TS fic: Overload
Only one month after the arbitrary deadline I made maxinemeyer assign me, here, finally, is my heartbreaking work of staggering angstiness.
Title: Overload [at my site]
Fandom, Pairing: The Sentinel, Jim/Blair
Rating: Mature audiences
Word Count: ~17,000
Spoilers: Sentinel, Too Part 2
A/N: I never knew how much resentment I harbored toward Blair for always being right. Here's me writing this story: (type type) "Oh, man, poor Blair. I am shattering his world. And when he tries to put the pieces together, I take them away and hide them. Oh, dear little Blair, you deserve a hug. You won't get one." (type type) You have been warned.
Lovely beta from yolsaffbridge, keefaq and janedavitt.
Summary: It was times like these when he seemed almost there, when Blair began to think he could snap him out of it if he just tried hard enough. He'd whisper intently into his ear, sometimes for hours at a time: "C'mon, Jim. Come back to me. Follow my voice..." The good times were worse than the bad, in that way, because it always seemed--it always so seemed!--like that would work.
*
Most of the cops didn't want to come; didn't want to see what Jim had been reduced to. Blair understood theoretically, if not personally. Serengeti baboons also shunned the aging or injured members of the troop.
They'd been home nearly two weeks when Megan and Joel arrived unannounced. It was lucky they'd waited until after dinner; Jim had been having a bad day, up until then, twisting in bed with his hands over his ears, while Blair alternated between watching over him protectively and sitting downstairs failing to read. Jim came down after dinner, though, and ate an apple of his own accord. He was better, then, his best, really: wandering into a room, staring at something, snapping out of it, wandering out to zone on something else. It was times like these when he seemed almost there, when Blair began to think he could snap him out of it if he just tried hard enough. He often couldn't resist making the attempt. He'd sit Jim down on the couch, or lay him on the bed, and climb close beside him, and whisper intently into his ear, sometimes for hours at a time: "C'mon, Jim. Come back to me. Follow my voice..." The good times were worse than the bad, in that way, because it always seemed--it always so seemed!--like that would work.
"Hey, wow," said Blair when he opened the door. "Come on in. Long time no see."
"How've you been? We've missed you," said Megan. "Last week I introduced Brown as a 'consultant to the department' just out of nostalgia. It really seemed to bother him," she added earnestly, "so I kept doing it." Blair smiled, but he noticed that she didn't say anything about Jim. He wondered if he was expected not to, either, which would make things kind of awkward. But Joel said, shyly, "How is he?"
Blair could have hugged him. "He's got his ups and downs," he said. "Better now that he's at home. He couldn't stand the hospital." He turned and called up the stairs, "Jim!", then turned back to them and shrugged apologetically. "Not that that'll do anything. Lemme get you a beer."
"Simon said he was by earlier," said Megan.
"Yeah, he's been great," said Blair. "When we first got back, he was by nearly every day. I don't know what we would've done without him."
He'd brought the beers to the living room, and Megan had just launched into a funny-thief story, when Jim padded down in his slippers, and stood by the bottom of the stairs, head cocked, gazing intently through the guests. Blair got up and jogged over to him. "Hey, man, it's our friends. Come say 'hi,'" as if that was in the cards. He took Jim by the arm. Jim didn't resist his touch as he sometimes did, but he also didn't allow himself to be led forward. He inhaled, shakily, and swayed backwards on his feet.
"Jim?" Joel asked softly. He glanced to Blair. "Can I-- can he understand?"
"I don't know. Probably not," said Blair. "I talk to him, though. I don't know what he hears, but at least it doesn't seem to bother him. Usually."
"Hi, Jim," said Joel.
Jim didn't make eye contact; he just knit his brow, still gazing at a point in the middle distance. Blair tried to lead him forward, but he was an immovable object.
"He might just stay here for awhile," said Blair, trying to sound less weary than he felt.
"What is it?" Joel asked.
He had to know the party line--head injury, neurological damage--and Blair couldn't tell him more, not without a go-ahead Jim was incapable of giving. "The doctors don't know much," Blair said honestly.
Megan sent him a penetrating glance. She knew. She followed him into the kitchen, leaving Joel alone to watch Jim uncomfortably.
"It's a Sentinel thing, isn't it?"
Blair frowned at her ostentatious whisper, but Joel didn't seem to have noticed anything. "Yeah," he admitted.
"Like Alex? Circuits fried?"
Blair flinched and forced his mind not to dwell on that image: Jim busted, broken, beyond repair. "Yeah."
"But--but you're his Guide thingy, right? Can't you fix it?"
"If I could," said Blair, "I'd have done it. I'd have done it a hundred times."
*
Blair stretched out on the blanket, listening to the crackling of the campfire, to Jim's soft footsteps as he fortified the campsite. He breathed deeply, marveling at the pain-free working of his lungs. Lungs, man. People didn't stop and appreciate those bad boys enough.
The night was strangely peaceful--cozy, even--especially considering they'd only just traversed the same ground on the trail of a disease-wielding rogue Sentinel.
Blair had to smile when he thought of Jim as he looked tracking Alex. Focused, in control, graceful. He'd been more than man; he'd been the perfect, primal, panther-man; a bloodhound on the trail; a lean, mean, day-saving machine. Even tied up and scared out of his mind he'd felt a happy flush of pride, watching Jim work his magic.
He'd been so perfect with Alex before she collapsed--said all the right things, all the things Blair felt like expressing but couldn't. If any words could have saved Alex then, Jim's would have saved her. But her senses were too far gone. The second trip into the grotto had done her in. "Circuits fried," Megan had said, and that was apt: more information coming in than her neurons could handle. Watching her twitching body being loaded into the medical chopper, Blair was torn between sorrow and guilt and the overwhelming desire to study her. He almost volunteered when Simon asked for someone to escort her back to the hospital in Cascade, but Jim spoke first. "Sandburg and I will stick around and tie up the loose ends with the department here."
"You up to it, Blair?" asked Simon with concern.
"Of course," said Blair. "I'm fine." And any ideas he'd had about going home were overcome by the need to prove he could take the jungle. Like he hadn't already. He was getting a little sick of the kid glove routine. The only person who treated him normally was Jim.
Which, really, was odd. Jim was usually the one hovering around protectively, sneaking examinations of his wounds, while Blair batted him away with a steady chorus of "I'm fine, Jim. Jim, I'm fine. Jim. Jim. Let go! I've had worse." And Jim would say "Why does that not comfort me? You've had multiple concussions," or "You've been in a coma." Now he'd be able to say "You've been dead." Somehow this time, the one time Blair could not possibly have had worse, was the one time Jim was taking his recovery for granted.
But then, why shouldn't he? He'd been there. He'd made it happen. He'd seen the same vision--the panther and the wolf colliding. If anybody was going to understand the way Blair felt when he returned to the world of the living--perfect, reborn--it would be Jim.
Couldn't complain about the understanding between them these days. Jim had sent him a glance after volunteering them which Blair interpreted to mean "I know you wanted a second look at the temple." Blair's returning wide-eyed grin had been intended to convey "Dude, you rock! I wish I'd brought my camera. Do you think the hotel sells disposables?" To which Jim had shrugged an eloquent, "How should I know?" And that had been that. They'd spent the next twenty-four hours more or less apart, Jim filling out paperwork and having meetings while Blair hung around the beach pretending to organize his notes but actually looking at girls. Then at night before they went to their rooms Blair had asked "Want to head out in the morning?", not because he had any doubt of the answer, but because it seemed weird to arrange a camping trip without a single word spoken. "Gear's all packed," said Jim.
It was exciting, this--deepening, or solidifying, of the bond between them. They'd gone on to a new level, ready to face--something--something beyond what they'd encountered so far. Blair was getting used to a constant state of exhilarated confusion (more than usual, even). He felt so close to figuring it all out, like he had a word on the tip of his tongue.
He'd have liked to talk about it with Jim. As Sentinel he had a stronger instinctual connection to the Sentinel spirits, and he was a pretty good sounding board in general. He reacted to most of Blair's ideas with exasperated sighs, yes, but Blair had gotten good at telling which of his ideas were good and which were stupid by the arc of the eyeroll. But Jim had made it pretty clear this topic was impassible terrain. For a mystic warrior, he was remarkably uncomfortable with the unexplained.
