional, you know, because of the flu epidemic, and Sam’s not someone who goes to school when there’s an out. And I didn’t call at first because, you know, I hate her. Anyway, I called last night and her mom told me Sam’d gone crazy, started tearing her clothes off, and hearing things, and accusing her mom of trying to kill her by poisoning the Fritos… so I went to the hospital, but they wouldn’t let me in, because of what happened last time…”
Blair started to ask about “last time” but Jim seemed engrossed in Freddie’s story so Blair just grabbed a pad of paper and started taking notes, old habits dying hard.
“Then I realized that what Mrs. Puckett was saying about Sam sounded just like what it would be like if her senses had gone all super-wonky on her. So here I am. Dr. Sandburg, can you override Sam’s mom and get her out of Troubled Waters?”
“I’m not a Doctor…” Blair protested, but Jim was grabbing his jacket and readjusting his mask, so Blair shrugged and followed.
- - - - - -
“I can’t believe this place is actually called Troubled Waters,” Blair said as Jim pulled up outside the grim-looking brown-brick edifice.
“I know, right?” said Freddie. “I looked it up; half its endowment comes from a huge Simon & Garfunkel fan.”
Ten minutes later, Jim’s badge had gotten them onto a wing of the building that looked like every hospital Blair had ever been in. (Blair thought the masks all three of them were now wearing also might have helped.) A minute later, they followed the boy into a room just large enough for a bed; and in the bed was a terrified little blond girl; Sam Puckett, Blair presumed.
Terrified? In half an eye blink, she’d become enraged, straining against leather straps around her wrists. “Fredward, get me out of here!” she screamed. “They’re trying to kill me.”
“I wish,” said Freddie, perching on the side of her bed; she kicked him off, and Freddie looked like he was now casing the room for something to poke her with.
“You’re never going to get homeward bound that way,” said Jim. The kids stopped and stared at him.
“Who the hell are you?” Sam asked.
“I am a rock,” said Jim. “But you don’t have to be. Do you understand me?”
“He’s as crazy as Spencer,” said Sam. “Fredward, you brought me crazy people!”
“He’s a cop; he’s packing,” said Freddie. “He was the best I can do until Spencer gets back from visiting Carly and their dad.”
- - - - - -
It was ridiculously easy to spring Sam; figuring out what to do next was harder. It had been blindingly obvious that Troubled Waters wasn’t where she belonged, but delivering her home to her mother didn’t seem like a viable option either.
“She could stay with me, but my mom’s crazy,” said Freddie from the back seat of Jim’s king cab.
“And I hate her,” said Sam.
Jim lowered his mask and mouthed, “Has that word changed meaning?” to Blair; Blair shrugged.
Then, as one, the kids said, “The Shays!” Blair had no idea what that meant, but soon they were in the thick of downtown Seattle, Freddie and Sam calling conflicting directions to Jim, who was ignoring them. Then they were parked, sneaking past the doorman, up the elevator, and, with a brief pause so that Sam could pick the lock, into a surprisingly-coolly-decorated apartment. Like, artist cool. Cool.
“I’d feel better if you’d had a key,” said Jim.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “I lose keys.” Then, “Would you idiots take off those masks?” So they did.
She plopped onto the sofa, then said, “Feed me, Fredward. I haven’t had anything but lime jello in days.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’m betting there’s spaghetti taco fixings…”
As the boy started cooking in the kitchen area, Jim and Blair both settled into mismatched chairs. “Okay, start at the beginning,” Jim directed; Blair thought that that might be dangerously open-ended, but Sam, after seeming to weigh her options, opted not to be a smart-ass.
“It started about a week ago,” she said. “My mom was off somewhere, half my friends were sick, the other half were afraid of getting sick, we haven’t paid the cable bill so the TV and internet have been out… So last Saturday I was just home all day messing with stuff and it was fine, but by Sunday it was feeling creepy, like I could hear what nothing sounded like…”
“There’s her period of isolation,” said Blair to Jim. “Textbook sentinel ability trigger. Well, if there was a textbook.”
Jim nodded and waved him quiet. “The sound of silence?” he suggested to Sam.
“Yeah,” she said, “Um…” she seemed to be singing the song through in her head, “Actually, nothing like that, except neon’s always cheesed up my eyes….
“Anyway, I almost went to school Monday, even though they’d made it optional… By Tuesday, I couldn’t. Then my mom finally came home and I guess we had a fight. I don’t really remember. And now it’s…”
“Thursday!” called Freddie from the kitchen.
“Thursday, and here I am. A fugitive from the mental health system. I’d be more freaked, but I don’t want to scare Fredward.”
She took a deep breath, then continued. “I’m figuring Freddie hunted you down for a reason. You can make me normal again?”
“You’d hate normal!” Freddie called.
“You can help me pass for normal again?” Sam corrected.
“I think so,” said Blair. “I’m betting you’ve always had pretty good senses; you probably have tools you don’t even know you use. We just have to figure out which of those work now that your senses are enhanced, which are just getting in the way, and maybe come up with some new tricks. Okay?”
- - - - - -
Sam took to the notion of mental ‘dials,’ which could be used to increase and decrease sensory acuity, as quickly as Jim had, though Blair could see that actually being able to use them under normal conditions would take work. The first real challenge came when Freddie plopped a platter of spaghetti tacos on the coffee table; Sam took a bite and declared them poisoned. Slowly, they worked through her response - helped her filter and modulate her sense of taste, texture, smell, even hearing.
She could only eat two, compared to the three or four the rest of them ate. After, Freddie cleared away the dishes, then sat next to Sam on the sofa and pulled her toward him; she leaned in and put her head on his shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked, and she nodded. “Can you keep from biting everyone’s head off long enough to let us help you?” he asked, and she nodded again.
“Picking that lock… it’s always been easy, but I didn’t even have to think about it today,” she said. “The difference between seeing through fog and through clear air.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell these particular adults that you want to become a master thief,” said Freddie.
Jim looked at his watch, and Blair remembered that Jim, at least, had things he had to do that afternoon back in Cascade. Freddie assured them they’d be okay - turns out, he lived directly across the hall - and Blair promised to call that evening and then come back the next afternoon to work more with Sam, with Freddie observing.
- - - - -
Once they were back in Jim’s truck (masks back in place, per Jim’s order) and on the road, Blair asked, “Was that legal? Can we really leave them there?”
“She’s 17; it’s a grey area. Plenty of culpability to go around, if it comes to that, but I ran a check on her and her family before we left Cascade and I really don’t think it will.”
“Okay, morally and ethically, what are we getting ourselves into?”
“Hell if I know, chief,” said Jim. “I think they’re set up okay. Sam’s a quick study; both of them are. Unfortunately, there’s something huge they’re missing.”
“Huh?”
“You.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow.”
“No, I mean what-you-do you, not what-you-know. I mean, a partner. A guide.”
“You don’t think Freddie’s up to it?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. They’re 17. He might not even be remotely interested. It’s a hell of a commitment.”
Commitment? Had Blair, at some point, made a commitment to Jim?
And would Jim freak out when he realized he was making Blair freak out?
But Jim was laughing now, behind his mask. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start singing ‘Cecilia’ to you,” he said, “as long as you don’t start singing ‘Fifty ways to leave your sentinel.’”
* * * THE END * * *