HEY! I was thinking, as dangerous as that is for me. So I got out my tapes and watched the episode again a couple times. You know - rewind, play, rewind, slo-mo... And I just kept asking my self a couple questions. Finally, one of my mooses gave me a shove and I had to do something.

Disclaimer: The characters we all know and love aren't mine, I'm just borrowing them. I promise to give them back in good, if not better, condition than when I got them. They may be slightly mauled, but they're young, they'll adjust.

Notes: YES! I said MOOSES!

Delusions or Grandeur...

by Wnnepooh

"Sandburg!" Jim yelled as he entered the loft. "Sandburg? Blair?" Jim walked over to his friend's bedroom, noticing the rumpled and empty bed. The rest of the room was also a mess, books strewn about and clothes scattered everywhere. The most unusual thing was that the floor was completely clear. Everything the detective remembered as being stationary objects in his partner's room, seemed to have been removed to the bed, dresser, and desk. And THAT was quite a feat, since Ellison thought the desk was actually made out of Sandburg's research literature. "What the hell have you been up to?" He asked to no one. And turning around, Jim exited the room, extending his hearing and smell for any sign of Blair.

Footsteps and herbal shampoo greeted him as the detective opened the front door, intending to ask the neighbors if they'd seen the kid. Jim stopped, focusing in to hear his friend coming up the steps. The heartbeat was steady, but Blair was wheezing slightly. "Sandburg. What are you doing, man? What's going on? You're supposed to be taking it easy...What the?" Jim's voice pitched up as he saw the boxes in his friend's hands.

*You are NOT leaving!* he thought to himself, forcing the panic down.

Then he noted the number of boxes. They were piled up one inside the other, nearly obstructing Blair's sight. "That's perfect, Chief." And Jim walked down a flight to take some of the boxes in hand. "All you need is to miss a step and wind up back in the hospital with a broken neck - or worse..."

"Been there, done that..." And the young man laughed slightly, coughing a bit as he noted the scowl on his friend's face. "Take it easy, Jim. I...uh...just needed to get these from the basement. I didn't want to wait until you got home. What ARE you doing home? You're not due back until 6:00." And he looked for the watch that wasn't in his pocket, remembering that it was probably still on the floor where he'd dropped it when...

Blair's heartrate climbed furiously. Jim heard it, saw the wild almost frantic look that passed over Sandburg's face, and dropped the boxes, grabbing his partner as the young man pitched backwards. "C'mon, buddy. I gotcha..." The boxes dropped from Blair's hands and he fumbled up the steps, Jim holding tight to his partner's arm. The detective steered his partner through the front door and settled him on the couch. He didn't know if he was pleased or worried when he returned with the boxes some six or seven minutes later and found the kid hadn't even moved. His eyes stared straight, his heartrate was still rapid, and his breathing was labored. Jim was pleased that Sandburg was evidently still alive, but still worried at the sudden trance-like state.

"Blair..." he called Sandburg's name several times, finally resorting to smacking his friend across the face.

It worked. Sort of.

Blair's fist connected with Jim's jaw and sent the larger man sprawling on the floor. Jim couldn't recover enough to act, just watched his friend dash for the tiny room opposite the kitchen. The slew of noises unsettled him - the whack to the jaw didn't help either. Cautiously, Ellison stood and headed for the doors, his hearing leading in first. Thrashing and angry words mixed together, overlayed with Blair's erratic heatbeat. It didn't take more than a couple steps for Jim to actually get in close enough to see the horror in Sandburg's room.

Everything that had been on the floor, stuffed under the furniture, or hung on the walls was either being thown on the bed or into the boxes. All the while, Blair was stomping and flailing around the room, as if stamping out...

Flames. Jim shook his head and rushed forward, grabbing his partner and dragging the kid from the room. Restraining both the young man's hands with one of his own, Jim smacked Sandburg again. This time, Blair came back to reality - Jim's reality.

"Sandburg!" And they locked gazes. Jim didn't like the glossy stare, but at least he felt there was some cognitive thought behind those baby-blues. "Talk to me, buddy. I can't help you if you don't let me know what's going on." There was a shaking of the kid's head, and Jim reached to hold him still. "Blair. I'm not gonna let this go. They were here, weren't they. The Golden Fire people. In your room?"

Blair went still. Then suddenly, his head drooping slightly, he began to cry. "I couldn't stop them. They just kept coming and coming. They were under the bed at first...then I saw them coming out from under everything else..."