Jim sat down beside him on the blanket then and started unlacing his shoes, and Blair decided to give it a shot anyway. "Do you think we're more in sync than we used to be?"
"No. You left your stupid sesame snacks out. Do you want to be eaten by a cougar?"
"No, that's what I keep you around for."
"I don't know. I might be on the cougar's side."
"I mean, with the vision," Blair began.
"Here we go," sighed Jim.
"Do you think it was a cause or an effect?" Blair wondered, heartened by Jim's resigned tone of voice. It lacked that don't-go-there-on-pain-of-death edge.
"Do we have to analyze this right now?"
"Or like an instruction? Are we supposed to be doing something?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know, I just, I feel like there's something more to figure out."
"Whatever's supposed to happen, will happen," said Jim. "Go to sleep."
He was probably right. It wasn't like there was a problem they needed to solve; Jim's control had never been better. Blair still felt like there was something coming, a new trial, but whatever it was, they'd figure it out when they needed to. These things had a way of coming together in the moment. Blair couldn't count his flashes of inspiration since he started the project. Jim would have a problem with his senses, Blair would suddenly pluck an idea from the ether, and bam, it'd all be okay. It had been continually surprising at first, but he'd learned to trust his hunches. It seemed to work the same way for Jim. He had just known what to do to save Blair; just known what to do to comfort Alex in her final moments.
There was the familiar mix of sorrow and pride. Okay, so it had ended badly, but Jim had tried his best, and tellingly, he'd tried Blair's methods. There was really no better evidence that Blair had been useful to Jim--that Jim had really been paying attention to his guide-patter that he believed in its power. He'd become--
Click. Ideas coming together. Blair felt suddenly slightly nauseous. He turned to Jim and shook him gently. "Jim. Jim."
"What?" Jim fluttered his arm in a swatting motion.
"Jim, what if you're the Guide?"
Now Jim rolled over to give him an incredulous stare. "What are you talking about?"
"In the temple, you guided Alex. You told her, 'Listen to the voice, let it guide you'--that was your voice! You were guiding her!"
"I was trying to think what you would do."
"Right! But I didn't!"
"You were tied up."
"I wasn't gagged, Jim. I was there, I wanted to help, but I just, couldn't! I couldn't think of what to say. You stepped in. Maybe that's, I mean, maybe that's you now!"
"I'm the Sentinel," Jim pointed out impatiently.
"So now you're both! Maybe you don't need someone else to guide you anymore--you know what you're doing. You're it! You're done!"
"Done."
"Done, you know, learning what you needed to learn, or something."
"So what, you were just keeping it warm for me?"
"Sure, I don't know. I don't have all the details--"
"What about the vision?" Jim demanded. "The wolf and the panther," and searching for a word, he intertwined his fingers in illustration. "Came together."
"Exactly, yeah!" Blair nodded rapidly. "In you!"
"You're crazy," said Jim, and he had one of those that-is-a-legitimately-stupid-idea expressions.
"It makes total sense of everything," said Blair, but he was less certain now. Or maybe he just wanted to be uncertain. He had a motive for not wanting this theory to be true. It made him superfluous.
"If you don't want to..." Jim began. He spoke slowly, struggling with the words, and Blair didn't need him to finish the sentence.
"No! I just, I don't know, maybe you'd be better off."
"I don't want to talk about this," Jim muttered, settling back down onto the blanket.
Blair's mind still raced, comparing points for and against the theory, subjecting his own feelings to rigorous examination. He didn't expect to hear again from Jim until morning, when he would probably still limit conversation to breakfast-related topics, so he was surprised to hear him shift around suddenly and challenge, "Okay, genius. If you're not my Guide anymore, how come I still feel more focused when I'm around you?"
"I don't know." Blair willed himself not to rejoice in the counterevidence and to give the matter serious objective thought. "Maybe it's psychosomatic. All in your head. Like a sugar pill."
"You're some kind of pill," Jim grumbled.
Blair lay back down to think, but a minute later there was another rustle behind him, and Jim was speaking again. "So what did you get?"
Blair turned around, finally, even though it was too dark for him to interpret Jim's expression. "What do you mean?"
"The wolf, the panther. If I got your Guide thing, what did you get?"
"You mean like Sentinel abilities? No. Interesting thought, though."
"Sure?"
"I think I would have noticed."
"Close your eyes," Jim suggested. "What do you hear?"
"Can I just--for the record--are you guiding me?"
"Shut up. What do you hear?"
Blair closed his eyes, even though he couldn't see anything anyway. "Crickets."
"No, come on. Try."
Blair squeezed his eyes shut harder, even though there was no reason that should help. "Um... maybe an owl somewhere? Some other kind of chirping bug thing, too."
"Okay, what else?"
He listened, really listened, and was surprised to hear something else. "Running water somewhere? I think?"
"Yeah, yeah. What else?"
Blair listened longer. "I don't know. That's it."
"You're not a Sentinel," said Jim, sounding disappointed.
"Hey," Blair laughed. "You know what I got? Brought back to life."
"Oh. Right."
"I took one of your nine lives. Sorry about that, by the way."
"Hey, anytime," said Jim, and there was slight catch in his voice. "Help yourself." Jim's hand, large and warm, fell heavily over Blair's. Blair curled his fingers around Jim's knuckles.
"You're all wrong about the wolf and the panther," said Jim after a moment. "I know you're always right, but you're wrong. We were... I mean... I think they meant us to stick together. You don't get that?"
"Kind of," said Blair. He knew then that he hadn't really believed what he'd been saying about Jim being the Guide; he'd found it logically plausible, but he hadn't really deep-down believed it. What Jim said felt right. "I want to believe it."
"So believe it."
They had both shifted closer by some common instinct before Blair realized something was about to happen. He didn't know what. He knew what. Jim took Blair's face in both hands, and Blair's hands fell to cup Jim's elbows. His eyes had adjusted to the dark well enough now that he could meet Jim's gaze. He was amazingly close, smiling in that tender way he had. This was getting way out there, final-frontier, here-there-be-serpents, uncharted territory strange. This was as natural and familiar as coming home.
Their mouths came together as if magnetized. Jim's lips were hot against his, and when Blair pulled back to take a breath, Jim chased him back. Blair moved his hands up Jim's arms, curled them around Jim's shoulders, pressed their chests together. Jim dug one hand deep into Blair's hair, plunged the other down his back. Without conscious thought or decision-making, Blair slid his tongue into Jim's mouth, and with a complete lack of surprise Jim stroked it with his own.
Jim jerked around, looking over his shoulder. "What was that?"
The moment Jim's mouth left his, reality set in for Blair. Oh man. Oh man. Really? Really, this was a kissing thing? Since when? Lying side by side with Jim, in bed, arms entangled, lips wet and tingling--how? How had this come to pass? How had any of the steps leading to this made sense at the time? He slid out of Jim's slack embrace and sat up, touching his mouth dazedly. "Uh... Jim?"
Jim grunted in distracted acknowledgement.
"What was that?"
Brief pause, then Jim whirled back around. Even in the dark Blair could see a dramatic change coming over his features: bewildered concern to intensely bewildered concern.
"I don't... I don't know!" He shook his head, brows knit in what Blair hoped wasn't disgust. Because this all was confusing, yeah, but--Blair couldn't suppress the soaring feeling in his chest. This was good. This was right. The puzzle pieces fell into place.
"So," said Blair, "this makes new sense of the vision."
Jim released a laughing breath, and then Blair was laughing, too. Tension dissolved. There was no point fighting it: they were doing what the spirits wanted. He fell playfully against Jim's shoulder, and without hesitation Jim wrapped an arm around him and kissed his forehead.
*
Logically Blair knew that it was only a coincidence that Jim's first kiss and his last moments of real consciousness were separated by less than twelve hours. That any guilt he felt about it (I touched him and he broke!) was only the result of puritanical sex-negative and homophobic cultural influences in society at large and in particular in the police subculture in which he and Jim were enmeshed. This logical knowledge was not helpful when it four o'clock in the morning and he was sitting in the doorway of his room, watching Jim sit on the couch and stare at nothing. Staying that way because he was too nervously protective to go to sleep himself, and because when he had tried to go over and relax Jim, lie him down, soothe him with soft words and caresses, Jim flinched away like Blair's fingers burned him.
