The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.
- Miguel de Cervantes
-==OOO==-
A man sat in the shadows, the only light from the screen of his laptop. He flipped rapidly from screen to screen, some news articles, others intercepted emails. A small smile tugged at his lips, and he enlarged a picture of the object of his thoughts, blinking into the sunlight.
"Everything is in place. He cannot help but be drawn here now. And at last things will be as they should."
-==OOO==-
Blair was nervous.
Of course, anybody could have told that. Rapid pacing, muttering, a tense, jittery stillness broken by more pacing – it didn't take a cop to identify anxiety from those symptoms.
But then, it did take a Sentinel to identify the symptoms from three stories down.
Jim opted for the stairs, not in a particular rush. He could hardly blame the guy for being stressed – two weeks ago, his life had been utterly turned upside-down, changed almost beyond repair when his dissertation had gone public. After all the fallout, Sandburg had called it a "paradigm shift," but Jim tended to think of it more like a "paradigm annihilation." Jim could sympathize. He'd had one of his own a few years prior when one nutty anthropologist had told him what his whacked-out senses really meant. But Jim had had the advantage then – while a redefinition of self hadn't been fun in the slightest, he'd had the normalcy of everything else in his life to fall back on while he got his bearings in the new landscape. Blair hadn't just lost his life's goal and self-identity to the dissertation mess – he was facing total restart of everything he'd ever wanted or expected.
Except his friends. He hadn't lost them. And Jim hoped he knew it.
Jim reached the familiar door and opened it without hesitating. "Hey Sandburg," he greeted, catching his roommate in mid-pace.
"Hi Jim."
Jim glanced over to make sure there wasn't any evidence of stress beyond the obvious before he set about hanging up his coat and dropping his keys in the basket at the door as usual. "Picked up some basics for dinner," he reported. "The Jags are on in about an hour. Should be a good game."
"Yeah, yeah." Blair ran a hand through his usually-unruly hair absently. "Hey Jim? I gotta talk to you."
Yup, there it was. One of the major differences between them – it didn't take any effort or really any special behavior on Jim's part to get his friend to spill whatever was eating at him. Which didn't mean he didn't care, of course, just that Blair was apt to talk about whatever was on his mind no matter the circumstances. When Blair needed to talk, Jim listened. When Jim needed to talk, well, first Blair had to kick, punch, and drag it out of him, but when he managed that, then he listened too.
"What's on your mind, Chief?" Jim asked, shoving most of the groceries into the fridge casually. But he didn't start in on any cooking, instead turning back to his friend.
"Okay, so…" Blair took a breath and launched into his thoughts rapidly as if afraid to stop. "I've been doing a lot of thinking this week while waiting for all the dust to settle and I've come to a couple of conclusions and I don't know what to do about them. First is that I need to really clear my head somehow, because I can't even walk outside without watching for reporters even though there haven't been any in days and I know I'm old news now but I'm still looking for them, you know? I think I need to get out of here a while so I don't look around every corner with fear."
Jim nodded and waited. Sandburg had warmed to his topic and was starting to rock back and forth, punctuating his words with subdued gestures.
"Second is that I'm not really sure of anything else. I feel like I'm so caught up I can't think straight."
"You mean you don't know if you want to be my partner." Jim said it carefully neutrally.
"No, man! No, I definitely want to be your partner." Blair met his eyes with a bright almost-desperation. "Even though I keep thinking you're gonna change your mind about that."
"Not a chance, Sandburg."
A relieved smile broke through the rest of Blair's anxious expression. "Good. Yeah. Okay. But…"
"You're worried about the Academy."
"Yeah. And not just that. About everything!" Blair's arms went wide. "I'm your partner no matter what, but I don't know about being anything else yet, either a cadet or a detective or just plain old me, you know? I'm an outcast from my chosen society now, and it's messing with my head."
"You're not an outcast to us," Jim said solidly. "The department still backs you."
"Yeah but…I've been a student for almost 15 years. Turning off the part of my brain that says 'I am an academic and my primary social group is Rainier' isn't going so well."
"So what are you saying?" Jim kept himself still. There was too much room here for Sandburg to read something in his body language and take it the wrong way. They'd had more than enough of that lately.
"I just…I need to get away. I need to clear my head for real, not just sit here meditating and worrying every time the phone rings that it's somebody wanting to talk to me about being a fraud." His actions slowed. "And I…I still kind of want to finish my dissertation."
"What? Why?" That was a surprise.
"I know it'll never go anywhere now," Blair huffed a defeated laugh. "But I've been working towards that book since I could reach the middle shelf in the library. I can't just stop it now. The Sentinel thing, even if the whole world thinks I'm full of it, I owe it to both of us to finish what I started."
