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Tremble 4
i'd walk the water to get back to you and where i was
complete. in this place here, it takes me on tonight
--moist, leave it alone
"Survivor syndrome."
Jim looked at Simon. They were sitting in Simon's office, pretending to wrap up the case while Blair sat at Jim's desk and waited to go home.
"That doesn't make sense," he said. "It's not like people were dying all around him and he lived. He was the only one who was..." He stopped. Simon was sipping coffee and watching Blair through the blinds an his office window.
"Considering how often he's seen people die over the past few years," Simon commented, "it seems natural for him to wonder why he survived."
That was a fair point, even if Jim did hate it. Why did there have to be a reason? Blair had been damned lucky, and that was a vary good thing. End of story.
Jim pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to wish his headache away.
"Whatever he saw at that house can't have helped."
"He won't even be much use as a witness." Simon added, "given his state of mind at the time of the crime. I can't believe we had someone from Major Crimes right there watching the whole thing go down and we can't put him on the stand."
"Can't win for trying," Jim said. He know he should be concerned with the outcome of the case, but he had other things on his mind.
Simon looked him in the eye. "Go home."
"Yeah," Jim said. "I should."
He didn't stand up.
"I don't see you going," Simon pointed out.
Jim shrugged.
"I'll have to talk with him, and I don't see how. What am I supposed to do with this?"
"Drag him to a shrink. They're trained to deal with crazy people."
"Yeah. All I have to do is get through tonight."
Simon raised his coffee fee cup in salute, and Jim made it to his feet. No point putting it off any longer.
of course no man has complete trust in another. he merely thinks
he has because he needs to and hopes to
--nero wolfe, a family affair
"When I talked to Naomi, she said she was coming for a visit. She wasn't real clear about when she expected to got here. Maybe she's crossing a date line or something. I don't know. She said around forty-eight hours."
That was the first thing Jim had offered up for conversation since they'd left the station. Blair hid his face in his hands.
"I don't need that."
"You shouldn't have called her ex."
Jim didn't hear any dissent from Blair on that. He didn't hear anything at all. After a few minutes of silence, he tried another approach.
"I found your drum. I'd give It back to you, but I set it on fire before I went to the professor's house."
Blair lifted his face from his hands. "You *what*?"
"Well..." Jim sat on the arm of the couch where Blair had deposited himself. "I told the professor I was going to burn it if he didn't tell me where you were. In order to convince him, I soaked the thing in lighter fluid. Then, after he told me, I realized it would probably be a good idea to burn it anyway. I mean, I don't know what he was doing with it. Not that I necessarily buy all that hocus pocus, but I've seen some pretty strange things, and I just ..." He shrugged. "It was soaked in lighter fluid, anyway. Thing was a fire hazard."
It took Blair a few moments to realize that his jaw was hanging open. He placed a hand on his chin and pushed it back into place, then grinned.
"Wow. And they called *me* mad at the academy."
"You're still at the academy, and you *are* mad." He put a hand on Blair's shoulder. "I'm sorry if you still wanted it, but I had a feeling you didn't."
"I didn't." So much for Blair's smile. "You probably did the right thing."
Jim decided that he could handle sociable. He could handle sullen and distant. Under the circumstances, he might ever prefer it. It seemed a more reasonable reaction to the events of the day. But Blair wasn't one thing or the other ... his mood was turning an a dime, and Jim wasn't agile enough to keep up.
He moved to sit on the coffee table.
"Simon figures you should see a shrink. He thinks you have survivor syndrome."
Blair's mouth twitched.
"I can't believe Simon once lectured me on playing amateur psychologist. How the hell did he come up with that?"
"You've seen a lot of people die and you're the only one who came back. He thinks you might not feel right about that."
"Oh." Blair drew his logs up and put his arms around them. "I know it's not right.. When it's time to go, it just *is*, you know? You can't cheat. You pay for it if you cheat."
For some reason, this insane conversation reminded Jim of something Mary Richards would say to her boss. "You can't come back from the dead, Mr. Grant. They'll get you for that."
He shook his head to clear it, but it didn't help. Now he could hear hornets buzzing somewhere.
"You know something? You're right. You can't cheat death. When it's your time to go, you go. So think about it. Darwin -- obviously it wasn't your time to go. If it had been, there's no way I could have brought you back. I'm not a fucking miracle worker." He hadn't meant to raise his voice, but he couldn't control it. He was practically yelling, with Blair right there in front of him. "Someday you're going to die on me, and before that happens you could finish your thesis and pack your begs, and I won't have any say in either of those things. Stop acting like someone should have called interference when I dragged your sorry ass back from the other side. I have never been able to interfere with your life."
