Climbing up into the truck tired him out a little more than it really should have, but Blair didn't
pay much attention. Staying in the hospital always made him lazy, like some primitive lizard-lobe
of his brain started thinking, *People are bringing me stuff while I lay around on my back, so
obviously there's no need to move around anymore -- cool.* Leaving the hospital was always
high on the list of things Blair's ego enjoyed, but his id was often spoiled and pissy about it for
days.
"We should go to the grocery store," he told Jim, who was still hovering behind him as though
scared that Blair would fall out of the truck and need to be caught before he hit the ground. Just
to make Jim look at him like he was crazy, Blair grinned and added "My lizard needs ice cream."
But Jim didn't look at him like he was crazy. Well, he *did,* but not in the old, familiar
*Sandburg, you're a crazy son of a bitch, and why do you put me through this?* way -- more like,
*Sandburg's gone crazy, and it might be my fault.* "Store's good," he said, and closed the door
between them.
Blair leaned back in his seat. He listened to the door and the sound of Jim settling in, the door
closing again, the draw and click of the seatbelt. The sound of the engine would be next, and they
could get out of the parking garage, away from the hospital, and home, *finally.* He hadn't had a
lot of time to dwell on it, but suddenly Blair realized that he was missing the loft like he would
miss a person, an old friend.
More, actually. There hadn't been many old friends in Blair's life that he actually missed, once
circumstances removed them from the scope of his current concerns. But the loft.... No new
apartment, Blair realized with a rush of bemusement and terror, would have had the power to
distract him. Usually Blair went after the novel and the startling like a magpie after foil wrappers
and costume jewelry.
He was still waiting for the sound of the engine, although he was only vaguely aware of that.
"I'm not bored or anything," he mused out loud. "I really like -- things."
"Things?" Jim sounded a little strangled, like he was trying to converse with Blair while wrestling
an alligator on the side, although when Blair turned his head, Jim was just sitting there with his
hands resting on top of the steering wheel, staring straight ahead.
"You know." Blair drew an all-encompassing spiral in the air with one hand. "Things. Stuff.
My life. It's a really good life." Had he ever gone three years without getting bored with his life
before? Three *months*?
"It's *your* life," Jim said, unexpectedly insistent.
Blair smiled at him. "Jeez, Jim, really? That would explain my use of the word 'my' in that
particular context. I was wondering about that."
"Stop that."
"What? Stop what?"
Jim took a deep, deep breath and let it out grudgingly. "Stop...being so normal about this."
"Come on, Jim. Stop being so freaky about this. Let's just go home, okay?"
"It's not even normal for me to *touch* your stuff. I mean, I expect you to respect my things,
and I respect yours. It's sure as hell not normal for me to go through everything you own, box it
up, and--"
"Well, *obviously* it's not normal, man. That's why it's not an issue, you know? I mean,
that...that's not you. That's, like, the quintessence of non-Jim behavior. Everyone's been saying
that for weeks, and now that you've finally caught on to the fact that you're not acting like you,
we can tighten your screws or change your oil or whatever, and things can get back to the way
they were."
That made Jim laugh, a short little bark that Jim used whenever people played right into his
expectations of them. It wasn't Blair's favorite of Jim's laughs. "You're such a fucking scientist.
Sometimes I feel like your personal chemistry set."
"You love it."
"Yeah, I love you sticking a thermometer up my ass and going down to the toxicology lab every
time I bring home a new spaghetti sauce. It's better than the Superbowl."
"Jim. Shut the fuck up. I'm so bored with your post-traumatic stress syndrome. I swear to God,
every time I get tennis elbow, you fall in love with me, then you confront your own mortality,
then you get pissed off at me, and then you flagellate yourself, and like two weeks later
everything's groovy again. I love you, man, I love you like my life, but you wear me the fuck out
with this."
It was harsher than Blair could really muster the energy to feel, but the thing about Jim was, he
didn't always respond to dialoguing. He usually did respond to being poked with sharp sticks,
and Blair had long since gotten over his ethical qualms about sinking to Jim's own level,
therapeutically speaking.
"You don't have *tennis elbow,*" Jim said, and Blair was surprised how little he was allowing
himself to be goaded. Interesting. "You...."