*
Their mouths had hardly met a second time when Jim pulled away again.
"What's wrong?" asked Blair, and felt dumb: "This!" was the obvious answer.
But instead Jim said, "I think there's someone out there."
"Are you sure?"
Jim got up and walked to the edge of the campsite, looking out. "No," he said finally.
"Maybe you're just on edge. Stress. I mean, that could explain a lot. We've both had some seriously intense experiences lately, and, what's happening now is obviously really weird. I mean, we just kissed, Jim, and that's, like--whoa!" Blair cut himself off as Jim drew his gun. "Don't shoot the messenger!"
"Blood," said Jim, checking his ammo. "Human."
"You smell it?"
Jim nodded shortly and clicked the magazine back into the gun. "Come on."
Somehow Blair managed to keep track of Jim as he wove around trees, jumped over logs, failed to trip over roots and his own feet (which was harder than it looked), and probably didn't get hit in the face with nearly as many stinging little branches as Blair did. When he finally lost him he didn't have much time to panic before he was bursting out onto the bank of a little brook and there was Jim, kneeling by a still body, and thrusting his gun into the back of his pants so he could take the woman's face into his hands. "It's okay. You'll be okay. Chief!"
"I'm here," said Blair, coming up behind Jim's shoulder. He swallowed back a bitter tang as he reinterpreted the sight of the woman's face. What he'd thought was mud covering her features was actually blood oozing from an open gash across her neck and chest. She looked beyond help to Blair, but he bowed to Jim's superior judgment. A burbling gasp escaped her lips, and then Jim was holding her shoulders, calling out, "No, no, come back!" He pushed down on her wound, and to Blair's horror, looked like he might begin pumping it for CPR.
"Jim," said Blair gently.
"I know, I know." Jim relaxed his grip and swayed back on his haunches. "She's gone."
"What killed her?"
"You mean who." Jim looked down at his red hands and began to wipe them off on the grass. "She was murdered."
"Are you sure? It's a jungle out here. Wild animals..."
Jim shook his head and jerked it toward the body. "See the edges on the wound?"
Blair looked politely, even though he doubted the sight would have meant anything to him even if it were light enough to perceive it.
"She was killed with a machete."
Blair frowned. "Whoever it was--"
"--is still out there," Jim finished grimly.
"This is bad, Jim. If there's a killer out there, and we don't know his motives, we've gotta assume we're in danger, and so's everybody who lives around here."
"You don't have to convince me, Chief. I'm trying to get a read on him. There's too much--I can't," Jim rubbed his head. "It's all her. I can only smell her."
"Okay. Okay," said Blair soothingly. "You know how to do this, Jim. Separate her out. Try to figure out what's unique to the killer."
Jim closed his eyes and inhaled. Blair watched, trying not to distract him by so much as a breath. He shouldn't have worried, because Jim apparently wanted to know he was there. He reached out blindly and grabbed Blair's arm. Blair stepped closer, and Jim leaned his head into Blair's open hand. It was a strange gesture--weirdly intimate yet weirdly ritual. With Jim kneeling before him Blair felt like a figure in an ancient tapestry.
In a single businesslike move Jim broke contact and got to his feet. He had the look of a bloodhound.
"You got something?" Blair bounced on the balls of his feet, suddenly excited. "Lead the way, man."
*
Blair didn't waste time worrying when he walked into the kitchen to find Jim standing there, muscles tense, maybe on his fifth or sixth hour of fan-fixation. He just chirped, "Buongiornio, pumpkin! Insomnia, huh?" He was possibly going a little nuts. "Sit, now, there you go." Jim relaxed beneath his touch and allowed himself to be pushed gently into a chair. Blair poured a bowl of cereal for them both because he didn't know how much Jim would eat, and when Jim didn't respond to the proffered spoon, he soothed, "Come on, open up. This is good stuff, man, fortified with vitamins A, C, B probably, B12, B flat, I don't know, zinc? You want zinc, don't you? Sure, we all need zinc. Come on now. Say aaaaah. No? Okay, airplane, right? Vrrrrrrr," and midway through the engine sound effect, he froze.
What the hell was he doing? Jim wasn't a child. He was a man--the man--the primal, capable, superpowered Sentinel.
Very carefully Blair emptied the spoon back into the bowl and placed it down on the table. Suddenly, violently, he dashed the bowl, cereal, milk, everything onto the floor in a splashy crash. The bowl, frustratingly, didn't break, just spun a few times loudly on its brim. Jim turned his head sharply, but it was wrongly-timed, and in the wrong direction. Not a response, just a coincidence. Blair let out a wordless yell. It was just to let off steam, really, but when he noticed that Jim still didn't respond, he got closer, right up to Jim's ear, and shouted as loud as he could.
That got a response: Jim flinched hard, and tried to bury his ear in his shoulder. Even after the noise stopped he kept his eyes squeezed shut, and Blair could see tears of pain glittering at the corners.
Blair stepped back, clapping a hand over his mouth. He fell to his knees and dropped his head into Jim's lap. Jim's entire body was tense, and Blair's contact had no effect. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Blair whispered into his sweatpants.
He stayed that way for a long time. He half-expected to feel Jim's hand come up and rest heavy on his shoulder, to hear Jim's voice, calm and low: "It's okay" or "For what?" or "Sandburg?" or "What is this? Get off me," hey, that would be fine, too. Anything.
Turned out now was not the moment for Jim to miraculously wake up, all better. In that way this moment was just exactly like all the other moments of the last three weeks, which, by now, should not be so surprising.
"What am I going to do?" he asked out loud. Since meeting Jim, he'd never gone this long without inspiration. Maybe he ought to feel lucky about that, but why did the magic stop now--now, when he most desperately needed a solution?
The problem with being the world's foremost expert on a subject was that when he was stumped, that was it--nobody to ask. He knew Burton by heart, and there was nothing helpful there. Usually when he wanted new material he went straight to the source, but Jim couldn't even communicate with him now.
That was the difference--he'd never had to deal with any Sentinel problems without Jim. It wasn't just that Jim provided him with the raw data. (He actually wasn't that good at that. It was like pulling teeth, and he mocked Blair's questionnaires.) He kept Blair thinking on the right lines. Kept him on his toes. Kept him going.
And he was in closer communication with the spirits, which was sometimes really helpful. What if they were sending him visions now? Trying to show him the way? Didn't they realize it wouldn't help him any if the messages were all being marked "Return to sender"?
"Hey, guys," said Blair, lifting his eyes, "you know I'm right here, right? Ready, willing, and eager to be given some kind of deeply meaningful spirit quest? Vision? Dream? Maybe a message spelled out in Scrabble tiles? Anything, man. Cryptic's fine. I love cryptic. I'm a puzzle-solver." If only they'd give him some sign that he was on track, or that there even was a track. That someone up there was still on top of things and had plans for Jim yet.
Then again, maybe the spirits had decided to cut their losses and forget the used-up old Sentinel. Maybe Jim and Blair were on their own. Blair felt a flash of hatred for the hypothetical new Sentinel currently being prepared to make such-and-such a journey.
"This one's still good, you know," he snapped at the air. He gave the air a moment to prepare a response, but it snubbed him. Like talking to a brick wall, or to Jim. Hey-ohhh!
"Oh, God," Blair sighed, and hauled himself to his feet to deal with the cereal mess, feeling a dull wash of loneliness pass over him. No Jim. No spirits. Nobody to help him.
*
"Goddammit!" Jim stopped short, and Blair almost tumbled into him in the dark.
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"I've been tracking the fucking victim!"
"What?"
"We're on our way to her village. This is where she came from!" Jim grabbed a fallen branch and threw it into the trees beyond. "Goddammit!"
"Are you sure? Maybe this is the direction the killer went in, too," Blair suggested.
Jim shook his head and ran a hand over his hair. "No. I wasn't sure at first, but it's definitely just the girl I'm trailing. Reverse trailing. Fuck."
"Okay, no problem," Blair soothed, making slow, fluid gestures, trying to counteract Jim's brusque pacing. "We'll just go back and start again."
"Chief, we've wasted a lot of time, and I barely had anything to begin with. I don't... I don't think..."
