Disclaimers: The characters from The Sentinel do not belong to me. I'm only borrowing them for a little non-profit romance and adventure. No copyright infringement intended. Ideas about the nature and healing of psychological trauma, attributed to a character in the story, are taken from TRAUMA AND RECOVERY (HarperCollins, 1992) by Dr. Judith Lewis Herman, M.D. "Final Notations" by Adrienne Rich from AN ATLAS OF THE DIFFICULT WORLD (W.W. Norton & Co., 1991) is quoted without permission. Again, no copyright infringement is intended, and no profit of any kind is being made.
Jim could not remember a time when doing his duty had been such unmitigated hell. Even the months in Peru paled in comparison. He would take hunger, isolation, the merciless elements any day over watching Blair in a near constant state of panic. Not to mention being forced to face his own demons.
Dr. Knowlton had remained in the hospital over a week, while the doctors purged the drugs from her system and began building back her strength. Three days ago, they had moved to a secured location where the couple were under twenty-four hour protection. It's not that he'd wanted to volunteer for the assignment, but since he understood what they were dealing with better than anyone else, he was the logical choice. Blair had insisted on coming with him, despite his vehement, rather loud protests to the contrary. In the end, Blair had won, as usual, and they'd both moved into the safe house for the duration, supported by teams of other officers, to give the couple round-the-clock security.
Whenever Jim asked, Blair insisted he was fine, but he could hear him working overtime to keep his pulse and respiration under control. Every time Blair put his breathing into a calming pattern, Jim cringed.
Elizabeth had been very weak and still largely out of it when they first arrived. Every day, though, she seemed to get a little stronger, able to sit up in bed, take a shower with her husband's help, and even have a meal at the table that morning. She still slept a great deal, but she was definitely recovering. And Jim had begun having a bizarre reaction to her as he'd thought he would, only it wasn't remotely what he'd expected it to be.
Unbearable curiosity.
That's what he felt toward her. Or more precisely, toward her relationship with her husband. Her Guide. He was ashamed of himself, but he could not help listening in on them. It was as if his senses had a will of their own. He would have loved to pretend it was a protective impulse, the cop doing his duty, the Sentinel looking out for his Guide. But finally that had nothing to do with it. He was no better than a common voyeur, intruding on their intimacy, fascinated and jarred to his core all at once by this unique opportunity to observe firsthand another Sentinel and Guide relating to one another.
What time he didn't spending monitoring them he used to replay the scene up on the roof, thinking back on what Elizabeth had said on that ledge when she thought she'd killed her husband. //He gave me everything and look how I repaid him.// Oh God, and how had he repaid Blair? Packing up his stuff. Throwing him out of the loft. He could still picture the precise expression on Blair's face when he realized all the stuff in the cartons was his--a pained disbelief, a hurt that cut to the bone. It still made Jim wince when he remembered it, all these months later.
And if that weren't bad enough, there was that whole scene down at the station, the stuff of guilty nightmares for years to come. He still didn't know why he'd done it, why he'd gone out of his way to hurt his Guide. Because there was no more calculated way to hurt Blair than to tell him he didn't need him, didn't trust him, didn't want either their partnership or their friendship. He knew he had a capacity for cruelty, but it made him ache deep inside that he'd used it against Blair. In the light of all they'd been through together, it stunned him that he could take away Blair's home and security with such coldness, without remorse, without even caring at the time what happened to him, the man who was the best friend he'd ever had.
//You know where to find me.// Those had been Blair's parting words that day. But God. Oh God. He never expected to find him where he did. His own personal hell would always be an image of blue, blue water with curly brown hair floating on the surface of it. And the way his partner felt beneath his hands as he tried to breathe the life back into him, cold and clammy, the grave already laying claim to him. And that terrible sound, the absence of a heartbeat, nothing but silence at the center of the world. And the surreal quality of the entire afternoon. It was such a beautiful day. The sun was so yellow and the sky so blue, and Blair was the color of pale death on the green, green grass.
And then the EMTs finally arrived, but they didn't bring salvation, only their hateful pronouncements, the two most god-awful words in the whole of the English vocabulary. *I'm sorry.* But he was the one who was sorry. As his colleagues held him back, to prevent him from pummeling Blair's defeated body in a vain attempt to get him back, he saw with perfect clarity how every mean-spirited comment, every scornful look, every ingratitude had lead him to this moment. Blair would never have been in danger if he hadn't pushed him away. He would never have died if he'd repaid Blair with the love, trust and respect he'd deserved. What had he ever actually given Blair? A home that he'd taken away from him, an attitude every time his Guide tried to help him, friendship he'd rescinded with an ease that was hardly human.