"Died," Blair filled in, just as Jim rallied and came back with, "--had a near-death experience."
"*Died,*" Blair repeated.
"Whatever."
"Whatever? My death is a 'whatever' to you?"
"You're not dead."
"*Anymore.*"
"You're not dead. That's all that matters."
When Jim sounded that certain, it was a sure bet that he wasn't certain at all. Something else
mattered, something above and beyond the usual tango of guilt and control issues that Jim usually
did when he failed to protect Blair from something. Blair rubbed his temples, sighing slightly in
frustration. Like he wasn't tired and confused and still kind of stressed out himself; now he had
to play Clue with Jim's psyche. Colonel Mustard in the frontal lobe with the fear of intimacy....
Of course. God bless the subconscious -- of *course.*
"It matters *why,*" Blair said, as gently as he knew how to speak. This was not a sharp-stick
situation. This was infinitely more dangerous.
His lack of argument was probably the closest Jim could come right now to agreeing. Blair took
it as a gesture of reconciliation, a cease-fire, and he let the silence sit for a while, filling up the
truck with them. It seemed to actually change the air pressure, until Blair found himself
instinctively cracking and shifting his jaw like he did on airplanes to keep his ears from popping.
He also found himself holding Jim's hand, matching the tension there with tension of his own so
that they were meeting in the middle like weather fronts, a summer storm brewing up out of
nowhere.
Blair knew that he carried this in him -- tension, intensity, even ferocity, something predatory and
loud. Most of the time, it hibernated, but occasionally it howled. He could feel its golden eyes
opening inside his fragile and tired body, and he didn't like it. He'd never liked it, not at all. It
made him want to do things, and Blair's life was infinitely easier to manage when he only wanted
what the situation called for. Internal pressures, demands that came up from within himself, all
too often wound up as disruptions in the flow. His fingers pressing hard into Jim's knuckles,
sweat slicking their palms and mingling.... It was so crucial to stay flexible, to stay poised to
respond to the unpredictable demands of Jim's dangerous lifestyle and Jim's turbulent inner life.
This didn't feel very flexible. He couldn't change it, though, couldn't let go even if he wanted to.
"I don't know how I did that," Jim finally said. "Don't bother asking; I don't have the first clue."
"I know. Neither do I. I could probably do some research. On animal spirits.... Most of what I
know about shamanic healing is related to medicinal plant lore, but soul-retrieval is totally well-
documented, and--"
"No, no, you don't-- It's not that I don't know how it was done. I mean, I don't, but I don't
really care, either. I don't know how *I* did that. How did I get that kind of...power? Over life
and death? I mean, how long have I *had* that, Sandburg? How the hell could I have that and
never notice?"
"Maybe you don't have that. Or, I mean, just...with me."
Jim's eyes flicked over toward him, and then off to his left, staring out the driver's side window.
"Is that how it works?" he asked, sounding impressively cold and scientific. It almost made Blair
proud, in a totally wrong sort of way.
"No. In your typical case, no." Jim turned back to him, looking slightly dazed by the very
thought of a straight answer from Blair. "But in your typical case, it's a shaman who's retrieving
the soul, and you're not a shaman. So obviously this is...."
"Not typical."
"Give the man a cigar."
"But it's...typical for Sentinels, right?"
Something inside him, no longer comfortably asleep, propelled Blair's arm, and he punched the
dashboard, wondering why the hell he was doing something so pointless and immature. "Well,
how the *fuck* should I know? I sort of totally fucked up with Alex, in case you hadn't noticed,
so my chances of comparing and contrasting your experiences with being Sentinels are pretty
much shot to hell, along with whatever chance I had of being able to write an intellectually
defensible dissertation on Sentinels, as opposed to an episode of *Lifetime Intimate Portraits*!"
After a brief silence, Jim said, "I'll kill her," in a tone that might have been an appeal for
permission.
Blair laughed. "That won't change anything."
"It might make us feel better."
"It might get you twenty-five to life."
"No jury in the land would convict me. Do you mean that? About the diss being...."
He hadn't wanted to tell Jim. He hadn't wanted to tell Jim because it put Jim in the position Blair
was already in, forced to lie about Blair's academic prospects in order to keep him on the force.