"Easy, buddy. I understand." and Jim really did. They'd just released Sandburg from the hospital two days before, after being in there for some 8 days while the kid's body processed out a massive, and involuntary, overdose of Golden. The doctors had warned that the nature of the drug would cause lapses in reality for another couple weeks. While most of the ingredients in Golden could be fllushed or processed out of the body in a matter of days, a couple of the more rare substances took anywhere from days to years. Through it all, Ellison was proud of his partner - he'd never given in. The kid had really scared him for the first two days, teetering on the line that divided "assisted" and "unassisted" breathing. But with constant encouragement - each of the members of Major Crimes had taken turns sitting bedside for the kid - Blair had come around late on the third day. Still, the anthtopologist slipped between the realms of reality and drug-induced fantasy at the drop of a hat. As the week in the hospital had gone on, the testing revealed less and less residuals to cause problems. Now, two days after his release, Sandburg was thrown back into his nightmare. They said it could happen, for no reason at all.

And now it had, and Jim hadn't been there.

He looked uneasily at his partner, his friend. "Easy, Chief. It's okay. I understand."

"I can't stop them, Jim. They keep coming and coming... I tried, I REALLY tried." He stared at his hands. His useless hands. It was their fault in the first place. He'd been reading in bed, making good use of his ordered rest. While checking his watch, the shakey hands had dropped the timepiece on the floor. As he'd reached for it, the little flames had flared up from nowhere and engulfed the item. Then they'd come after his other things - the things that meant the most to him. Swatting them away from his Memory Box, Blair tried to remember what his friend, his Sentinel had said. "Clap your hands." Jim had said to clap his hands and the demons would go away. But they didn't. The didn't go away for him, then. So, he threw things at them, smothered them with his pillows, even stepped on them, but the Golden Fire people just kept coming. For each one he destroyed, there came more. Realizing they needed darkness and places to hide, Blair had begun uprooting everything on the floor or under the furniture. It didn't work for long. So he'd run down to the basement to get his empty boxes from storage. He could dump all his stuff and break down the bed before Jim got home at 6:00.

"What are you doing home, man? You're early..."

"It's almost 8:00, Chief. Where's your watch?" Jim saw the confusion and fear on Sandburg's face. "C'mon, buddy. Let's go take a look at your room. See what we can do, eh?" Jim made to move, but Sandburg wouldn't budge. "I'll be right there with you, Chief. You've gotta do this."

"I can't." he yelled in Jim's face, fists twisted in the big man's shirt. "I tried. I..I... just can't. They're onna get me. Don't you understand? They won't stop until they get me."

"Why would they do that? We'll just clap our hands and..."

Blair shook his friend trying to get him to understand. "I CAN"T DO IT ANYMORE! I've tried clapping my hands and they won't go away for me. I don't have any power. I'm not..I just...I'm not..."

"Not what, Chief?"

"I'M NOT YOU! Get it NOW, oh Great Detective Ellison? Wise and powerful Sentinel? I can't BE you. I can't save the world with just my hands. They don't respect me..."

Jim pulled his friend to him, holding the crying and emotionally vulnerable young man in a loose embrace. The words Sandburg had just hurled at him hurt, but it made the situation more uderstandable. The Observer was worried about living in the Sentinel's shadow.

Didn't the kid know that without him, Jim would be - he stopped at the reality that washed over him. Without all the coaching the kid had provided, the sound - and not so sound - advice, and the friendship in general, Jim was certain he wouldn't even be a cop anymore. Hell, Jim was certain that he'd either be stark-raving mad, now, or he'd be dead. Neither was a good option. He pushed Blair back so he could look him in the face.

"Hey, Chief, c'mon. Look at me." Jim smiled slightly as the young man wiped his eyes on too-long sleeves and stared blindly. "You don't have to be ME, Chief. YOU just have to be YOU! Blair Sandburg CAN save the world - It may not be the WHOLE world, but either MY world or YOUR world. Maybe just our corner of it.