Jim hadn't even given Blair back the life his foolish actions had robbed from him. Blair had managed that miracle on his own, the heart wondrously beginning to beat again, the lungs taking up their work once more, as the EMTs scrambled to get him into the ambulance, at a loss to explain his stunning rebirth. And the whole way to the hospital, kneeling by his partner's side, holding the pale hand tightly in his own, he'd praised God and cursed himself.
That feeling had not changed during the three months Blair had been back among the living. Elizabeth saw blood on her hands. He saw the blue water.
He could hear the shower running upstairs, and he didn't even try to fight his hearing as it zeroed in on Sam and Elizabeth. He could hear the spray travelling down the curves and angles of their bodies, the slippery slide of soap, hands ranging over wet flesh, the sound of shampoo being worked through hair, low murmurs of contentment and affection, the occasional gasp as Sam discovered some new bruise or cut, the fading evidence of Elizabeth's captivity.
He cast a sidelong glance over at Blair to see if he was aware of this guilty eavesdropping, but his partner was bent over his laptop, working on the mid-term for his class. He realized it wasn't just curiosity he felt toward Elizabeth. It was envy. She'd gotten to wake up from her nightmare and have her Guide back intact, the whole thing no more than a drug-induced delusion. He'd gotten his Guide back, but the nightmare was still between them. Blair had been changed. Blair had been damaged. That's why Jim could never feel the perfect happiness he wanted that Blair was safe and sound and alive. Because there had still been a death that day, and he was in mourning. It just wasn't Blair's body that was gone, but a part of his spirit. A part that Jim had loved so much without ever even realizing it, and now it was gone. Because he'd killed it.
They should have talked about it. Of course, they should have. He should have made Blair open up to him. Maybe then, there wouldn't have been all the terrible silences. Maybe then, he wouldn't have had to stand by and watch as the wound only deepened. Instead, Jim had simply moved Blair's stuff back into the loft, hoping his actions would say what he found so difficult to communicate in words. He'd brought Blair back to their home after the doctors released him, hoping somehow they could restore all that had been damaged between them. And in some ways, they had. Blair had convalesced, and after that, they'd gone back to their jobs and their routine and their everyday lives. But they'd left all the most important things undone, unsaid, unhealed. They had not come to terms with the fact that Blair had almost died, that he *had* died, and only by some chance or grace of God had made it back. They had not discussed the rupture in their friendship or the very obvious fact that Blair was struggling with what had happened to him. In fact, it seemed that they talked about very little these days, more and more evenings spent apart or mindlessly in front of the television, the electronic buzz standing in for company and consolation.
Jim knew it was his fault. He had always followed Blair's lead in emotional matters, waiting for his Guide to draw him out, to understand him, to fix it. And now it was his Guide who needed help, and he was failing him yet again. He had been waiting for Blair to be Blair, the person he knew before the fountain. He'd been waiting for Blair to do the talking. And waiting and waiting. It was a longstanding inequity in their relationship, he realized. He depended on Blair to handle their communication, since it same so easily to him and felt like a hundred different kinds of torture to Jim. Only now Blair was shut down tight. Silent Blair. Blair so deep within himself that to get him to talk about the ordinary happenings of his day was a major accomplishment. Blair with all the energy and enthusiasm taken out of him. This was Jim's handiwork. This was what he had returned for all the good Blair had done him.
Blair shut down the computer and began gathering his things to take up to the bedroom he was using.
"Hey Chief," he said softly. "You want to catch the Jags game on TV with me?"
Blair shook his head. "Sorry, man. I'm kind of wiped. Think I'll just head on up to bed."
He nodded and watched his friend climb the stairs, looking pale and spent. It was ten o'clock. He bet Blair hadn't gone to bed this early since grade school. But now it was more and more often, like his partner could barely summon up enough energy to get through the day.
He went to the refrigerator for a beer. It probably wasn't a good idea. Technically, he was on duty. And he didn't give a shit. He flopped onto the couch and flipped on the set, tuning in the game. He half watched it as he listened to Sam and Elizabeth settling in together for the night, as he monitored Blair's too-fast pulse that told him his friend was having little luck falling asleep.