"We have to try," said Blair firmly. "I mean, it's that or give up, right?"
Jim stood still a moment, and Blair worried that he was considering giving up. He knew they had no reason to believe that this killer, in the grand scheme of things, was that dangerous; and he knew it was only by chance that they were here to witness the crime to begin with; but he still felt sure that giving up was the last thing Jim should do. Jim couldn't see his own progress as clearly as Blair could. From Jim's point of view, he'd racked up a lot of failures lately: failure to save Alex; failure to protect Blair... He needed this.
Suddenly Jim sprang into action, slamming his arm into a poor defenseless tree. "What the fuck is the use of these senses if they're only almost good enough! What the hell kind of Sentinel am I if I can't even protect the maybe six people in spitting distance of my own goddamn temple!"
"Hey, hey, man. Relax, okay?" He needed this, all right. Blair rested a hand on his back, tried to focus him with gentle strokes.
He stopped mid-rub. Jim noticed; he glanced down, frowning, and met Blair's eyes.
"How far did you say we are from the temple?" Blair asked.
"We're not." Jim indicated a direction.
"So," said Blair, "Here's a crazy idea."
*
"Where the hell were you today? You know you're going to get assigned to teach intro to the jocks and comp sci kids, right?"
Jim flinched even hearing the voice over the phone. "Molly, hi," said Blair as quietly as possible, letting himself into the hall. Like that would help. Jim could probably hear flies buzzing in Spokane, and everything in between. Blair couldn't imagine the cacophony.
"Why are you whispering? Seriously, why didn't you go to orientation? Besides the obvious suckitude."
"I've been busy."
"Police stuff," Molly suggested.
"Kind of. Uh." Well, he didn't need to get into details. "Jim's sick." She had a nurturing streak and would understand this better than tales of adventure, anyway.
"Oh, no! Is it serious?"
"Kind of," said Blair again, and even though he didn't feel weepy or anything, his voice came out surprisingly ragged.
"I'm sorry," said Molly. Then, cheerfully, "I hope you're not too busy to come out with us tonight. We're doing the anti-orientation thing. Cool kids only. We're calling it an ice solidifier."
It was tempting. Even being on the phone with Molly was refreshing, and he was strangely surprised every time she responded relevantly to something he said. But what if Jim needed him while he was off painting the town? There was nobody else who could take care of him. "I don't think I can."
"Come on, Blair, you owe us. I think Shelby will actually burst if she goes another day without seeing your pretty face."
Shit, Shelby. She was the honors undergrad Blair was supposed to be mentoring. He'd agreed to it last semester, when the greatest constraints on his time and energy he could imagine were balancing his work on Jim's cases with not finishing his dissertation. He'd met with her exactly once, when she ran into him on his office research raid just after returning from Mexico. He'd been so burned out with lack of sleep and overwork, he could see his own handwritten notes on Jim and Alex whenever he closed his eyes. He'd done a very bad job of listening to her opinions about ancient Inca organizational and bureaucratic documents, given her some probably semi-insane busywork, and taken off. He really owed it to her to at least check in.
And he needed some time off. He was no use to Jim if he went stir crazy. "I'll come," he said.
He hung up and called Megan to ask her to look in on Jim every so often during patrol. He phoned from inside the closet, partially to muffle the noise, and partially because he needed to make some serious wardrobe decisions. He was ridiculously excited to be leaving the house.
He brought out his blue shirt and his white shirt and held them up to Jim, balancing them like scales. Both seemed to cause Jim pain. Blair wore green.
He got to the bar early and the only other person there was Shelby. She was perched on a tall stool, long slender legs crossed at the ankles, sipping a pink fruity drink bigger than her head and studying a notebook. Her face lit up when she saw him, possibly because he'd been a remarkably elusive adviser, and possibly because she had a massive and obvious crush on him. Blair kind of liked that. Not that he had any intention of doing anything with her--for so, so many reasons--but it was nice to be appreciated. And it was one of many ways that she reminded him of himself at that age. He still had fond memories of Professor Williams, she of the long, long hair and the sexy South African accent, who'd almost gotten him to major in biochemistry. Just in time to file the paperwork, he'd taken his first anthro class and decided that whatever magical thing happened in the mind to create consciousness and society and humanity, he was more interested in the after photo than the before. God damn him; a biochem background would probably be really helpful right about now.
"I um, I finished the chart," Shelby said proudly. "I brought it, just in case you came." She pulled a thick stapled packet from her notebook.
"Chart?"
"You asked me to compare these symbols with all known ancient South American writing systems?"
Man. She'd obviously slaved on this assignment he had no memory of giving. It was like the time he'd suddenly remembered at nine-thirty that he'd asked Jennifer Hauer out for eight, and he arrived at her house to find her sitting on the stoop with a phone in her lap, make-up smudged and updo wilted. He could hardly imagine what had compelled him to ask her to do such unfocused busywork. And yet, he had to kind of admire his past self's ingenuity: he'd obviously thought ancient documents -> ancient writing systems -> the instructions on the wall of the Temple of the Sentinels. It had described the original disastrous sense-enhancing potion; why not the antidote?
And then he felt guilty for not following up on this line of research sooner. The thing was, for the first week AJA (After Jim's Accident), he'd spent twenty-four hours a day looking for a cure, figuring the sooner he fixed Jim the sooner they both could rest easy, but then he'd sort of realized it was going to be a longer-haul kind of thing, and the cure wouldn't matter if Jim starved to death while Blair was studying his notes. (Or if he starved himself. Jim was usually the one who brought him helpfully-timed bowls of soup and bread while he was deep in research mode.) In the last couple of weeks he'd relegated his study time to a few hours a day, Jim's mood permitting. But his study sessions were not only less lengthy of late, they were overall, hour for hour, less productive. He wouldn't have thought of making such a chart now. He resolved to recapture some of his old zeal, because there was no way hanging around in this state could be good for Jim. Or for Blair. Or for the city.
"Is there anything else you need?" Shelby asked eagerly.
And he resolved to be a better mentor to poor Shelby, God.
"This is perfect," said Blair. "Let me study it and see what I can come up with. In the meantime, hey, you've got me, you might as well use me." Shelby got a dreamy look, and Blair hurried on, "Have you decided on the topic of your project? Do you need some help narrowing it down?"
"Well--actually," she said, shyly, and Blair was overcome with the sneaking suspicion that her topic of choice was "the sex drive of the twenty-nine-year-old male PhD student"--"I stumbled on something--well. It might be kinda--out there."
"Try me," said Blair, thinking, You may have picked just exactly the right adviser after all, kiddo.
"Well, you know, you said I could use your office to work in, and, well, just to see, you know, why I was doing what I was doing, and what kind of thing you were maybe interested in" oh no "I took the liberty of looking at some of your books, and" oh God "I don't know, but I'm interested in--" Blair felt sure if he had Jim's powers he would have heard both their hearts racing double-time-- "the Sentinels."
*
"Sh." Jim clapped a hand over Blair's mouth as they entered the temple, and dropped to his knees.
Blair sat down on the stone ledge beside Jim and let him meditate silently for a minute, making a respectful attempt to try to keep his fidgeting to a minimum as Jim communed with his spirits or what have you. When Jim looked up at the temple etchings, and reached out to touch Blair's knee--a sort of routine check Jim had taken to performing at random moments: is my Guide around? okay, check, systems are go--Blair figured it was safe to talk. "Anything?"
"Not a damn thing."
"Okay, that's okay. Hey, we're just getting started. Now, relax. Breathe. And buckle up, buddy. We're gonna crank it up to eleven, here."
"I'm at eleven," Jim protested. "I've been at eleven. I still can't hear the bastard."
"Fifteen then! Twenty-nine! Ten million! We're going off the charts. But I need you to let go of your anger. Give yourself a break, man. We're trying to do the impossible, here, so have a little patience. Be at peace. Can you do that?"
Jim nodded and closed his eyes, letting out a deep breath.
"Okay. Here we go. Now, forget the dials. We're so beyond the dials. Picture... Picture the universe."
Blair knew Jim was doing it because a slow smile spread over his face.
Okay, so far, so good, though Blair hadn't a clue what he was going to say next.
