~oOo~

The air was being squeezed out of Jim Ellison's lungs at a greater rate than his body was able to replenish it. The strength in his attacker's arms was allowing very little leeway for his chest to heave and draw in the amount of oxygen that was needed for him to remain strongly on his feet. Ellison had to bring down his assailant and he had to do it quickly. While each and every move had so far been matched and counter-matched by the body behind him, the detective still held one last card up his sleeve – wielded exclusively by those with experience.

A strong knock to the midsection, a twist, and a lashing out with a well-placed, sweeping kick to the back of bare calves had Jim gaining the upper hand. He guided the body down as it made its quick and ungraceful decent onto the lawn and, without a moment's hesitation, he shifted to straddle his bare-chested attacker. "How many times do we have to go over this?" he asked, panting heavily. "When will you get it through your thick skull that I am the master, and the master never loses?"

"I had you for a minute there," the fallen teenager breathed.

Jim released the grip he had on the kid's wrists and shifted back, using some of his body weight on the teenager's diaphragm, effectively preventing any hope of escape. "And that minute was when?" he asked, sarcastically. "Seems to me, a person who is in the position that you're currently in might need to learn a little humility."

"Sorry," the kid wheezed. "But that word doesn't appear on my play list."

"I knows what that word means." A small but self-assured voice joined the conversation. Similarly bare-chested and dressed only in a pair of shorts, Lucas's foremost and favourite little partner in crime wound his arm briefly around Jim's neck before also taking a seat on the teenager's torso.

"You're three," Lucas ground out, now struggling with the combined weight holding him down. "You don't know what it means."

"I not three; I three point seven five and I do so know what it means, 'cause I are cleveh," Blair huffed, as if he'd been mortally insulted.

"Well, if you're so clever, Mr. Three Point Seven Five, why is your dad dry as a bone and I'm pinned to the ground by the original Ten Ton Tessie?" Lucas flopped his arm out on the grass and pointed toward the fully-loaded Super Soaker that lay abandoned on the grass. "Some backup there, Short Stop."

Blair leaned down, his elbows digging into Lucas's biceps and his nose nearly touching that of the teenager. "I not wanna do backup," he said. "And it don't matteh if I did, 'cause Daddy would'a winned anyhow."

"Is that so?" Lucas's arms came up and engulfed Blair in a huge, smothering hug. "What makes you so certain?"

"'Cause he always wins, Lucas. He too big to be picked on."

The sentinel laughed at his son's words. "Yep, pretty clever kid, if you ask me." Giving Lucas a hearty slap on the thigh, he pulled himself up, stretching his overtaxed muscles as he did so. "So, what was that you keep telling me again?" He gave the boy a wry smile. "Something about being ten feet tall and bulletproof, as I recall."

Lucas rolled over with Blair still in his arms and sprang to his feet with a lot less effort that it had taken Jim. "Wheelchairs and nursing homes. Remember old man, that it pays to be nice to the person who holds the keys to your future."

Ellison scratched his jaw. "Allowance and staying out to eleven." He slapped Lucas on the shoulder. "Somehow I think the keys I hold are a lot more valuable."

"Think it might be time to pick on someone short," Lucas conceded, his future dates with Laura now taking on a whole new meaning. Dropping Blair down onto the grass, he smiled mischievously at the youngster. "I'd run, if I were you, Sport." He tickled Blair's stomach before retrieving the water pistol. "You have to the count of five."

Before Lucas had a chance to take off after Blair, Jim hooked him by the arm. "And what about all this camping gear that still needs to be loaded into the truck?"

Lucas shrugged. "We're not leaving until tomorrow afternoon. What's the big rush?"

"No rush, I just like to be prepared, that's all."

"Well, you know what they say. Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow." Without another word, Lucas took off after Blair, and it wasn't long before squeals at being captured turned into laughter and the gate to the pool fence swung open and slammed shut. "So much for help," Jim muttered.

Traipsing back to the house for another load of gear, Jim's thoughts turned to Lucas's words. In the space of eight months, the boy who had been the epitome of the phrase 'short term' had gone from a kid whose foresight and expectations didn't extend past where his next meal was coming from, to a teenager who now had dreams for the future. Lucas Wilder's place in life had been transformed from a forgotten child of the streets, to a boy who now belonged.

~oOo~

"Catch," Lucas called, throwing the foam ball in Blair's direction.

Standing in knee-deep water on the first step of the pool, Blair caught the ball clumsily against his chest. "Hey, you made me wet," he admonished.

"You're in a pool, goof ball," Lucas laughed. "You're supposed to get wet."

Taking a break for lunch, Jim watched the antics in the pool from the kitchen window. While he trusted Lucas implicitly, Blair still didn't know how to swim and he never felt quite at ease leaving the pair alone for too long.