Jim didn't like to lie any more than Blair did -- a lot less, actually. He'd been intending to protect
Jim for at least another semester or two. "No committee is going to take it seriously. It's going
to be a hell of an interesting read, but if I told you it was going to earn me a doctorate...I'd be
lying."
"So...you'll need to do another one. Pick a different topic...."
"Yeah. I'll probably end up doing the thin-blue-line one."
"Have you started it?"
"What, the cop diss?"
"Yeah."
"Man, I'm not finished with the Sentinel diss yet. How many hours do you think a day has, in my
world?"
"But, so...." Jim looked well and truly lost at sea. "You're still writing it? My-- the Sentinel
paper?"
Blair wondered if he looked as stunned as he felt. "Jim! Of *course* I'm writing it! You think
I'm going to abandon it *now*?"
"But you said it wouldn't--"
"It *won't.* But it's going to be finished, and it's going to be out there. It'll do fuck-all for my
academic career, but sooner or later...sooner or later, someone else is going to find a Sentinel, or
*be* a Sentinel, and I'm not saying there's going to be any way to make that a walk in the park,
but...."
"But they'll have more than Burton," Jim interpreted. "They'll have Burton and Sandburg."
It sounded a little egomaniacal when he put it like that, but Blair just shrugged, because there
wasn't anything in the statement that he could exactly argue with. "No sense reinventing the
wheel." He doubted there was any way to explain to Jim the importance that this had assumed in
his own mind, the way he was becoming all but obsessed by the idea of generations of Sentinels
going quickly insane without guidance or even simple validation. Blair had believed in Sentinels
when no one else did; he had always believed, long before he had any proof. They all belonged to
him, in some strange emotional way; they were all his responsibility. Who else was both willing
and qualified -- even *marginally* qualified, as Blair was -- to make sure they didn't flare up and
die out like the combustible balls of energy that they were?
He had saved Jim. There wasn't a doubt in Blair's mind about that, and he knew that deep down,
Jim understood it, too. That certainty was what allowed him to be irritated rather than alarmed
when Jim kicked him out. They had the power of life and death over one another, elemental,
constitutional.
And he had failed Alex. She was something a little more than simply human, and something less
than a Sentinel, and he had held her life in his hands, had a fair shot at making her into what Jim
had become. Blair remembered the early days of Jim well enough to know that he hadn't
*always* been the nice guy he mostly was now; Alex's defensiveness had been little more than a
rough-edged echo of Jim, paranoid and isolationist, demanding and resentful. Sure, Alex had
come out of a slightly darker place than Jim had (maybe -- there was still an awful lot Blair didn't
know about those years in the Rangers, and even though Jim had been on the sunny side of the
law and Alex hadn't, the brain and the heart responded to some experiences in ways that the
government couldn't do much about), but still. Still, he'd been the only chance she had, her only
friend in the world, and he'd had the power of life and death over her, and he had simply...failed.
Lost a Sentinel, pure and simple. As if the world didn't need as many Sentinels as it could get.
It could drive a person stark raving mad, Blair reflected apprehensively. Thinking about it too
much...about the disasters that wouldn't be averted now, because there was no Sentinel in the
vicinity, no one who could protect the tribe, even though there should have been, even though
there had been, almost, so very nearly. You could let your imagination tally up the deaths and the
broken hearts, and wonder endlessly what you might have done differently, how you could have
seized that opportunity that God or genetics dropped in your lap when a pretty and terrified
woman wrapped her car around a telephone pole in your precinct.
"Do you think she wanted to be a better person?" Blair blurted out, vaguely aware that Jim didn't
really know Alex, and really couldn't answer that question. "Do you think it's -- a Sentinel thing,
wanting to help people?"
"Yes. And I don't think she was a Sentinel." Blair looked up, surprised. "I couldn't -- have -- I
couldn't do those things. I *couldn't.* I can kill, but -- but it's different, what she--"
"Because you're a Sentinel? Or because you're you?"
"I don't know, I guess."
Blair snorted, but not too bitterly. "You see my problem with the diss. You really think she
wasn't a Sentinel?"