Before he'd worked it out, Jim opened his eyes. "Okay," he said. "I know what I have to do."
To be continued...
Title: Overload [at my site]
Fandom, Pairing: The Sentinel, Jim/Blair
Rating: Mature audiences
Word Count: ~17,000
Spoilers: Sentinel, Too Part 2
A/N: I never knew how much resentment I harbored toward Blair for always being right. Here's me writing this story: (type type) "Oh, man, poor Blair. I am shattering his world. And when he tries to put the pieces together, I take them away and hide them. Oh, dear little Blair, you deserve a hug. You won't get one." (type type) You have been warned.
Lovely beta from yolsaffbridge, keefaq and janedavitt.
Summary: It was times like these when he seemed almost there, when Blair began to think he could snap him out of it if he just tried hard enough. He'd whisper intently into his ear, sometimes for hours at a time: "C'mon, Jim. Come back to me. Follow my voice..." The good times were worse than the bad, in that way, because it always seemed--it always so seemed!--like that would work.
*
Most of the cops didn't want to come; didn't want to see what Jim had been reduced to. Blair understood theoretically, if not personally. Serengeti baboons also shunned the aging or injured members of the troop.
They'd been home nearly two weeks when Megan and Joel arrived unannounced. It was lucky they'd waited until after dinner; Jim had been having a bad day, up until then, twisting in bed with his hands over his ears, while Blair alternated between watching over him protectively and sitting downstairs failing to read. Jim came down after dinner, though, and ate an apple of his own accord. He was better, then, his best, really: wandering into a room, staring at something, snapping out of it, wandering out to zone on something else. It was times like these when he seemed almost there, when Blair began to think he could snap him out of it if he just tried hard enough. He often couldn't resist making the attempt. He'd sit Jim down on the couch, or lay him on the bed, and climb close beside him, and whisper intently into his ear, sometimes for hours at a time: "C'mon, Jim. Come back to me. Follow my voice..." The good times were worse than the bad, in that way, because it always seemed--it always so seemed!--like that would work.
"Hey, wow," said Blair when he opened the door. "Come on in. Long time no see."
"How've you been? We've missed you," said Megan. "Last week I introduced Brown as a 'consultant to the department' just out of nostalgia. It really seemed to bother him," she added earnestly, "so I kept doing it." Blair smiled, but he noticed that she didn't say anything about Jim. He wondered if he was expected not to, either, which would make things kind of awkward. But Joel said, shyly, "How is he?"
Blair could have hugged him. "He's got his ups and downs," he said. "Better now that he's at home. He couldn't stand the hospital." He turned and called up the stairs, "Jim!", then turned back to them and shrugged apologetically. "Not that that'll do anything. Lemme get you a beer."
"Simon said he was by earlier," said Megan.
"Yeah, he's been great," said Blair. "When we first got back, he was by nearly every day. I don't know what we would've done without him."
He'd brought the beers to the living room, and Megan had just launched into a funny-thief story, when Jim padded down in his slippers, and stood by the bottom of the stairs, head cocked, gazing intently through the guests. Blair got up and jogged over to him. "Hey, man, it's our friends. Come say 'hi,'" as if that was in the cards. He took Jim by the arm. Jim didn't resist his touch as he sometimes did, but he also didn't allow himself to be led forward. He inhaled, shakily, and swayed backwards on his feet.
"Jim?" Joel asked softly. He glanced to Blair. "Can I-- can he understand?"
"I don't know. Probably not," said Blair. "I talk to him, though. I don't know what he hears, but at least it doesn't seem to bother him. Usually."
"Hi, Jim," said Joel.
Jim didn't make eye contact; he just knit his brow, still gazing at a point in the middle distance. Blair tried to lead him forward, but he was an immovable object.
"He might just stay here for awhile," said Blair, trying to sound less weary than he felt.
"What is it?" Joel asked.
He had to know the party line--head injury, neurological damage--and Blair couldn't tell him more, not without a go-ahead Jim was incapable of giving. "The doctors don't know much," Blair said honestly.
Megan sent him a penetrating glance. She knew. She followed him into the kitchen, leaving Joel alone to watch Jim uncomfortably.
"It's a Sentinel thing, isn't it?"
Blair frowned at her ostentatious whisper, but Joel didn't seem to have noticed anything. "Yeah," he admitted.
"Like Alex? Circuits fried?"
Blair flinched and forced his mind not to dwell on that image: Jim busted, broken, beyond repair. "Yeah."
"But--but you're his Guide thingy, right? Can't you fix it?"
"If I could," said Blair, "I'd have done it. I'd have done it a hundred times."
*
Blair stretched out on the blanket, listening to the crackling of the campfire, to Jim's soft footsteps as he fortified the campsite. He breathed deeply, marveling at the pain-free working of his lungs. Lungs, man. People didn't stop and appreciate those bad boys enough.
The night was strangely peaceful--cozy, even--especially considering they'd only just traversed the same ground on the trail of a disease-wielding rogue Sentinel.
Blair had to smile when he thought of Jim as he looked tracking Alex. Focused, in control, graceful. He'd been more than man; he'd been the perfect, primal, panther-man; a bloodhound on the trail; a lean, mean, day-saving machine. Even tied up and scared out of his mind he'd felt a happy flush of pride, watching Jim work his magic.
He'd been so perfect with Alex before she collapsed--said all the right things, all the things Blair felt like expressing but couldn't. If any words could have saved Alex then, Jim's would have saved her. But her senses were too far gone. The second trip into the grotto had done her in. "Circuits fried," Megan had said, and that was apt: more information coming in than her neurons could handle. Watching her twitching body being loaded into the medical chopper, Blair was torn between sorrow and guilt and the overwhelming desire to study her. He almost volunteered when Simon asked for someone to escort her back to the hospital in Cascade, but Jim spoke first. "Sandburg and I will stick around and tie up the loose ends with the department here."
"You up to it, Blair?" asked Simon with concern.
"Of course," said Blair. "I'm fine." And any ideas he'd had about going home were overcome by the need to prove he could take the jungle. Like he hadn't already. He was getting a little sick of the kid glove routine. The only person who treated him normally was Jim.
Which, really, was odd. Jim was usually the one hovering around protectively, sneaking examinations of his wounds, while Blair batted him away with a steady chorus of "I'm fine, Jim. Jim, I'm fine. Jim. Jim. Let go! I've had worse." And Jim would say "Why does that not comfort me? You've had multiple concussions," or "You've been in a coma." Now he'd be able to say "You've been dead." Somehow this time, the one time Blair could not possibly have had worse, was the one time Jim was taking his recovery for granted.
But then, why shouldn't he? He'd been there. He'd made it happen. He'd seen the same vision--the panther and the wolf colliding. If anybody was going to understand the way Blair felt when he returned to the world of the living--perfect, reborn--it would be Jim.
Couldn't complain about the understanding between them these days. Jim had sent him a glance after volunteering them which Blair interpreted to mean "I know you wanted a second look at the temple." Blair's returning wide-eyed grin had been intended to convey "Dude, you rock! I wish I'd brought my camera. Do you think the hotel sells disposables?" To which Jim had shrugged an eloquent, "How should I know?" And that had been that. They'd spent the next twenty-four hours more or less apart, Jim filling out paperwork and having meetings while Blair hung around the beach pretending to organize his notes but actually looking at girls. Then at night before they went to their rooms Blair had asked "Want to head out in the morning?", not because he had any doubt of the answer, but because it seemed weird to arrange a camping trip without a single word spoken. "Gear's all packed," said Jim.
It was exciting, this--deepening, or solidifying, of the bond between them. They'd gone on to a new level, ready to face--something--something beyond what they'd encountered so far. Blair was getting used to a constant state of exhilarated confusion (more than usual, even). He felt so close to figuring it all out, like he had a word on the tip of his tongue.
He'd have liked to talk about it with Jim. As Sentinel he had a stronger instinctual connection to the Sentinel spirits, and he was a pretty good sounding board in general. He reacted to most of Blair's ideas with exasperated sighs, yes, but Blair had gotten good at telling which of his ideas were good and which were stupid by the arc of the eyeroll. But Jim had made it pretty clear this topic was impassible terrain. For a mystic warrior, he was remarkably uncomfortable with the unexplained.