He sat on the sofa drinking his beer, trying to figure out when the hell everything had gotten so far out of his control, until he drifted off to sleep.
It was like floating on a fluffy cloud to Elizabeth's still recovering senses. Oh yes, it was a comfortable chair, oversized and overstuffed, soft fabric, soothing white color, with cushiony arms where she could rest her head whenever it started to hurt again. She still could not stay awake for long stretches of time, but she was sick to death of lying in bed. Two days ago, she'd graduated to the living room and the big chair. She spent as much of the day as she could in it, fighting to stay conscious as long as possible, drifting off to sleep when she lost the battle. It was a definite improvement. It made her feel saner somehow, more part of the normal world, waking hours in one place, sleeping hours in another.
The time up on the roof seemed more and more distant. In her mind, it had a photographic quality, like something she'd seen in a magazine, something she'd read about, something that happened to someone else. That wouldn't last forever, she knew. She was a psychiatrist, and she specialized in treating trauma. She understood what disassociation meant, the way the mind distanced itself from painful events. But she could not help wanting to hang onto that distance as long as possible. It was comforting to remember so little and feel nothing. She was too tired to do anything more than lie curled up in her favorite chair in a state of blissful numbness.
The panic still came over her at times. For a brief moment, she would believe Sam was dead again, and her pulse would race and her breathing stop. When Sam was in the same room with her, he would realize it and put a hand on her arm or back. That always comforted her. If he was somewhere else, her senses would shoot out into the house like someone had fired a starting pistol. They would fasten on Sam's pulse, his voice, his smell. She tried to get as many different kinds of sensory input as possible to keep from zoning on any particular one. She'd taken to wearing his shirts, so she'd be blanketed in his scent all the time, so she could hang onto the knowledge that Sam was wonderfully alive. So she could fend off those moments of spiraling confusion and the black hole of loss that kept threatening to suck her back in.
That's what the whole time away from Sam seemed like now: a black hole. The first few days in the hospital really were like the beginning of a new creation for her, light separating from darkness, the world taking shape once more. She had gotten her full-fledged senses back, and that hurt like hell. The drugs in her system interfered with her control, causing her senses to fritz out completely at times and then spike painfully at others. Sam had been working with her on it, and finally, they seemed to have calmed down, which was a great relief.
Now, it was her body that needed to recuperate. And her spirit, which would take longer and be much, much harder to fix. But she didn't want to concentrate on that just yet. She recognized denial when she saw it, but she didn't care. It was so much easier to take a professional interest in the people around her, to figure out how she might be able to help them. //Physician heal thyself.// She shook her head. //Maybe later.//
Once her senses were back online, it didn't take long to realize that Detective Ellison's partner was having a negative reaction to her. She felt him seize up and heard his pulse go off the chart whenever she was around. It was a startle response. He could get it under control after a few minutes, but he couldn't prevent it from happening. Or how could she possibly have missed the way Detective Ellison scrutinized her whenever she was in the same room with his partner? He would tune into Blair's vital signs, getting the same grim expression on his face every time he heard the heartbeat go crazy.
She'd been trying to desensitize Blair to her presence, little doses at a time, being in the same room with him, sitting at the same table, passing in the hall. He had almost gotten used to her. This morning, Jim had gone into the station to finish up another case. Sam was catching up on some work, using the desk in their bedroom as a makeshift office. Blair was sitting on the sofa, grading papers, and she had taken up her usual position in the big chair. They'd spent most of the morning like that, just the two of them, and his vital signs stayed close to normal.
She listened to the scratching of the pen across the paper. It seemed like a lot of red ink. "Was it a hard test?" she asked.
He started for a moment, surprised she'd spoken, but not overly agitated. "Um, I don't know, maybe. Yeah, actually I guess so. Harder than I meant it to be. They're not doing very well."
"You teach anthropology?" she asked.
He nodded.
"I took an anthopology course in college. The thing I remember most clearly was what the Aztecs did to their captives. That ripping the beating heart out thing kind of got to me."
He smiled. "We're covering material that's a little less gruesome than that."
She smiled back at him. "I'm glad for your students."
"Did you like it? The course you took?"