"That's a hell of a speech," Blair commented mildly. He was looking right through Jim, but Jim was pretty sure he'd been paying attention.
"Didn't mean to yell," Jim told him. Blair waved a hand. "Forget it."
Jim didn't exactly want to leave, and if Blair had anything to say he was curious to hear it, but sitting so near to Blair that their legs were almost touching suddenly seemed a little too close. He stood and went into the kitchen.
Blair let Jim get about halfway through preparations for a dinner he didn't really want before offering a response.
"You know," he said thoughtfully, "You're probably right. I never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. You were supposed to be there, and you were supposed to bring me back."
"Good," Jim said. "Then that's settled. I tell Simon I solved everything and we don't need the shrink."
He'd tried to sound friendly, but he didn't think he'd pulled it off. And he couldn't seem to stop banging pots around. Blair moved to stand across the island from him.
"Even with that accounted for, something's not right."
"Um." Jim said eloquently, Unable to think of an appropriate follow-up, he left it at that. Blair set his elbows on the island and leaned forward.
"You really think I'm getting ready to bail, don't you?"
Jim shrugged. He liked that even better than unintelligable grunting. He decided to make it his gesture of the week.
"I'm not. I haven't been for a long time, and if you were paying attention, you'd know that. I repeat, I have been stalling an my dissertation."
"You started working on it again," Jim said. forgetting that he was only supposed to shrug. "You started right after you told me that."
"That doesn't mean I want to leave. And if you really care so much, here's a tip -- don't throw me out of the loft."
It was sad, the way Jim's heart lifted at the prospect of a good old-fashioned fight with Sandburg.
"You know damned well I wasn't myself at the time."
"Is that supposed to reassure me? You have a propensity for becoming not yourself, and you don't compensate for it. I have to accept that, at any moment, you could slip your gears and toss me into the street again. You think you don't trust me to stick around ... buddy, let me tell you, I don't trust *you*."
Blair had the slightly astonished expression of a man who'd said more than he'd meant to say, He probably thought he'd gone way over the line, but the truth was, Jim didn't mind. He felt almost inclined to laugh.
"So, to sum this up," Jim said, "you don't trust me not to kick you out, and I don't trust you to stay." He shook his head. "That's funny."
"It's not funny to me," Blair said but there was a spark in his eyes that made Jim suspect he was lying. It was at least a little funny to him.
"You wouldn't happen to know how we fix this, would you, Chief? I mean, you're supposed to be some kind of spiritual adviser."
Blair's eyes slipped their focus for a moment, and Jim suspected he was thinking about the very spiritual afternoon he'd had in the professor's laundry room. Probably considering the fact that tribal religion cut both ways, and wondering it really meant to be involved with one. Jim had spent more than a little time considering that topic himself.
Blair shook his head and his eyes cleared.
"I'm supposed to be a shaman," he said. "Although I keep telling you I don't know how to do that. And it doesn't *necessarily* mean I'm supposed to advise anybody. Not all shamans do that."
God, it was annoying when Blair talked shit to him. Jim placed his hands on the island and got in his partner's face.
"I can't get over this sudden reluctance to give me advice. I don't believe that you have no idea what we should do. That goes against the laws of nature in the Sandburg Zone. I'm not asking you to ... I'm not asking you to do anything morally questionable. I just want to know how you think we can get over this personal problem of ours."
Blair looked as though he'd just bitten into something awful.
"You won't like it," he said.
Jim stared at him.
"That's never stopped you before."
"You said no before."
Jim couldn't have said how it happened, but suddenly he knew exactly what Blair was talking about. He met Blair's eyes and placed a hand an Blair's arm.
"Chief ... I didn't say no. I said I wasn't ready."
Blair was looking at Jim's hand, holding himself perfectly still as though he were afraid of scaring it away. Jim raised his other hand and touched Blair's face.
"Besides," he added gently, "even if I were ready, I wouldn't know what to do."
Blair looked up. He seemed not much more than twelve years old.
"You knew before."
Which was true. Jim let Blair go and stopped around the island.
"Lie down," he said, waving a hand at the couch. Blair obeyed him silently. He was trembling a little. Jim couldn't say anything about that, because his shaking hands weren't suited to throwing stones.
Blair lay on his back and shut his eyes. Jim knelt beside the couch and looked at him. That he was lying still, that his eyes were closed ... these things were the same. Everything else was immeasurably different. Warm skin, his hair brushed out and shining, colour tracing his cheekbones. And that soft quiet breathing. The sound of his heart.