Jim sat down beside him on the blanket then and started unlacing his shoes, and Blair decided to give it a shot anyway. "Do you think we're more in sync than we used to be?"
"No. You left your stupid sesame snacks out. Do you want to be eaten by a cougar?"
"No, that's what I keep you around for."
"I don't know. I might be on the cougar's side."
"I mean, with the vision," Blair began.
"Here we go," sighed Jim.
"Do you think it was a cause or an effect?" Blair wondered, heartened by Jim's resigned tone of voice. It lacked that don't-go-there-on-pain-of-death edge.
"Do we have to analyze this right now?"
"Or like an instruction? Are we supposed to be doing something?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know, I just, I feel like there's something more to figure out."
"Whatever's supposed to happen, will happen," said Jim. "Go to sleep."
He was probably right. It wasn't like there was a problem they needed to solve; Jim's control had never been better. Blair still felt like there was something coming, a new trial, but whatever it was, they'd figure it out when they needed to. These things had a way of coming together in the moment. Blair couldn't count his flashes of inspiration since he started the project. Jim would have a problem with his senses, Blair would suddenly pluck an idea from the ether, and bam, it'd all be okay. It had been continually surprising at first, but he'd learned to trust his hunches. It seemed to work the same way for Jim. He had just known what to do to save Blair; just known what to do to comfort Alex in her final moments.
There was the familiar mix of sorrow and pride. Okay, so it had ended badly, but Jim had tried his best, and tellingly, he'd tried Blair's methods. There was really no better evidence that Blair had been useful to Jim--that Jim had really been paying attention to his guide-patter that he believed in its power. He'd become--
Click. Ideas coming together. Blair felt suddenly slightly nauseous. He turned to Jim and shook him gently. "Jim. Jim."
"What?" Jim fluttered his arm in a swatting motion.
"Jim, what if you're the Guide?"
Now Jim rolled over to give him an incredulous stare. "What are you talking about?"
"In the temple, you guided Alex. You told her, 'Listen to the voice, let it guide you'--that was your voice! You were guiding her!"
"I was trying to think what you would do."
"Right! But I didn't!"
"You were tied up."
"I wasn't gagged, Jim. I was there, I wanted to help, but I just, couldn't! I couldn't think of what to say. You stepped in. Maybe that's, I mean, maybe that's you now!"
"I'm the Sentinel," Jim pointed out impatiently.
"So now you're both! Maybe you don't need someone else to guide you anymore--you know what you're doing. You're it! You're done!"
"Done."
"Done, you know, learning what you needed to learn, or something."
"So what, you were just keeping it warm for me?"
"Sure, I don't know. I don't have all the details--"
"What about the vision?" Jim demanded. "The wolf and the panther," and searching for a word, he intertwined his fingers in illustration. "Came together."
"Exactly, yeah!" Blair nodded rapidly. "In you!"
"You're crazy," said Jim, and he had one of those that-is-a-legitimately-stupid-idea expressions.
"It makes total sense of everything," said Blair, but he was less certain now. Or maybe he just wanted to be uncertain. He had a motive for not wanting this theory to be true. It made him superfluous.
"If you don't want to..." Jim began. He spoke slowly, struggling with the words, and Blair didn't need him to finish the sentence.
"No! I just, I don't know, maybe you'd be better off."
"I don't want to talk about this," Jim muttered, settling back down onto the blanket.
Blair's mind still raced, comparing points for and against the theory, subjecting his own feelings to rigorous examination. He didn't expect to hear again from Jim until morning, when he would probably still limit conversation to breakfast-related topics, so he was surprised to hear him shift around suddenly and challenge, "Okay, genius. If you're not my Guide anymore, how come I still feel more focused when I'm around you?"
"I don't know." Blair willed himself not to rejoice in the counterevidence and to give the matter serious objective thought. "Maybe it's psychosomatic. All in your head. Like a sugar pill."
"You're some kind of pill," Jim grumbled.
Blair lay back down to think, but a minute later there was another rustle behind him, and Jim was speaking again. "So what did you get?"
Blair turned around, finally, even though it was too dark for him to interpret Jim's expression. "What do you mean?"
"The wolf, the panther. If I got your Guide thing, what did you get?"
"You mean like Sentinel abilities? No. Interesting thought, though."
"Sure?"
"I think I would have noticed."
"Close your eyes," Jim suggested. "What do you hear?"
"Can I just--for the record--are you guiding me?"
"Shut up. What do you hear?"
Blair closed his eyes, even though he couldn't see anything anyway. "Crickets."
"No, come on. Try."
Blair squeezed his eyes shut harder, even though there was no reason that should help. "Um... maybe an owl somewhere? Some other kind of chirping bug thing, too."
"Okay, what else?"
He listened, really listened, and was surprised to hear something else. "Running water somewhere? I think?"
"Yeah, yeah. What else?"
Blair listened longer. "I don't know. That's it."
"You're not a Sentinel," said Jim, sounding disappointed.
"Hey," Blair laughed. "You know what I got? Brought back to life."
"Oh. Right."
"I took one of your nine lives. Sorry about that, by the way."
"Hey, anytime," said Jim, and there was slight catch in his voice. "Help yourself." Jim's hand, large and warm, fell heavily over Blair's. Blair curled his fingers around Jim's knuckles.
"You're all wrong about the wolf and the panther," said Jim after a moment. "I know you're always right, but you're wrong. We were... I mean... I think they meant us to stick together. You don't get that?"
"Kind of," said Blair. He knew then that he hadn't really believed what he'd been saying about Jim being the Guide; he'd found it logically plausible, but he hadn't really deep-down believed it. What Jim said felt right. "I want to believe it."
"So believe it."
They had both shifted closer by some common instinct before Blair realized something was about to happen. He didn't know what. He knew what. Jim took Blair's face in both hands, and Blair's hands fell to cup Jim's elbows. His eyes had adjusted to the dark well enough now that he could meet Jim's gaze. He was amazingly close, smiling in that tender way he had. This was getting way out there, final-frontier, here-there-be-serpents, uncharted territory strange. This was as natural and familiar as coming home.
Their mouths came together as if magnetized. Jim's lips were hot against his, and when Blair pulled back to take a breath, Jim chased him back. Blair moved his hands up Jim's arms, curled them around Jim's shoulders, pressed their chests together. Jim dug one hand deep into Blair's hair, plunged the other down his back. Without conscious thought or decision-making, Blair slid his tongue into Jim's mouth, and with a complete lack of surprise Jim stroked it with his own.
Jim jerked around, looking over his shoulder. "What was that?"
The moment Jim's mouth left his, reality set in for Blair. Oh man. Oh man. Really? Really, this was a kissing thing? Since when? Lying side by side with Jim, in bed, arms entangled, lips wet and tingling--how? How had this come to pass? How had any of the steps leading to this made sense at the time? He slid out of Jim's slack embrace and sat up, touching his mouth dazedly. "Uh... Jim?"
Jim grunted in distracted acknowledgement.
"What was that?"
Brief pause, then Jim whirled back around. Even in the dark Blair could see a dramatic change coming over his features: bewildered concern to intensely bewildered concern.
"I don't... I don't know!" He shook his head, brows knit in what Blair hoped wasn't disgust. Because this all was confusing, yeah, but--Blair couldn't suppress the soaring feeling in his chest. This was good. This was right. The puzzle pieces fell into place.
"So," said Blair, "this makes new sense of the vision."
Jim released a laughing breath, and then Blair was laughing, too. Tension dissolved. There was no point fighting it: they were doing what the spirits wanted. He fell playfully against Jim's shoulder, and without hesitation Jim wrapped an arm around him and kissed his forehead.
*
Logically Blair knew that it was only a coincidence that Jim's first kiss and his last moments of real consciousness were separated by less than twelve hours. That any guilt he felt about it (I touched him and he broke!) was only the result of puritanical sex-negative and homophobic cultural influences in society at large and in particular in the police subculture in which he and Jim were enmeshed. This logical knowledge was not helpful when it four o'clock in the morning and he was sitting in the doorway of his room, watching Jim sit on the couch and stare at nothing. Staying that way because he was too nervously protective to go to sleep himself, and because when he had tried to go over and relax Jim, lie him down, soothe him with soft words and caresses, Jim flinched away like Blair's fingers burned him.