But you DO make a big difference." Jim watched Blair smile briefly, then wobble a bit and pitch off to the side. "Easy, buddy. Easy."

~~~~~

"Oh, man..." Blair moaned as he tried to sit up. A warm hand was placed on his forehead, forcing him back down. "Jim?"

"Yeah, Chief. Take it easy."

The hand moved from his forehead, and Blair felt himself being helped to sit up. "Whoah. I feel like I went a couple rounds with ..." It came back to him, then. He HAD gone a couple rounds. Glancing around, Blair realized he was tucked under the afghan on the sofa. *How'd I get here?* he questioned himself. Other bits of memories and conversations came back to him. "Oh, MAN!" and he launched himself off the couch, running to his room. Everything was back in place. Maybe he hadn't really updumped it all.

Jim was there to catch Blair when he faltered, slamming into the doorframe. "Okay, Sandburg. Have a seat and let's get you some dinner." Settling his partner at the table with a large sandwich, Jim ruffed the kids hair and continued the mothering. "You'll feel better after some food and a good night's sleep. So eat up, Chief, then get yourself to bed."

Blair checked his pockets, searching. Before he could remember too much more, Jim handed him the watch. The question must have shown all over his face. "Jim, man. Where'd you find this?" But he didn't need an answer. The look on his friend's face explained everything. "Thanks..."

The detective smiled at the humble tone in his partner's voice. "You're welcome, Chief. I, uh, just figured that if we were gonna save the world - I'd need you... to be on time."

It took a second or two for Blair to understand that Jim wasn't making fun of him. It wasn't that he thought Jim would, just that the big guy had said it so earnestly - like he really believed they were gonna save the world. It caught the anthropologist off guard. The feel of Jim's hand on his shoulder brought him out of his thoughts.

"Sandburg? Chief, you okay?"

*DUH* Blair thought, and shook his head. "Yeah...uh-huh. Just thinking."

" Bout what?"

Why he said what he did, Blair will never know. But once he said it, his entire body seemed to loosen up. "Why is it Lisa Hughes saw Golden Castles and people that shine, and I get attacked by Firey Demons? I mean, is it me? Really! She gets happy thoughts like Disney and I get something from Hitchcock? How fair is that?" Nervously, he took a bite of the sandwich.

"Blair, I..." Jim was speechless. Suddenly, the episode in the garage was so much clearer. They'd wondered why Blair had fled the safety of the Bullpen for the open activity of the garage area. It wasn't running from safety, but TO safety. Away from the area where the demons started. They dealt with society's demons every day. And all the while, Sandburg was the soul of innocence. Sure, the cops laughed a bit at Sandburg's green attempts to avoid revulsion on crime scenes. But deep down, most of them wished they were still so young and naive as to react. It was good to see someone who looked at the better side of life, and was still sickened by the horrors of their job with Major Crimes. And here was Detective Jim Ellison, Sentinel, with his ability to remain straight-faced at all the bad stuff.

And there was his partner's problem. Blair's demons, at least some of them, were the mental representation of his feelings of inadequacy in the Policeman's world. He wanted to be able to hold it all off, to let it wash through him, like Jim the Detective did.

"Sandburg. I want you to listen to me." And Jim took the seat opposite his friend, meeting soft-blue eyes. "We're a team, right? And you know in most teams of two, they're usually opposites. Good and Evil, light and dark, yada yada, right?"

Blair nodded.

"You also know that they work together, and even though they may fade into each other on the borders, they are still two separate entities."

More nodding.

"Chief. You're not me. NO more than I'm you. You're not MEANT to be me. And you don't have to be LIKE me, either. I've seen so much in my life - so much of the dark side of things. While you, on the other hand, have seen so much of the good. I see that in you. I like that about you. Now you have to like it about yourself."

*God, does that make sense?* Jim thought.

Blair was quiet for a second or two, turning it over once or twice. Then he smiled. Smiled with his whole being. "You're saying you think the demons are representations of YOUR life that I internalize, but can't process? So I have to kill them?"

It was Jim's turn to nod.

"You been reading my Psych books?" And he took another bite of the sandwich, watching as his friend - his big brother, mother, and Sentinel - smiled happily at him. "Thabs pwetti zheeb,mwab."

Jim laughed at the kid. "How many times do I have to tell you not to talk with your mouth full. It's not just that I can see what you're eating - but you sound like an idiot. Chew, swallow, THEN talk."

The young man took a sip of water, just to help, then spoke again. "I said: That's pretty deep, man.'" And he reached out, grabbing his partner's shoulder. "But I think I understand what you're getting at. I don't have to BE you to function in your world."

"It's not MY world, anymore." Jim corrected. "It's yours too. But you're right. You don't have to be me, or WANT to be me. You have a function, and a place there. A place you made yourself, without me." That said, Jim went to finish making his own sandwich.

"But you're still there, right?" And Blair saw Jim nod.

"We're a team. Two halves of a whole... light and dark, good and evil..." Jim said honestly.

"Ying and Yang." Blair added.

That made sense. "Yeah...Yeah, Chief. Ying and Yang..."

~Finis~