Casualty
Another day, another bullet hole in the paintwork.
At least you don't have to explain it on the car insurance this time. The household insurance, though... ah fuck it. Better in the door frame than in Sandburg, his medical insurance can't take much more, and neither can your blood pressure.
Simon filled you in on the details - good of him, and at least he doesn't look all puppy-eyed at you when you yell about insane half-witted risks and brainless observers who can't stick to observing and what the hell were they both trying to do, get themselves killed before you could rescue yourself? - but yeah, it was good of him, because when your little professor decides to take the fifth on you, nothing short of dynamite will get him to talk, as he'll tell you himself at amazing length and about six thousand words or more.
But when Simon finally told you how those goons came to your home and did their best to eradicate Blair, pretty much for no reason except as a loose end... huh. You wonder - semi-seriously - how to drag Oliver back to life just for the joy of eradicating him. Slowly.
It's over and you should forget it. And maybe you will, in another century or two, but right now you're too sick and tired of fucking thugs coming into your territory and threatening your... well, threatening Sandburg. What the hell did the kid do in a past life to earn this much karmic trashing? If this was fiction, you'd think the writers were out to get him and good...
Anyway, you just keep toting up the damage Oliver caused, well the physical damage, and asking yourself who needs a doorframe... and a door or two... oh, and a bookcase. CD player. Speaker. Two windows, window frame. At least four of Sandburg's beloved native whatevers, including that damn ugly mask he brought back from campus again. That's no loss, but you don't think you'll say that to him, or mention that the insurance isn't likely to cover any of them, even if you knew what to call them on the paperwork.
Nor the fertility fetish that seems to have got gelded in the gunfire. Not bad aim, the part of you that is forever a cop thinks, not bad if they'd been aiming for it. But you won't say that to Blair either.
Because speak of the devil, Blair appears in the broken doorway, with a totally heartrending look on his face, cradling something in careful and (to a Sentinel's eye, trembling) hands.
In spite of yourself, your own heart races. He's okay, he's okay, you know that, but damn it, when he looks like that... you just hate it.
"It's... they could have destroyed it, Jim," he says in a small, dazed voice. Hell, he hasn't even noticed the mask, or the pieces of fetish under his feet. He's just staring down at the book.
The Book.
Yep, that book. The one by Burton-the-explorer-not-the-actor, which means more to him than anything else he's ever owned, that he's carried around the world, that he's read to you more times than you even want to think about, that was on the table by the fire escape when the goons came.
That's now got a charred, blackened hole plowing straight into the cracked and worn leather cover, and out the spine. And looking at Sandberg's face, and the way he's holding it, right now he feels it nearly as much as if it were his own spine that was hit...
Yeah, he's overreacting, Yeah, you know that, but it's Sandburg, that's what he does. And when he looks like that, you just really really hate it. Especially when you have no idea how to fix an old, moldy, decrepit - and gut-shot - book.
~oOo~