*
Their mouths had hardly met a second time when Jim pulled away again.
"What's wrong?" asked Blair, and felt dumb: "This!" was the obvious answer.
But instead Jim said, "I think there's someone out there."
"Are you sure?"
Jim got up and walked to the edge of the campsite, looking out. "No," he said finally.
"Maybe you're just on edge. Stress. I mean, that could explain a lot. We've both had some seriously intense experiences lately, and, what's happening now is obviously really weird. I mean, we just kissed, Jim, and that's, like--whoa!" Blair cut himself off as Jim drew his gun. "Don't shoot the messenger!"
"Blood," said Jim, checking his ammo. "Human."
"You smell it?"
Jim nodded shortly and clicked the magazine back into the gun. "Come on."
Somehow Blair managed to keep track of Jim as he wove around trees, jumped over logs, failed to trip over roots and his own feet (which was harder than it looked), and probably didn't get hit in the face with nearly as many stinging little branches as Blair did. When he finally lost him he didn't have much time to panic before he was bursting out onto the bank of a little brook and there was Jim, kneeling by a still body, and thrusting his gun into the back of his pants so he could take the woman's face into his hands. "It's okay. You'll be okay. Chief!"
"I'm here," said Blair, coming up behind Jim's shoulder. He swallowed back a bitter tang as he reinterpreted the sight of the woman's face. What he'd thought was mud covering her features was actually blood oozing from an open gash across her neck and chest. She looked beyond help to Blair, but he bowed to Jim's superior judgment. A burbling gasp escaped her lips, and then Jim was holding her shoulders, calling out, "No, no, come back!" He pushed down on her wound, and to Blair's horror, looked like he might begin pumping it for CPR.
"Jim," said Blair gently.
"I know, I know." Jim relaxed his grip and swayed back on his haunches. "She's gone."
"What killed her?"
"You mean who." Jim looked down at his red hands and began to wipe them off on the grass. "She was murdered."
"Are you sure? It's a jungle out here. Wild animals..."
Jim shook his head and jerked it toward the body. "See the edges on the wound?"
Blair looked politely, even though he doubted the sight would have meant anything to him even if it were light enough to perceive it.
"She was killed with a machete."
Blair frowned. "Whoever it was--"
"--is still out there," Jim finished grimly.
"This is bad, Jim. If there's a killer out there, and we don't know his motives, we've gotta assume we're in danger, and so's everybody who lives around here."
"You don't have to convince me, Chief. I'm trying to get a read on him. There's too much--I can't," Jim rubbed his head. "It's all her. I can only smell her."
"Okay. Okay," said Blair soothingly. "You know how to do this, Jim. Separate her out. Try to figure out what's unique to the killer."
Jim closed his eyes and inhaled. Blair watched, trying not to distract him by so much as a breath. He shouldn't have worried, because Jim apparently wanted to know he was there. He reached out blindly and grabbed Blair's arm. Blair stepped closer, and Jim leaned his head into Blair's open hand. It was a strange gesture--weirdly intimate yet weirdly ritual. With Jim kneeling before him Blair felt like a figure in an ancient tapestry.
In a single businesslike move Jim broke contact and got to his feet. He had the look of a bloodhound.
"You got something?" Blair bounced on the balls of his feet, suddenly excited. "Lead the way, man."
*
Blair didn't waste time worrying when he walked into the kitchen to find Jim standing there, muscles tense, maybe on his fifth or sixth hour of fan-fixation. He just chirped, "Buongiornio, pumpkin! Insomnia, huh?" He was possibly going a little nuts. "Sit, now, there you go." Jim relaxed beneath his touch and allowed himself to be pushed gently into a chair. Blair poured a bowl of cereal for them both because he didn't know how much Jim would eat, and when Jim didn't respond to the proffered spoon, he soothed, "Come on, open up. This is good stuff, man, fortified with vitamins A, C, B probably, B12, B flat, I don't know, zinc? You want zinc, don't you? Sure, we all need zinc. Come on now. Say aaaaah. No? Okay, airplane, right? Vrrrrrrr," and midway through the engine sound effect, he froze.
What the hell was he doing? Jim wasn't a child. He was a man--the man--the primal, capable, superpowered Sentinel.
Very carefully Blair emptied the spoon back into the bowl and placed it down on the table. Suddenly, violently, he dashed the bowl, cereal, milk, everything onto the floor in a splashy crash. The bowl, frustratingly, didn't break, just spun a few times loudly on its brim. Jim turned his head sharply, but it was wrongly-timed, and in the wrong direction. Not a response, just a coincidence. Blair let out a wordless yell. It was just to let off steam, really, but when he noticed that Jim still didn't respond, he got closer, right up to Jim's ear, and shouted as loud as he could.
That got a response: Jim flinched hard, and tried to bury his ear in his shoulder. Even after the noise stopped he kept his eyes squeezed shut, and Blair could see tears of pain glittering at the corners.
Blair stepped back, clapping a hand over his mouth. He fell to his knees and dropped his head into Jim's lap. Jim's entire body was tense, and Blair's contact had no effect. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Blair whispered into his sweatpants.
He stayed that way for a long time. He half-expected to feel Jim's hand come up and rest heavy on his shoulder, to hear Jim's voice, calm and low: "It's okay" or "For what?" or "Sandburg?" or "What is this? Get off me," hey, that would be fine, too. Anything.
Turned out now was not the moment for Jim to miraculously wake up, all better. In that way this moment was just exactly like all the other moments of the last three weeks, which, by now, should not be so surprising.
"What am I going to do?" he asked out loud. Since meeting Jim, he'd never gone this long without inspiration. Maybe he ought to feel lucky about that, but why did the magic stop now--now, when he most desperately needed a solution?
The problem with being the world's foremost expert on a subject was that when he was stumped, that was it--nobody to ask. He knew Burton by heart, and there was nothing helpful there. Usually when he wanted new material he went straight to the source, but Jim couldn't even communicate with him now.
That was the difference--he'd never had to deal with any Sentinel problems without Jim. It wasn't just that Jim provided him with the raw data. (He actually wasn't that good at that. It was like pulling teeth, and he mocked Blair's questionnaires.) He kept Blair thinking on the right lines. Kept him on his toes. Kept him going.
And he was in closer communication with the spirits, which was sometimes really helpful. What if they were sending him visions now? Trying to show him the way? Didn't they realize it wouldn't help him any if the messages were all being marked "Return to sender"?
"Hey, guys," said Blair, lifting his eyes, "you know I'm right here, right? Ready, willing, and eager to be given some kind of deeply meaningful spirit quest? Vision? Dream? Maybe a message spelled out in Scrabble tiles? Anything, man. Cryptic's fine. I love cryptic. I'm a puzzle-solver." If only they'd give him some sign that he was on track, or that there even was a track. That someone up there was still on top of things and had plans for Jim yet.
Then again, maybe the spirits had decided to cut their losses and forget the used-up old Sentinel. Maybe Jim and Blair were on their own. Blair felt a flash of hatred for the hypothetical new Sentinel currently being prepared to make such-and-such a journey.
"This one's still good, you know," he snapped at the air. He gave the air a moment to prepare a response, but it snubbed him. Like talking to a brick wall, or to Jim. Hey-ohhh!
"Oh, God," Blair sighed, and hauled himself to his feet to deal with the cereal mess, feeling a dull wash of loneliness pass over him. No Jim. No spirits. Nobody to help him.
*
"Goddammit!" Jim stopped short, and Blair almost tumbled into him in the dark.
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"I've been tracking the fucking victim!"
"What?"
"We're on our way to her village. This is where she came from!" Jim grabbed a fallen branch and threw it into the trees beyond. "Goddammit!"
"Are you sure? Maybe this is the direction the killer went in, too," Blair suggested.
Jim shook his head and ran a hand over his hair. "No. I wasn't sure at first, but it's definitely just the girl I'm trailing. Reverse trailing. Fuck."
"Okay, no problem," Blair soothed, making slow, fluid gestures, trying to counteract Jim's brusque pacing. "We'll just go back and start again."
"Chief, we've wasted a lot of time, and I barely had anything to begin with. I don't... I don't think..."
"We have to try," said Blair firmly. "I mean, it's that or give up, right?"
