2:57
The shadows in the loft were shifting and cold, like the broken fragments of screams in his mind. Screams he couldn't quite hear, words he couldn't quite understand... he was standing at the balcony windows, staring out with sleep-blinded eyes, trying to see something, someone who was shrieking in fear, someone who wasn't there...
Again.
"Nightmare?" Sandburg spoke softly from behind, as he could feel the pain stabbing through Jim's head like the screams. "Another one?"
"Yeah. Sorry I woke you."
"No, no, no, no..." His oversized yawn, however, didn't help the denials. "Okay, maybe. It doesn't matter, man. What time is it?"
"2:57 a. m."
One slightly bleary blue eye peeked at him. "57..."
"Now 58."
Blair thought about that, clearly labeled it 'Sentinel Thing For Future Grilling', and let it go - for the moment. "Pretty bad, huh?"
"I guess so."
He didn't really want to talk about any of it, about the tattered, bloody threads of a fear he could still almost touch. He shook his head as if to clear it - a mistake which hurt even more - and looked something else to think about. "Want some coffee?"
"At three in the morning?" The light brush of a testing hand against his forehead actually hurt. "I'll make you something."
"Not that ditchwater stuff again."
Blair's deep, rich chuckle warmed him. "It's herbal ditchwater, Jim, chamomile, lemon balm, St. Johns wort -"
"What?"
"Very funny. Hops, catnip... great stuff, all of it, and just what you need now. You know it's helped before."
"Whatever." He watched Sandburg wandering around the kitchen, absently noting the ratty state of his - for want of a better word - nightwear: grungy boxers and the sorriest excuse for a T-shirt he'd ever seen. And bed hair to die for.
It was odd. They'd now been roommates for what, a month? - and he was still surprised at how quickly they'd both slid into it. Comfortably. As if they hadn't each been living alone for years.
Too bad the comfort kept being shattered at 3 a. m. by dreams.
"Aren't you cold?" He asked, more to say something than because he didn't know.
Blair looked up. "No... oh, now that you've made me think of it, yes."
"And tired."
"So are you," Blair came back, unanswerably. "After all, this is the third night in a row, and that's just this week, Jim."
"I know, I -"
"And it's hardly your fault, okay? Do you, uh," and tired as he was, Blair couldn't entirely suppress the scientific bounce Jim knew and feared, "do you remember anything this time?"
Did he? No, not much... the sound mostly, shrieks, moaning, perhaps pain, or anger, or... or not, he couldn't be sure. And the smells, that he now knew all too well meant deep, splintering terror. And sight: glimpses of a twisting figure tangled in something soft and thick and enveloping, glimpses he could see through a window, through shadows far darker and colder than those in the loft.
Nothing new though. "Not enough." He took the cup Blair held out, more for the warmth as his hands wrapped around it than to actually drink the muck.
"There should be something we can do," Blair curled cross-legged on the floor, frowning into his own cup. Jim thought he was disgustingly - though drowsily - cheerful for three in the morning, the third morning in a row. "You can't go on without a decent night's -"
"And you can?"
"Youth and vigor, man, youth and vigor." Blair waved a vague hand, avoiding the light smack across his head with the ease of practice. "But this really sucks."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Hey, not your fault, Jim. No one can help nightmares, they're the subconscious trying to talk to you, once you work out what it's trying to tell -"
Jim's growl came from somewhere between amusement and irritation. "Once I do that - huh?"
"Uh -" Sandburg blinked. "Uh, yeah, yeah I know. Generic you, man - not specifically you you, you know?"
God help him, he did. And God help him even more, this surreal conversation was doing wonders to dispel the last, vanishing tatters of the darkness he had sensed.
"I'm a sentinel," he said awkwardly, "not a telepath."
"I know that, Jim. It's just," Blair hesitated, "if we had any idea what the dreams were, we might be able to work out -"
"Who's doing the dreaming, yeah I know." Jim sighed. He was getting really tired over the senses-enhanced backlash from other people's sleep: really, really tired.
