Spoilers for Sentinel too. Both parts. This takes place at the end of Sentinel too, pt. 2 so I guess it's an epilog. Much angst, some noisy HC, and a few bad words. Mild PG 13
They aren't mine, cause I'd make a feature film with the writing (not mine) and direction, that they deserve. I make no bucks, lucre or beads for writing this so don't sue me.
Crowswork
"That's the difference between you two. She lost her way." Blair stepped closer and watched the dazed Sentinel as he sat on a huge block of stone that had tumbled down from the ancient temple. Jim no longer seemed the perfect fighting machine who had effortlessly taken down a drug lord and his hired killers. He seemed lost and Blair automatically fell into his Guide persona. "Jim, I don't know..."
"God, Chief," Jim interrupted as he looked up at the cold, wet young man, only now noticing the lines of pain and exhaustion that marked the pale face.
As the fog of twisted loyalties and desire lifted, the Sentinel was able to see those around him clearly. Blair looked his age for once. His bright eyes and expressive face seemed weary and unnaturally somber, and Jim knew it was his fault. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I'll understand if you can't forgive me." Jim looked into the endless velvet green of the jungle as though searching for some ephemeral truth. "You've done nothing but help me from the first. And how do I reward your hard work, your loyalty? I revert to the miserable son of a bitch I was that first day in your office."
"Jim. You weren't yourself." Blair wondered why he was quarreling with Jim's fairly accurate assessment of the situation. After all, he was angry. Jim had kicked him out. Alex had murdered him, drowned him like some unwanted little animal who wasn't worth the cost of a bullet. The deep bruises caused by Jim and Simon's frantic CPR efforts ached miserably, and it was getting harder to breathe. "I should have told you about Alex... forced you to listen to me."
"Don't even think about taking the blame for this." Jim listened to the increasingly troubled breathing and stood up. "Sit your ass down, before you fall down." His tone was brusque as he rested one hand on the younger man's forehead, the other on his shoulder, making him sit.
"Don't you see? If I'd told you about Alex sooner she would never have gotten that nerve gas." Blair slumped as the full import of his words hit home. "I was so excited about finding another Sentinel that I endangered millions of lives."
"I wouldn't have listened. It would have been like talking to a wounded bear." Jim looked down in amazement as his friend chuckled ruefully at his words. "I forget, you would try to talk to a wounded bear." Then his tone became solemn again. "Blair, none of this is on you. I betrayed our friendship... everything we had." Jim still seemed remote and dazed. "You go home now. I had the guys move your stuff back to the loft."
"Jim, you shouldn't have done that."
"Don't get your back up, Chief. I know it was highhanded of me to assume that you wanted to move back." Jim looked down, dejected. "But you'll have the place to yourself. I'm not coming home, not right now.."
"What do you mean?" Blair felt a flash of concern, almost fear wash over him. "You have to come home now."
"Not right now. This is a place for Sentinels, I think I'll stay here. I'll be home." Jim's expression had returned to the distant, disconnected gaze Blair remembered from the old Time magazine cover. "It'll just be for a while."
Blair bit down a wave of panic at the words. A vision of Jim being carried away, as helpless and insane as Alex tore at him. "I'll stay with you."
"No, Chief. You go home, go to school and be a teacher. You are a great teacher, I don't think I ever told you that." Jim was saying goodbye, it was evident in every look and gesture. "I almost took it away from you and that was wrong."
"I'm your Guide first, always." Blair wasn't going to let Jim get away with this crap. "What do I have to do to prove that to you?"
"You already died... no damn it. I won't drag you down with me. You deserve a life, a safe life. I'll be OK here."
"Like hell!"
"You'll live a lot longer," Jim ignored the outburst and seemed to be talking primarily to himself. "Without me around. Happier too."
"Oh yeah, I'll be real freaking happy, knowing that I left you alone here to fry your brains."
"It won't fry my brain," Jim said quietly. "The boost in my senses, the visions, they're already fading. Alex would have been... well... not ok, but the increase in her senses, that was only temporary."
"What are you talking about. I saw her. She was totally burned out."
"I know... I did it." The harsh words hung in the damp air like ice. He leaned closer to Blair and spoke more quietly. "We were one. I saw the things that made her the way she was. It doesn't excuse what she did, but her childhood was... unspeakable, she never had a chance. Coming to this place gave her hope. Of course, there was none, because she trusted me to save her."
"She was going to release the nerve gas!" Blair didn't like this at all. After everything that had transpired, he was ready to crash and burn himself. And he wanted his Sentinel, grumpy and pragmatic, to be there to pick up the pieces like always. "She was going to kill us all, not to mention half the population of Sierra Verde." Blair's raising his voice brought on a coughing fit.
"It would have been kinder if I'd shot her. What's that poem about killing what you love. ' A coward does it with a kiss, a brave man with a sword.' Something like that?"
Jim, quoting Oscar Wilde? "You didn't kill Alex, and you didn't love her, either."
"But I knew what that kiss would do to her, Chief. Hell, it almost sent me around the bend." Jim couldn't explain to anyone the burst of sensations that greeted him as he left the pool. He had dispatched the men who threatened his guide with frightening ease.
Afterward, Alex had emerged from the pool and threatened to release the nerve gas. Simply linking hands with her had produced wave after wave of pure soul searing ecstasy. Then he had kissed her with all the passion and tenderness he could muster, knowing that her senses were infinitely more acute than his. And he 'killed' her with a kiss.