Jim nodded. He could respect that. There are some things a man shouldn't let go, even when they end. He'd had more than one case like that, cases he refused to close, refused to drop off his desk on principle, even though they were deader than their victims. Even if there was absolutely no chance of solving them, closing the case was a betrayal of the person who'd died to put it on his desk in the first place.
"I got a call," Blair said, now moving to the answering machine. He hit the button to play the message.
"Hi Blair. This is Eli. Look, I don't have a lot of time here, but I had to call. I heard about the university. I'm sorry, Blair. And you're no fraud. I'm sure you had a good reason for what you did, but you and I both know you were lying then and not when you wrote that paper. I'm more sorry now than I was before that you didn't come to Borneo when I asked you the first time. Maybe you wouldn't have ended up like this. But that's why I'm calling now. My expedition here is finally done, but something's come up and I'm staying for a while longer and I want you to come out. This time it's my project, my funding, and nobody gets to tell me who I can or can't have, and I want you. It's…there's a rumor of a tribe up the Baleh River with a Sentinel, Blair. You should be here with me to make contact. I'm finishing up the official expedition now so you might not catch me on the phone, but I've got intermittent email access and I'll be sending you the details. I expect to hear back from you. Don't back out on me now, Blair. I need you to be on this one and I think you do, too. I'll talk to you soon."
After the beep confirming the end of the message, there was a silence in the loft. Sandburg was looking at the answering machine as if it were still speaking; Jim was looking at Blair.
"I got the email," Blair said after a long quiet. "Doctor Stoddard is using private funds to stay on for two months to follow this rumor. It's not really even an expedition, just me and him and the locals heading upriver on a wild goose chase. No way would any university ever sign off on it. Which is why he's going," he smiled a little fondly, eyes still downcast. "Eli likes to do zany things sometimes."
"I'm starting to see why you picked him for your mentor," Jim said, smiling slightly.
"He always believed in me," Blair said. "He read everything I ever wrote on Sentinels, backed me up when the program wanted me to pick a different topic. And now…"
"Chief, he's trying to help you," Jim put in. "You don't have to defend him to me."
Sandburg looked up and met Jim's eyes gratefully. "Right. So, he really wants me to go down to Borneo, go with him to see if we can find a Sentinel."
"And you want to go."
"Yeah! But I don't know, man." He let out a long breath and moved to stand across from Jim. "It's…it would let me get one more shot at being an anthropologist, you know? One more chance to be what I used to be – before. But I don't want to leave now, either. There's so much…" he gestured vaguely at the loft, Jim, everything.
"Look, Sandburg," Jim put a hand on his shoulder. "The first time you gave up Borneo, you did it because of the Sentinel thing."
"And the friendship thing," Blair said firmly.
"Yeah, okay, and that," Jim brushed past it. "But that was going to be a huge deal, you said. At least a year, and we were still figuring out a lot of the stuff with my senses. This is a couple of months, right? And it might be your last chance. If you're hesitating because of me, stop it. It sounds like this is what you need. Unless you think you'll get your head together better up at that monastery than you would in Borneo?"
"No. I think I need to get to my roots and figure out which way I want to grow."
"Then do it," Jim nodded. "I can handle two months on my own. And when you get back, there will still be time to go to the Academy or do whatever you decide to do. We're not gonna close down the Major Crimes offer because you take a break first."
The visible relief that poured through Blair made Jim realize how much his friend had been hurting the last few weeks. Ripping away Rainier, his doctorate, his academic life, it had broken something in that bright person, and only now was Jim realizing how much he had missed it. He squeezed the warm shoulder under his touch.
"One condition, though," he warned.
"What's that?"
"I don't care how bad reception is down there. You will call me every three days to confirm that you're okay."
"Don't you think that's a little…?" Blair started.
"No it isn't. I know you, Sandburg. Two months alone in the jungle with one professor and some hired help? If Simon can get himself captured by drug-runners on a weekend excursion, I don't even want to contemplate the trouble you're going to get yourself into." There was a glint of humor in his smile.
"You could come with me."
Jim could see that his friend was warring with that offer. And he didn't need Sandburg's psychology minor to know why.
"I've got cases here," he deflected. But then he said, "And you will clear your head better without me there messing it up. You have to decide if you want that badge that's waiting for you, and I can't help you do that." Even if Jim would rather his partner had decided to go to the monastery or a local retreat or something, not a jungle halfway around the world as far from any possible help as he could get. But then, there'd been an assassination attempt at the monastery, and with Blair's luck the local retreat would get targeted by gun-toting crime bosses or something. That was just life in the Sandburg Zone.
"Every three days," Blair nodded. "Got it." He smiled. "Thanks, man. Thanks for understanding."
"Yeah, well," Jim let go and turned back to dinner. "Just don't make me come down there after you. Because you know I will."
"Yeah," Blair nodded, and even with his back turned, Jim could feel the smile. "I know you will."