With less than a month until Blair's fourth birthday, he had yet to get to the bottom of the youngster's irrational fear of the swimming pool. One of the reasons he'd decided on buying the house in the first place was his son's initial excitement about having a pool and learning to swim. But as spring gave way to the warm sultry days of summer, the top step was as far as the three-year-old had ventured. Although they'd both tried to gently cajole and encourage Blair to take that final leap, he'd refused. And when Blair said no – seriously said no – that's when all persuasion came to an end. Somewhere, hidden deep within the child's psyche, was a reason which nobody had the right to challenge. Blair would swim when Blair was ready.

"You gonna throw that ball back, or am I gonna have to come and take it from you?" Lucas picked up a water pistol and aimed it playfully at Blair. "Your choice, dude. The ball, or the squirt gets squirted."

"No," Blair squealed. Moving along the step, and as far away from Lucas as possible, he giggled as a jet of water splashed just short of his legs. "You can have the ball, you can have the ball," he said. Lifting up his arms, ready to toss it back, Blair misjudged how close he was to the edge of the step and was unable to regain his balance as he began to fall. There was hardly even a splash as he toppled into the water.

By the time it took Jim to run from kitchen to the back door and sprint toward the pool, Lucas already had Blair in the shallow end and cradled safely against his chest. Ellison stopped in his tracks and worked to get his own fears under control before going any further. There were no sobs or sounds of distress coming from Blair, and no physical indication that the child was any worse for wear. Lucas's voice was soft and calming and, by the way Blair's head nodded in agreement against his shoulder, whatever he was saying obviously had the youngster's attention. An enormous amount of parental concern and a small amount of curiosity had Jim breaking one of own rules about privacy, and it didn't take much internal persuasion to convince himself that he was close enough to naturally overhear what was going on, anyhow.

"I didn't drownded," Blair whispered into Lucas's neck.

"Of course you didn't drown. You were only in the water for a few seconds."

Lucas moved to sit on the stair and Blair flinched as the water sloshed around his midsection. "Blair, why are you so scared of the water?"

Jim's hearing automatically adjusted up another level.

"Because of the man," Blair answered softly.

"Because of Tom?" Lucas asked.

"No." Blair buried himself deeper into Lucas's chest. "Because of the otheh man ... the one that drownded me."

Jim didn't move – he couldn't move. Another chapter in his son's life was about to unfold and, once again, he found himself prowling the outer edge of the circle like a starving dog banished from the pack, waiting for his chance to steal away with a morsel of food. Unintentional as it may have been, Blair had formed an exclusive club in which membership was reserved for those he deemed had earned entry by a rite of passage. There was no denying that Lucas and Blair had a special bond, not only as the brothers they had become, but also by the circumstances of their lives. There was an empathy between the pair that Jim had no real hope of ever fully identifying with. He could sympathise and he could understand and, in Lucas's case, he could be the rock that the boy clung to when life's memories became too hard, but his own son was a different story. Blair was too concerned about his emotional well-being to ever confide in him the way Lucas had. Conversations that ended in 'don't worry, Daddy', or 'please don't be sad, Dad', had clued Jim in very early on about the child's inner concerns. Lucas had once told him that Blair had youth on his side and that, as time went by, his memories would fade, but every now and then Blair would come out with a statement, or a situation would arise, that reinforced to Jim how very profoundly his son still did remember. His only hope was to persevere and to show Blair that his father was strong enough to handle the truth.

Lucas's voice drew Jim from his thoughts. "What man?"

"The man in the dream. The one with the black eyes."

For the first time, Lucas noticed Jim standing on the other side of the pool fence. Their eyes locked as a common thought ran through both their minds.

"I know some pretty weird shit happens around here, but he couldn't, could he?" Lucas whispered. The man that Blair was referring to, the one with the black eyes, was one that both Lucas and Jim knew all too well. After far too many nights of being jolted awake, shaking and soaked through with sweat and fear, Lucas had finally confided to Jim about his dream.

"No," Jim assured as he unlatched the gate and moved toward the pool. He ran his hand lightly across the top of Lucas's wet hair. "He couldn't." Lucas's dream was just that, a dream, and the only logical way Blair could have known about it was if he'd overhead one of the many late night conversations that had taken place when the dream became too hard for a sixteen-year-old to handle alone.

"Hey, Munchkin, what's going on?" Peeling off his shirt, Jim lowered himself into the pool. He ran his hand up Blair's back. "Are you okay?"

Blair turned his head and peeked out to look at his father. "Ah-ha," he nodded. Releasing the hold he had on Lucas, he moved into Jim's arms. "Daddy, will you teach me how to swim?"

"Okay," Jim replied tentatively "Are you sure about this?"

"It a good time," Blair answered.

An eerie sensation ran through Lucas's body the moment Blair broke contact, leaving him with an uncanny feeling that something a lot deeper was brewing. While Jim tended to skirt around the mystical side of his sentinel abilities, Lucas wasn't quite as quick to negate them or write them off as hocus-pocus. He hadn't thought much about Fate while growing up; to believe in fate, you needed to believe in the future and, up until now, his future had been a moot point. But as the house he occupied had slowly become a home, a future – his future – had turned from an irrelevant question to a concept with definite merit, and one that was worth protecting with everything he had.

~oOo~