"I did. A lot, actually. I've always been interested in what makes people tick. Usually on a more individual basis. But it was also interesting to get the larger vantage point, to understand how societies are structured, how they operate and the formative effect all that has on individual behavior."
"I guess when you put it that way it's not all that different from what you do in your field."
She shook her head. "Not really. It's mostly just a matter of macro vs. micro. And even that's really a false distinction. In the work I do with trauma survivors, the community is actually quite important. How well traumatized people heal has a lot to do with the reaction of the people around them and the society's attitude toward the type of traumatic event they suffered."
"I've read some of your work, mostly case studies. To help me understand things I see down at the station a little better. We deal with a lot of hurt and scared people. You've gotten some pretty amazing results."
"I've been lucky. What with my senses and all. I know you know about that."
"Jim figured it out," Blair said, a little uncomfortable.
She smiled. "When he came to see me at the hospital. I guess you could say we kind of recognized each other. It's okay. I don't mind your knowing. You understand what this is. You've seen it before. With Jim. I know you won't reveal my secret."
"It's safe with me," Blair assured her and looked thoughtful. "So you use your senses in your work as a psychiatrist?"
She nodded. "Yeah. The hardest part of conducting therapy is trying to figure out what people want to tell you but can't or act like they want to tell you but really are fighting tooth and nail not to. My senses are invaluable to me in figuring out what to explore and when to press and when to hang back, when it's time to offer reassurance, to work on establishing safety. It sure does beat relying on intuition alone."
"It must get hard at times, though. Hearing all those terrible stories."
She sensed an opening. She held his eyes. "It can be. Truly unspeakable things happen to people every day. That's a difficult reality to accept. But I also see the strength and resilience of the human spirit on a daily basis, and that is an amazing thing. Political prisoners. Rape victims. Abused children. People who have survived encounters with human evil, who have endured ultimate powerlessness, who have faced death. And they're still here, as shattering as the experience was. And they're still fighting. And I find it a sacred duty to bear witness for them, to grieve with them, to help them learn to celebrate the fact that they are still alive."
His attention was riveted on her. She used her senses on him the way she did with her patients, to assess his state of mind and let them guide her next move. "Were you badly hurt?" she asked softly. "By the other one like me."
He choked slightly on the coffee he was drinking. "What? What makes you think that?"
She regarded him compassionately. "I'm a human heart monitor, Mr. Sandburg, remember? Plus, I'm a psychiatrist."
He retreated into silence, and she let him, knowing he would speak when he was ready. "You can call me Blair," he said finally.
She smiled. "Thank you. And I'd love it if you'd call me Elizabeth."
"Is it just written all over me?"
"Not at all. Certainly not to anyone without my...skills. And it took me a while to piece it together. I'm sorry. I really wasn't trying to intrude on your privacy. It just wasn't possible not to notice how you reacted every time I got near. I knew it couldn't really be fear of me. I'm hardly at my most imposing just at the moment. And while a lot of people dread shrinks, most people don't find us terrifying. So it just made sense that you'd met up with another one of us somewhere along the line, and it wasn't a very positive experience."
Blair laughed, but there was no humor in it. "That is the understatement of the century. She...she tried to kill me. Actually, she did kill me. But the worst part is..."
She waited a long moment before prompting him. "What's the worst part, Blair?"
"Because of her, I betrayed Jim." Tears trickled down his cheeks, and he hurriedly wiped them away with his sleeve.
Elizabeth made her voice as low and gentle as possible. "Somehow I don't think he sees it that way."
"You don't know how it's been...everything's changed between us. Even before it happened, he said he couldn't trust me anymore. And why should he? I'm an idiot. I got it all wrong. I was so romantic about Sentinels, naive. I wanted to believe so badly, since I first learned about them. Heightened senses and a biological imperative to protect. But finally, Sentinels are just human, like everyone else. Not super heroes or fucking saints. And Alex proved they can do just as much harm as the next person."
"What exactly did Alex do?"
He sighed and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "She was a thief and good at it. She killed a security guard during one of her jobs, shot him through the heart. She stole enough deadly nerve gas to kill everyone in Cascade ten times over and sold it to terrorists. She came after Jim. Then she...she tried to drown me, left me for dead. And she got away. And I helped her do it. I taught her how to manage her senses, how to use them more effectively. And that's how she put them to work, that's how she chose to use her gift."