"I think...it's possible that you're off-base about the senses. That Sentinels have them, but maybe
they're not what makes the difference between a Sentinel and the next person."
"You think it's more...spiritual." Blair didn't know if he liked that idea or not. Once, he would
have hated it, and argued against it with all the passionate sophistry he could summon up, which
was a lot. The death thing, the vision...had definitely made him a little more intrigued by that side
of the equation. Possibly because for the first time, it had something to do with him personally;
not the most admirable of thoughts, but seriously plausible, Blair could admit to himself.
"For me it is," Jim said, and in that moment, he seemed whole, grounded and mature and almost
*wise,* for pete's sake. Most of the time, Blair was affectionately conscious of how fractured
and rebellious Jim's sense of reality was, but every now and then, Jim had it completely,
magnificently together.
Every now and then, Blair knew that Jim had it together because of *him,* and there were no
words for that feeling. It felt like a sudden breath of air to a dead man.
"I'm sorry I didn't--"
"Knock it off. You're sorry, I'm sorry. We don't know what the hell we're doing most of the
time; what else is new?"
"I really thought she needed safe space, and you were acting so weird. I just--"
"It's *okay,* Sandburg. What I said -- about not trusting you -- that was stupid. I didn't mean
that. I only said it because I didn't know what I did mean."
"So can we go home now, or what?"
Jim turned the engine on, and then off again. As Blair rolled his eyes and prepared to mock Jim
for this, Jim said, "You died because of me."
He could have said, *No, James, I died because of Alex -- relax.* But instead, Blair said, "I try
not to think about how many people die because of us," and only after he said it did he realize that
it was true.
Obviously Jim, however, had never really put it in those terms -- or didn't think Blair had. Either
way, he looked pretty floored by the statement. "You're no killer, Chief. You're the furthest
thing from."
He nodded, just so Jim would let it go. Jim didn't look quite like he wanted to, but faced with the
flat wall of Blair's silence, he didn't seem to know what else to say. *With great power comes
great responsibility,* Blair thought, and grinned, imagining the shit that Jim would give him under
better circumstances for saying anything that sounded quite so much like a bad Star Trek episode.
He wondered where Alex was, and the thought occurred to him that Jim probably knew, or at
least had a better idea than Blair did at the moment; he had surely spent part of the time that Blair
had been confined to his hospital room contributing to the search. He could ask, but on the other
hand, of course he couldn't.
"It's too bad this is all so hush-hush," Blair reflected. "I could get a lot of mileage out of this
story. How stubborn is Jim? Once he promised me that he wouldn't let me get hurt, so when I
died, he had to go to the afterlife and drag me back by the scruff of the neck."
"All I could think...was that I wasn't going to allow it. That I hadn't given my fucking
*permission* for anything to take you away. Pretty vain, really."
"Your ego is stronger than the laws of reality. I always kind of suspected."
Jim laughed, and it was one of the laughs that Blair did like, that set something inside him to
simmering over a burner. "Trust you to figure out a way to tell the story that makes me look bad.
You know, some people would feel compelled to shower me with praise, if I prevented their
certain death -- or their ongoing death. Whatever."
"I'm sure plenty of people would. I'm sure plenty of people do." Blair liked that idea, all the
people who would tell their grandchildren about Jim, about the strong and brave and skillful man
who was responsible for the fact that they were alive today. They would never mention Blair, but
hey. You didn't become an anthropologist to get famous.
"Let's go home," Jim said suddenly.
"Ice cream," Blair reminded him.
"Right. You know, we're extremely overdue for a vacation. How does that sound to you, when
we can arrange it?"
"Whatever," Blair said, while what he really meant was, *It feels so good to be back with you, I
couldn't care less where we are.*
"You still want me to teach you how to surf?"
"Oh, yeah. A hundred feet of water crashing down on my head, that sounds *great.* Hold me
back."
"Maybe something else."
"Maybe."
"Niagra Falls?" Jim suggested, much too innocently to be meant as anything but a jab.
Blair made a face at him. "I'd make you pay for the honeymoon suite."
Jim turned slightly to sweep Blair with a fast, speculative look. "Oddly appropriate," he said
mildly, and started the truck, leaving Blair to enjoy both wondering exactly what that meant, and
totally knowing.