-==OOO==-
Blair gazed out the airplane window, watching with a strange feeling in his chest as the ground dropped away and Cascade vanished behind thick, foggy clouds.
If I were a Sentinel, I bet I could still see Jim's truck from here, he thought.
The strange feeling broke apart into a mix of several. Blair closed his eyes and leaned his head back. A moment later, when he was allowed to use electronic devices, he filtered out the world through earth music in his headphones. His feelings slowly revealed themselves as his mind let go.
Certainly, bright and brittle on the edges there was excitement – a new adventure, a new people, a new world to explore lay before him. Curiosity, keen interest, enthusiasm, these were his old friends on flights to parts unknown.
Inside that was a deeper, stronger interest in finding another Sentinel. Some of that was the old obsession that had led him to Jim in the first place after a lifetime of searching. Some of it, too, was the desire to prove himself, his theories, even if no one in the world would ever know about it. Truth and knowledge always matter, even if they are kept in the silent dark place between the heart and soul. Naomi had taught him that.
Of course, Blair couldn't think about meeting another Sentinel without feeling his body tense at remembering the last one. Alex Barnes had nearly killed him – had killed him, in fact. Only Jim had saved him. But then, Alex had also been insane to start with totally independently of her Sentinel senses. There was no guarantee that another Sentinel would be Alex instead of Jim. Blair was hoping that he'd paid enough karma lately to earn a boost from the universe on that score. And besides, he needed to know that the topic to which he had devoted his life, and lost much of it, could be based on people like Jim. With a sample-size of two, Blair had no way of knowing if Sentinels were inherently good, evil, or just people. He wanted to believe they were good and Alex was the exception, but until he met another he wouldn't know for sure. He needed "being a Sentinel" to fade from an almost mythical pedestal to being a descriptor. A remarkable and amazing descriptor, but a descriptor like "short-tempered" or "thick as mud." He had to know that.
Because under the fear of Alex-the-Sentinel was a fear of Jim-the-Sentinel.
Blair would trust Jim-his-friend with anything – his life, his heart, his fears. But sometimes it was like a switch went off in Jim's mind and he stopped being Jim Ellison, detective and best friend, and turned into Jim-the-Sentinel who was prickly, territorial, distrustful, and most of all solitary. Blair knew that Sentinels in general often had partners in the field to help guide them through their senses and watch their backs. But when at his most Sentinel, Jim often displayed extremely antisocial characteristics. Just like Alex. Blair had to know if it was something to do with being a Sentinel or if it was something to do with being Jim. He had to know so he could decide if he could live with it anymore.
Because that was the root of all things. Not this two-month trip of a lifetime. The hanging, looming question before him – now what?
Blair could never return to Rainier, which had been his home, his world, since the age of 16. He had closed that door with the first words of his press conference three weeks before. There was another door open and waiting for him at the Cascade Police Department, and yet Blair was hesitating at the threshold. Could he really become a cop? Carry a gun, possibly shoot someone, live a life where people saw the shield before they saw his face? He just didn't know.
But if he turned away from the Cascade PD, then what? How could he be Jim's partner if he didn't follow through as a cop? How could he keep what he'd built – and broken, and tried to rebuild with limited success so far, it seemed – if he refused? And could he even keep it anyway?
That was the real question. Could he, even in a perfect world where he jumped at the chance to be Jim's official police partner, still actually be Jim's partner after everything that had happened? Could he trust Jim not to pack up his stuff again at the slightest fight? Could he keep making the effort to look beyond the patented Ellison-Glare-Of-Privacy to coax out the man who lived inside? Could he bend his shoulder to the wheel of forever being the awkward, unexpected shadow at Jim's side knowing that the entire world might never regard him with anything kinder than suspicion?
Away from Jim, out in the world like he had been before he'd ever found a real-life Sentinel, this was what Blair was determined to decide. If he couldn't live as a cop, if he couldn't get up the courage and fortitude to decide to stay anyway (and decide it every single day and every single argument and every single hurtful joke from whoever decided to poke at them this time), he would find it out there. And he needed to find those answers before he could face Jim again.
And who knew? Maybe if he decided he couldn't live in Jim's world, couldn't be a cop, couldn't fix his own broken parts that made Jim-the-Sentinel so ever-living terrifying, maybe he'd just stay wherever he was. Borneo was as good a place as any to spend a lifetime. If there was no future in Cascade, there was no better place to start over. And hope, of course, that whatever spot he picked was remote enough and hard enough to find that Jim would accept his answer and not hunt him down anyway. Because he knew Jim would come after him unless he could give him a really, really good reason not to.
Blair felt himself sliding into a deeper mediation, farther away from himself and reality and closer to the true unknowable, and he let go. He had two months to find his answers before he had to worry about telling Jim either way. Time to let that worry slide away and focus on the journey into his future, and himself, that was before him.