Jim stood still a moment, and Blair worried that he was considering giving up. He knew they had no reason to believe that this killer, in the grand scheme of things, was that dangerous; and he knew it was only by chance that they were here to witness the crime to begin with; but he still felt sure that giving up was the last thing Jim should do. Jim couldn't see his own progress as clearly as Blair could. From Jim's point of view, he'd racked up a lot of failures lately: failure to save Alex; failure to protect Blair... He needed this.
Suddenly Jim sprang into action, slamming his arm into a poor defenseless tree. "What the fuck is the use of these senses if they're only almost good enough! What the hell kind of Sentinel am I if I can't even protect the maybe six people in spitting distance of my own goddamn temple!"
"Hey, hey, man. Relax, okay?" He needed this, all right. Blair rested a hand on his back, tried to focus him with gentle strokes.
He stopped mid-rub. Jim noticed; he glanced down, frowning, and met Blair's eyes.
"How far did you say we are from the temple?" Blair asked.
"We're not." Jim indicated a direction.
"So," said Blair, "Here's a crazy idea."
*
"Where the hell were you today? You know you're going to get assigned to teach intro to the jocks and comp sci kids, right?"
Jim flinched even hearing the voice over the phone. "Molly, hi," said Blair as quietly as possible, letting himself into the hall. Like that would help. Jim could probably hear flies buzzing in Spokane, and everything in between. Blair couldn't imagine the cacophony.
"Why are you whispering? Seriously, why didn't you go to orientation? Besides the obvious suckitude."
"I've been busy."
"Police stuff," Molly suggested.
"Kind of. Uh." Well, he didn't need to get into details. "Jim's sick." She had a nurturing streak and would understand this better than tales of adventure, anyway.
"Oh, no! Is it serious?"
"Kind of," said Blair again, and even though he didn't feel weepy or anything, his voice came out surprisingly ragged.
"I'm sorry," said Molly. Then, cheerfully, "I hope you're not too busy to come out with us tonight. We're doing the anti-orientation thing. Cool kids only. We're calling it an ice solidifier."
It was tempting. Even being on the phone with Molly was refreshing, and he was strangely surprised every time she responded relevantly to something he said. But what if Jim needed him while he was off painting the town? There was nobody else who could take care of him. "I don't think I can."
"Come on, Blair, you owe us. I think Shelby will actually burst if she goes another day without seeing your pretty face."
Shit, Shelby. She was the honors undergrad Blair was supposed to be mentoring. He'd agreed to it last semester, when the greatest constraints on his time and energy he could imagine were balancing his work on Jim's cases with not finishing his dissertation. He'd met with her exactly once, when she ran into him on his office research raid just after returning from Mexico. He'd been so burned out with lack of sleep and overwork, he could see his own handwritten notes on Jim and Alex whenever he closed his eyes. He'd done a very bad job of listening to her opinions about ancient Inca organizational and bureaucratic documents, given her some probably semi-insane busywork, and taken off. He really owed it to her to at least check in.
And he needed some time off. He was no use to Jim if he went stir crazy. "I'll come," he said.
He hung up and called Megan to ask her to look in on Jim every so often during patrol. He phoned from inside the closet, partially to muffle the noise, and partially because he needed to make some serious wardrobe decisions. He was ridiculously excited to be leaving the house.
He brought out his blue shirt and his white shirt and held them up to Jim, balancing them like scales. Both seemed to cause Jim pain. Blair wore green.
He got to the bar early and the only other person there was Shelby. She was perched on a tall stool, long slender legs crossed at the ankles, sipping a pink fruity drink bigger than her head and studying a notebook. Her face lit up when she saw him, possibly because he'd been a remarkably elusive adviser, and possibly because she had a massive and obvious crush on him. Blair kind of liked that. Not that he had any intention of doing anything with her--for so, so many reasons--but it was nice to be appreciated. And it was one of many ways that she reminded him of himself at that age. He still had fond memories of Professor Williams, she of the long, long hair and the sexy South African accent, who'd almost gotten him to major in biochemistry. Just in time to file the paperwork, he'd taken his first anthro class and decided that whatever magical thing happened in the mind to create consciousness and society and humanity, he was more interested in the after photo than the before. God damn him; a biochem background would probably be really helpful right about now.
"I um, I finished the chart," Shelby said proudly. "I brought it, just in case you came." She pulled a thick stapled packet from her notebook.
"Chart?"
"You asked me to compare these symbols with all known ancient South American writing systems?"
Man. She'd obviously slaved on this assignment he had no memory of giving. It was like the time he'd suddenly remembered at nine-thirty that he'd asked Jennifer Hauer out for eight, and he arrived at her house to find her sitting on the stoop with a phone in her lap, make-up smudged and updo wilted. He could hardly imagine what had compelled him to ask her to do such unfocused busywork. And yet, he had to kind of admire his past self's ingenuity: he'd obviously thought ancient documents -> ancient writing systems -> the instructions on the wall of the Temple of the Sentinels. It had described the original disastrous sense-enhancing potion; why not the antidote?
And then he felt guilty for not following up on this line of research sooner. The thing was, for the first week AJA (After Jim's Accident), he'd spent twenty-four hours a day looking for a cure, figuring the sooner he fixed Jim the sooner they both could rest easy, but then he'd sort of realized it was going to be a longer-haul kind of thing, and the cure wouldn't matter if Jim starved to death while Blair was studying his notes. (Or if he starved himself. Jim was usually the one who brought him helpfully-timed bowls of soup and bread while he was deep in research mode.) In the last couple of weeks he'd relegated his study time to a few hours a day, Jim's mood permitting. But his study sessions were not only less lengthy of late, they were overall, hour for hour, less productive. He wouldn't have thought of making such a chart now. He resolved to recapture some of his old zeal, because there was no way hanging around in this state could be good for Jim. Or for Blair. Or for the city.
"Is there anything else you need?" Shelby asked eagerly.
And he resolved to be a better mentor to poor Shelby, God.
"This is perfect," said Blair. "Let me study it and see what I can come up with. In the meantime, hey, you've got me, you might as well use me." Shelby got a dreamy look, and Blair hurried on, "Have you decided on the topic of your project? Do you need some help narrowing it down?"
"Well--actually," she said, shyly, and Blair was overcome with the sneaking suspicion that her topic of choice was "the sex drive of the twenty-nine-year-old male PhD student"--"I stumbled on something--well. It might be kinda--out there."
"Try me," said Blair, thinking, You may have picked just exactly the right adviser after all, kiddo.
"Well, you know, you said I could use your office to work in, and, well, just to see, you know, why I was doing what I was doing, and what kind of thing you were maybe interested in" oh no "I took the liberty of looking at some of your books, and" oh God "I don't know, but I'm interested in--" Blair felt sure if he had Jim's powers he would have heard both their hearts racing double-time-- "the Sentinels."
*
"Sh." Jim clapped a hand over Blair's mouth as they entered the temple, and dropped to his knees.
Blair sat down on the stone ledge beside Jim and let him meditate silently for a minute, making a respectful attempt to try to keep his fidgeting to a minimum as Jim communed with his spirits or what have you. When Jim looked up at the temple etchings, and reached out to touch Blair's knee--a sort of routine check Jim had taken to performing at random moments: is my Guide around? okay, check, systems are go--Blair figured it was safe to talk. "Anything?"
"Not a damn thing."
"Okay, that's okay. Hey, we're just getting started. Now, relax. Breathe. And buckle up, buddy. We're gonna crank it up to eleven, here."
"I'm at eleven," Jim protested. "I've been at eleven. I still can't hear the bastard."
"Fifteen then! Twenty-nine! Ten million! We're going off the charts. But I need you to let go of your anger. Give yourself a break, man. We're trying to do the impossible, here, so have a little patience. Be at peace. Can you do that?"
Jim nodded and closed his eyes, letting out a deep breath.
"Okay. Here we go. Now, forget the dials. We're so beyond the dials. Picture... Picture the universe."
Blair knew Jim was doing it because a slow smile spread over his face.
Okay, so far, so good, though Blair hadn't a clue what he was going to say next.
Before he'd worked it out, Jim opened his eyes. "Okay," he said. "I know what I have to do."
To be continued...