All they'd established in the last two weeks was how his senses honed in, even in sleep, on the sound and sometimes scent of people caught in dreams - hell, even the sight sometimes, those nights he'd wake to find himself open-eyed and gazing blankly across the city, as if staring into shadows that were miles away. All of it, good and bad, could be coming from anyone. Anyone at all. In an ever-increasing radius that Sandburg got indecently excited about when fully awake.
"It was - someone named..." There had been a name among the wordless screams, yes.
"Named?"
He tried, he really did, but it escaped from him. But shaking his head was still a mistake, and still hurt. "No, it's gone."
"Damn. There has to be something we can do. I mean, sentinels living in small villages must have had the same problem -"
"Eavesdropping on the neighbors' fantasies?"
"Fantasies?" That got a sleepy-eyed but irrepressible heads-up from Blair.
"It isn't all nightmares, Chief, you know that. And I think I recognized the voice from last night -"
"You did?" That got him bolt upright. "And you didn't tell me?"
"I'm telling you now, aren't I?" Thinking about this was better than trying to remember the screams. "Deimschutz's grandmother, down near the beach."
"That's not very far."
"Yeah, not far enough to be exciting, I know. Anyway, it was anything but a bad dream." He stopped, and waited for the penny to drop.
Blair's eyes, absurdly round and bright for the shadows under them, widened. "It wasn't."
"It was."
The eyes widened even more. "She couldn't."
"She did."
"How do you know?"
"Believe me, I know what that sounds like."
"But who...? No," as Jim's mouth opened, "don't tell me, I don't think I want to know."
Jim shrugged, lips twitching, and took another mouthful of the cooling tea. He'd never admit it, but the damn ditchwater did help. A little. A very very little. And no, Sandburg definitely, absolutely did not want to know.
He could still hear the screams echoing in his mind. Screams in a voice he didn't know, of a name he vaguely, possibly did...
"...Macgyver."
Sandburg blinked. "One of the neighbors wants to - sweet little old Grandma Deimschutz dreams about - oh man, don't make me go there."
"No, not then. Tonight. The nightmare - it was about - Macgyver." He slumped back, totally exhausted and totally pissed off. Of all the stupid... "Or rather pieces of a dead Macgyver, from the sound of it."
"I... see." Blair obviously couldn't fathom how a dead Macgyver could cause nightmares, but let it go. "That isn't going to help, you know. Do you have any idea how many people dream about TV characters? Even dead ones?"
"Surprise me." That got him an all-too-familiar look. "Yeah I know, no help at all. There's no way we're going to track this one down, Blair."
"We'll work something out." Blair's calm confidence was spoiled by another yawn. "After all, as your senses get sharper and stronger - and they will, the longer we work on them - this will only get worse."
"Great."
"Unless we find a way to block it... We'll think of something, work something out, trust me."
And he did, though saying it at 3... he didn't have to look at the clock... 3:12 in the morning was more than Jim would ever be able to manage. He only hoped Blair knew to take it as read.
"Can you hear anything now?"
He stretched out, skipping past late-night music from across the bay, a few lovers in the local parks and the usual insomniacs watching infomercials till dawn. "Nothing I can't sleep through, no."
"Then drink your ditchwater man, and we'll call it a night -"
"Morning."
"- Night."
"But -"
"Jim, we'll find a way around them. I've got a few ideas, we'll test them," Jim flinched, he wasn't up to the Dreaded T-word at this hour of the night - morning - whatever, "today. Later. We've got two whole days before Monday, after all."
Optimist.
Yeah, that was Blair. Hopeless optimist. Even at 3 in the morning.
"Yeah, maybe. Go back to bed, Chief," Jim put out a hand to pull him up, "and don't even think about what old Mrs Deimschutz is thinking - but if you do, do me a favor? Try and keep your nightmares away from me."
-the end-