"But Blair, nothing in nature is perfect. In every species, every group, there are aberrations. Couldn't that explain Alex? That she doesn't define...what do you call us again? Sentinels?...that she doesn't define us so much as point out that there are exceptions to every rule."
He looked at her sadly. "It's not an easy prospect, is it? That Sentinels can be both good and bad. It's tempting to look for any other explanation. But the proof is in the deeds. And Alex's were all evil. That stands alongside all the good Jim has ever done, all the good you've done."
She paused a moment. "I hope you'll have proof sometime that this gift does have a higher purpose and all fully developed Sentinels have that knowledge, that drive, deep in their bones, in their very souls."
"That would be great. But I kind of doubt it's going to happen."
"You never know, Blair. Keep an open mind, huh?"
She heard Jim's heart thudding in the hall. He had just come in and stood listening outside the living room, monitoring his partner, the Sentinel on full alert, ready to protect Blair if it should come to that.
"I'm too tired now, but if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to talk to you some more about Sentinels later. There's so much of the background I don't understand, and you have so much knowledge. Would that be okay? Would it make you too uncomfortable?"
He hesitated. "No, I could do that. It's just that...you have to understand, I don't have quite the same enthusiasm for it that I once did."
Elizabeth winced for the detective hearing those words but nodded. "I understand. And thanks."
When she passed Jim on her way out of the room, she smiled at him, but he only stared at her in return, blue eyes remote and decidedly unfriendly. She felt that icy gaze follow her up the stairs, and she couldn't quite keep from flinching.
It was three days later that Elizabeth was alone in the kitchen with Jim and decided it was time to end the tension. She had learned that sometimes the way to earn someone's trust was to put your yourself on the line with them.
"It's not the first time I was kidnapped," she told him.
His expression was completely startled, and she went for it while she had him off balance. "The first time I was nine. My father was an oil company executive. They took me from the playground at school and locked me in this old fallout shelter outside of town. I was so terrified. They left me alone a lot, and when they were gone, I was afraid they were never coming back. But then when they did, I was so scared they were going to hurt me. After a while, though, I could hear them coming. I could sense whether they were agitated or calm. I could even smell what kind of food they were bringing me."
"That's how you developed the Sentinel senses."
She nodded. "After I was rescued, I blocked out everything about the experience, including the senses. When my mother tried to talk to me about it, I would swear I hadn't been kidnapped, that I'd been away at camp and it had been lots of fun. Neither of my parents were all that comfortable talking things out, so they were just as glad I wanted to pretend it never happened. This was before we knew how damaging it is to be silent about traumatic events. It wasn't until I was doing my psychiatry residency, when I started working with other trauma survivors, that it all began coming back to me. The memories of what happened. And these flashes of intense sensory experience that just kept getting worse. I had these awful headaches. When I tried to sleep, the sheets hurt me. The fluorescent lights at the hospital were torture. It was like trying to stare into the sun. Between the flashbacks and the sensory spikes, I couldn't function anymore."
Jim kept the stony facade in place, but she could tell he was listening. "What did you do?" he finally asked.
"I took a leave of absence. I left town. I literally just drove away. No idea where I was going. Somehow I made it to New Mexico. I really don't know how. I was in a lot of pain, and those days are still a blur to me. Anyway, I found this retreat in the mountains north of Santa Fe. It was supposed to be for artists, and you were supposed to make a reservation. But they took one look at me and knew I need that kind of solitude, so they took me in. That's where I met Sam. He studies and writes about eastern religions and meditation techniques. As soon as we met, he started looking out for me, helping me. He really...well, he saved me. Literally. I had decided that if I couldn't get the thing with me senses to stop I'd have no choice but to kill myself. But then there was Sam. The first time he touched me was like a flash in the darkness. I could finally see a way out. I finally had a reason to hope, something to grab on to.
"I know what that's like."
"I thought you might."
He frowned. "Why are you telling me all this?"
She touched his arm very lightly, very briefly. "I just wanted you to know that I appreciate what you did for me up on that roof. I would have died if you hadn't helped me. I also wanted you to know that we're not meant to be enemies with our own kind. No matter what Alex did."
She could see him bristle. "Blair told you about that?"
Elizabeth nodded.
"How could he talk to you about it and not to me?"
"Because I wasn't part of it. I don't have a stake in it. And I'm trained for this sort of thing. And I guessed most of it anyway. That's what I do with my senses. I use them to figure out the right questions to ask."