*It's okay* Jim thought. He'd spoken to himself this way as a kid, whenever he'd heard coyotes howling or seen a snake under a log. *It's okay. Remember, he's just as scared of you.*
He took a deep breath and and placed his hands on Blair's face.
stairways circle back to where you've been
--chagall guevera, escher's world
He'd touched Blair a hundred times since that day, a thousand, but this time it wasn't a casual touch. And though Jim had claimed not to be a miracle worker, the miracle happened again.
There was that same sense of motion, and then he was standing in that oddly bright jungle where the colours were sharp as broken glass. "Blair?" He said softly.
"Over here," Blair answered. Jim turned, dizzy from the way the jungle flew past his eyes, and saw Blair looking down the path. He went to stand behind Blair and looked over his shoulder to see what Blair was watching.
It was a living sketch, the moving and breathing outline of a panther and a wolf. They were drawn to flow into each other, but by some slight of hand it had become impossible to tell where the connections had been made. It wasn't even conceivable that they could be pulled apart.
"It's an Escher," Blair whispered. "If he draw stuff like that. But I think the only animals he ever drew were lizards."
"That's what happened when I brought you back," Jim told him. "Do you remember?"
Blair nodded. With the sight of their spirit animals cozied up that way, it seemed ridiculous to keep his hands to himself, Jim slid his arms around Blair's waist.
"I didn't realize what we did," Blair said. "Do you think that's bad?"
Jim hugged him closer.
"Wouldn't have happened if it wasn't supposed to. Answers my question about you leaving, anyway."
Blair leaned back against him. "I told you I wasn't going to."
"Yeah. You say a lot of things."
Blair didn't have an answer for that. Jim buried his face in Blair's hair and took a deep breath. He'd been wanting to do that for years, but this was the first time it had ever seemed right.
"I'm not usually a jackass about people leaving," he said.
"I don't usually worry about the fact that somebody might kick me out," Blair answered.
Jim shut him eyes.
Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a drumbeat, muted and thick as though it were coming through water. Blair shivered.
"Jim? I think we should go."
Jim opened his mouth to ask why, but before any words came out he got it. It wasn't a drumbeat. It was a heartbeat.
"First Escher," Blair muttered, "now Poe."
Jim didn't bother to ask what he meant.
"I don't remember this afternoon," Blair said stubbornly. "I *don't*."
"You don't want to," Jim said. The words were coming out before he could form thoughts. "If you turn around you'll see it. Your memory is standing right behind you."
"I don't remember," Blair said again. "I want to go now."
"Blair..."
"Jim, I want to go home."
Jim couldn't push it, couldn't demand that Blair turn around and face a memory he wasn't prepared to live with.
"Okay. Okay. We'll go home."
Jim felt a weird impulse to pick him up and carry him over the threshold. It wasn't as if he couldn't see what this place meant. He could see what they had done.
He let Blair go and offered him a hand.
"Come on," he said, casual as any man who'd been married for years. "I've got something on the stove."
don't worry -- the downpour of unhappiness is over. i can see
you crawling on your bloody knees and everything was really
nothing after all. everything you thought would pull you down
into the firey depths of hell ... they're shooting horses somewhere else right now
--jann arden, shooting horses
Very late that night, Blair turned to Jim with a sad smile.
"I could testify if I remembered. Couldn't I?"
"Maybe," Jim said. "But your initial statement was that you didn't remember, and it's hard to go back on that. Looks bad in court. People wonder if you manufactured the memory after the fact."
Blair shook his head and went into his litany, the thing he recited when he realized he'd gone out without his brain.
"I'm so *stupid*. Why am I so stupid? I could've stopped those guys, I should've done something. I just didn't think they were real."
"The state you were in at the time was their good luck," Jim told him, "and someone else's bad luck. That doesn't make it your fault. Besides which, I wouldn't be surprised if those guys were messing with your head."
"Oh, god ... it's not like I needed any help in that department."
Jim caught his hand and pressed it.
"It's a good thing a quick word from Dr. Ellison can solve all of your philosophical problems."
Blair laughed.
"You were right one time and *that's* the conclusion you leap to."
Jim sighed. It would be nice to give up on the difficult things and just play, but there was one more thing to take care of.
"You're going to remember eventually," he said. "You can't keep you back turned forever. I want you to talk to the department shrink."
Blair looked a little hurt.
"Why can't we just go back to that place together?"
Jim brushed stray hairs from Blair's face. Seeing past that hair would be a challenge, something like looking at a 3D hidden picture all the time.
"I think you're going to be more upset that I can deal with. You get upset, I get upset, you're useless, I'm useless ... I have to recommend a professional for this."
Blair studied his face, looking for something. After a minute or so, he smiled.
"Okay. I guess it's time I stopped fooling around with amateurs like you and Simon,"
"Sandburg," Jim suggested, "shut the hell up."
And that was the last thing either of them said that night.