-==OOO==-
Sandburg kept his promise and called dutifully every three days from the moment he touched down in Borneo. For three weeks, even if they only took a few minutes, he babbled excitedly about the jungle, the local guides, the reports of the tribe so far up the river only a multi-day boat ride with a portage could get them close, renewing his friendship with Eli Stoddard, and everything else that came into the kid's head.
Jim enjoyed the calls, even if he wouldn't admit it. He hadn't seen a lot of the partner who ranted at full speed without stopping to breathe. Whatever Blair decided when he got home, he was evidently finding himself again now. The Sentinel was glad.
Then Blair missed a call.
For one day, Jim didn't worry at all. He knew from the last call that Sandburg and Stoddard were approaching a sensitive period in their expedition – they'd spent three weeks getting close enough to the tribe in question to observe, but now came the moment for their actual, formal first contact. And with Borneo on the other side of the world, the time-difference could have been a factor.
On the second day, Jim scoured the news reports for anything that might explain the silence, from a satellite outage to political upheaval in the region. Nothing.
On the third day, Jim walked into Captain Banks's office.
"It's been almost a week since I heard from Sandburg," he said without preamble. "I'm going down there."
Simon didn't bother asking whether or not it was too early to worry. He knew Sandburg's history. "Do you think he's okay?" He put down his cigar.
"I don't know, Simon," Jim shook his head with a frown. "It's not like I can hear him from here."
"Do you want backup?" was Simon's next question.
"Sir, I don't really know if…"
"Not another word, Ellison," Simon stood. "When Daryl and I got lost in that godforsaken jungle in Peru, the kid followed you and protected my boy. When you and I went to Mexico, he was right there with Connor to back us up. Near as I can figure, I owe him at least that much."
"This isn't like that."
"Why not?"
Jim turned to look out the window. "There might be another Sentinel involved this time."
Simon exploded. "Like Alex Barnes? Dammit, Ellison! Why'd you let him go alone, then? You know what happened last time!"
"Half the reason I went so crazy was because of proximity to another Sentinel," Jim replied tightly. "I thought Blair would actually be safer if I didn't go into another Sentinel's territory. As soon as I get there, whatever's gone wrong will start to go worse."
"Or that other Sentinel might have already-" he stopped.
"No." Jim's eyes went cold. "No, if Blair were already dead, I'd know. I'd have to know."
That sounded like one of those Sentinel things Simon always asked not to be told. For once, he was glad for that creepy, inexplicable mystical side to Jim's abilities. Simon didn't want to know the details, but he could see from Jim's face that Jim didn't believe for one second that Blair was dead. And if he didn't believe it was possible that he could be wrong, then he wasn't. Jim's rock-solid belief was good enough for Simon.
"All the more reason for me to back you up, then," Simon folded his arms against his chest. "You're gonna need somebody to help you keep your head through that mess."
"It's not that I don't appreciate the offer. And Sandburg'd be over the moon if he thought you cared," Jim began.
"I do care! Just don't tell him so," Simon growled. "Kid's one of ours now."
"You can't help me in the jungle, Simon." Jim turned fully and glared. "No offense, but for all you're pretty good in the wilderness, you're still a city cop. Even Sandburg at least knows how to move through the land even if he does it chattering nonstop. I'm going to be in places where there aren't paths through the jungle, where I'll have to live off the land. If I'm dealing with another Sentinel, I need someone who can keep up."
"Never thought I'd see the day I'd be sorry I wasn't more of a naturalist," Simon grimaced.
"Or an Army Ranger," Jim added. "Look, you want to help. I get that. So help me by not telling anybody else about this."
"Why?" The captain regathered his cigar and chomped at it with narrowed eyes.
"It could be nothing. Busted phone. Bad connection. Hell, Simon, the kid could be hitchhiking canoes to get back to civilization so he can call me with a long explanation before I come down there and kick his ass. If I let this get everybody worried, he won't forgive me." Jim dropped his eyes. "He still complains about people thinking he's made of glass."
"After what happened at that fountain, can you blame anybody?" Simon returned. "Nobody ever wants to see that happen again."
"Sandburg's still supposed to be gone for a month. Give me that much time before you spread the word."
"You want me to let you go and not worry until the trail is five weeks cold?"
"I'll keep in touch," Jim said. "If you don't hear from me, in a month you can release the hounds."
"I don't like this, Jim. I don't have to be a Sentinel to know that something's wrong here." Simon sat back down. It was distinctly not his first-, second- or third-preferred plan, not the most intelligent, certainly not the most reasonable course of action. But long experience with Detective Jim Ellison had taught Simon how often his best investigator was none of those things.
"I know. I don't like it either. Thanks, captain."
"Ellison." Simon's voice stopped him with his hand on the doorknob. "Bring him back to us."
"Yes, sir." Jim's face hardened. "That's a promise."