Blair knew he should talk this out with Jim, right now before his Sentinel closed down and repressed everything again. But he simply didn't have the strength. He saw Megan talking to Simon and caught her eye. Somehow she knew what he wanted and brought him the leather back pack he had been forced to leave behind. Simon and the rescue party must have found it and brought it along.
"Sandy?" She shot Jim a sidelong glance, as if unsure what to make of him. "You should take your tablets, you're overdue." The brown vials were in her hand, along with a fresh bottle of water.
Before Blair could move, Jim's large hand intercepted the medications. Frowning he read the labels. "My God, Chief. I didn't know they gave this high a dosage of antibiotics to human beings." The capsules were huge and the instructions said to take two. "And these pain pills." Jim examined the large white tablets. "They should have knocked you on your tail the first time you took them. Damn it! You left the hospital against medical advice, didn't you?" Blair had said nothing about his release from the hospital and Jim had just assumed that the doctors had agreed to his release.
You were in a fog, so focused on Alex that you didn't even check your Guide.
Now he listened closely and was appalled at the labored, congested breathing, and something else that teased at his memory. A faint flutter in his friend's heartbeat. A memory of an overworked Blair trying to stay awake on a diet of coffee and colas one summer, returned as he remembered the trip to the ER. The trip caused when he heard that rapid irregular beat twice in one hour and panicked. Caffeine poisoning, the doctors said. It was depressingly common among college students. But his guide had no access to those beverages in the jungle.
"Jim! Give me my pills." Blair could see the change come over his friend. The old blessed protector Jim was returning fast and things were going to get loud.
"Give me the pep pills first." Jim held out his free hand, curling the fingers impatiently.
Blair thought about running, but knew he wouldn't get far. Maybe he could ask Megan to shoot him. Or Jim. But she only gave him a disappointed look and stepped back. She knew about the prescriptions, but not the under-the-counter energy pills he had bought when they'd arrived. Blair fished through his jacket pockets and handed over the pills before the detective could frisk him. It took Jim a moment to translate the ingredients and then, as predicted, things got loud.
"SANDBURG! THESE THINGS HAVE AMPHETAMINE IN THEM!"
"They are sort of legal here, Jim." Blair had wanted to get his friend's mind off the temple and had succeeded... big time. "I just needed to be here, I had to be here..."
"AMPHETAMINES?" An icy blue glare known to make hardened killers wet their pants was pointed at him. "Mister 'I don't believe in drugs' Sandburg, was risking his health by taking AMPHETMINES?"
"Jeez, Jim. Why don't you yell that a little louder? I think a couple of those local cops didn't hear you." Blair had to fight the urge to smile, as insane as it seemed. Jim was back. His big, neurotic, overprotective, pain in the ass Sentinel was back.
"Do you know you have fluid in your lungs?" Jim's voice got quiet. It was even worse than the yelling. "Megan? Would you tell those medics we need another stretcher."
"I had an inhaler. It got lost during the gunfight at the river..." Blair answered before he noticed Megan making a strategic withdrawal. "No! Wait! No stretcher. I will NOT dangle from some helicopter again." Panicked, he could feel his heart beat faster until it felt like it was in his throat.
"Calm down, Chief." Jim's voice was frightened now and he waved Megan away. "No basket. There's a natural clearing over there, half a mile at most. They landed a chopper. I know you don't like them, but it beats a two day hike."
"I can walk," Blair insisted stubbornly. "I just made a 'two day hike', part of it forced march at gun point."
"But this time..." Jim flung the bottle of energy pills into the jungle. "...you don't have those to counteract the pain meds and keep you on your feet."
"Jim!" Blair scowled as he was handed his prescription bottles.
"What? You were going to take them home as a souvenir? Take your medicine, and we'll go."
"We? You are coming back to Cascade with me then?" Blair relaxed and took the pills. It wasn't the perfect ending but it would do for now. They would work things out when he felt better and their lives calmed down. They had time now. His head started to spin as the pills took effect and he leaned against the solid warmth of his friend.
"Soon as a doctor say's you can travel. Then we'll go home." Jim wrapped his arm around his friend and pulled him close. "And I'll try not to be such a horse's ass in the future."
"Don't call my friend names." Blair slurred the words as he tried not to drool on Jim's shirt. "...Never hurt me, takes care..."
Jim felt the last of the ice around his heart melt as he held with his guide. This was his home.
Blair had risked his life, risked damaging his heart, to follow his sentinel and friend into the fray. Knowing that Jim was vulnerable to Alex, he staked his heart and soul on his belief that the Sentinel would do the right thing. The connection that linked him to Blair strengthened to an almost physical sensation of warmth and devotion. It had been weeks, maybe months since he had felt this way.
Since before Alex came to town.
The voice in his head was tormenting and he tried to ignore it. The inflection was his, but with the same cold, cruel edge it had when he accused Sandburg of betraying his trust.
You'll do it again. Use words like a club to hurt him. Things will go wrong and you'll lash out. And he will be your target.
"I'll try to be better, Chief, I swear it."
Selfish! He was right about those fear based responses. Coward! You need him to insure your own survival. You will betray him. Just like you betrayed everyone else you ever loved. You'll get him killed.
"Things will work out. I'll never let anyone hurt you again."
YOU will hurt him.
The men were coming with the litter, so he turned his back to them and brushed a fraternal kiss on the curly head resting on his chest.
Each man kills the thing he loves.
"I can't lose you." Only a Sentinel could hear Jim's whisper. "I guess that makes me coward after all.
The End
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