"So you've been monitoring us."
She half smiled. "The way you've been monitoring Sam and me."
He had the good grace to blush.
"It's all right. I understand. And it doesn't bother me. It's not an easy thing to shut down. And there are some things that are just too hard not to notice. Like the way you tense up whenever I get near your partner. Is he...what does Blair call it?...your Guide?"
Jim nodded. "For the time being at least."
She looked surprised. "You're thinking of ending the relationship?"
He rubbed his forehead. He was getting another headache. "No, but I doubt Blair will be up for it much longer."
"That's not the impression I got from him. He seemed to think you're the one who doesn't want him around."
"He can barely stand to spend time with me. He won't talk. He doesn't want to come to work with me anymore. Let's face it. I screwed up, and he can't forgive me for it. Can't say I blame him."
She looked confused. "He told me he was the one who messed up. Well anyway, I think you're misinterpreting his actions. What you see as rejection and a lack of forgiveness are actually post-traumatic symptoms."
"How can you tell?" he asked, not able to meet her eyes.
"Professional insight. Enhanced senses. Personal experience. Let's just say I recognize that unnatural quiet."
His laugh was strained. "You have no idea just how unnatural a silent Blair is."
She smiled gently. "I think I have some inkling. People who have survived a life-threatening ordeal often have difficulty reconnecting with loved ones. They feel outside of ordinary daily experience, separated from life. They're frequently depressed, have trouble eating and sleeping. They don't have the same enthusiasm for things they once enjoyed a great deal. It takes time to work through. And it's not reasonable to expect that things will ever be exactly the same again. All our experiences leave their mark on us. But this is a stage. It doesn't last forever. Dealing with it can help it pass more quickly."
"I don't know what to do for him. Nothing I've tried has helped."
"It's mostly his work to do, and he may not have been ready to tackle it before now. But I think it's a positive sign that he was able to talk to me. I know he misses you. I think he'd like to talk to you about it."
"How can I get him to do it then?"
"Let him know you're there for him. Be ready to acknowledge that you've both suffered a loss and allow yourself to mourn with him. It's not an easy thing. But it is necessary if you're ever going to move on."
"Is that what you're going to do?"
She stared down at the table. "When I'm ready. Which isn't just yet. Right now, I still don't remember that much of what happened. And what I can recall is more like a movie. It's like watching myself. No pain attached to it. I don't look forward to having those emotions again. I want to hold onto the blankness a little while longer. When I'm finished here and get back to San Francisco, then I'll have to face the demons of the past month. And so will Sam."
"It sucks, doesn't it?"
"It sure as hell does, Jim."
The investigation was limping along, with few leads and lots of unanswered questions. Elizabeth still had not been able to remember much of anything. Her memory from the afternoon of her disappearance to the events of the roof was pretty much a blank. Even the time on the ledge wasn't especially clear. //Someone's out there who knows about Sentinels, who's targeting us, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.// Jim was trying to be patient, but this was personal and patience had never been his particular forte. Worse still, he was beginning to get that edgy feeling again, like something was terribly wrong, very much like his reaction up on the roof that day, only he had no idea what it was about. //Instinct would be great, if only it came with a manual.//
He and Blair were putting in a day at the station, trying to further the few leads they did have, while Rafe and Brown had taken their place at the safe house, watching over Elizabeth and Sam. Blair was flipping through mug books, looking for the apocryphal Dr. Smith. They'd also had a police artist put together a sketch from the numerous eye witnesses among CPD's own ranks, and the drawing had been sent out over the wire for any matches. Megan was working on tracking down anyone who might have seen Elizabeth earlier in the day before she made it to the Lorden Towers. If they could find what vicinity she came from, that might point them in a direction. Jim was combing through the case file SFPD had faxed them, looking for any thread that might lead somewhere. He was having no luck and was almost beginning to zone on his own frustration.
"What's up, big guy?" Blair asked, watching him closely, a wrinkle developing between his eyes.
He shook his head, trying to throw off the eerie bad feeling. "Nothing, Chief. Just sick of looking and finding nothing."
"Don't do that, Jim. If you don't want to tell me, that's fine. But I know it's more than frustration about the case."
Jim froze for a minute. It dawned on him that he seriously needed to get past the old patterns. Nothing good had every come from not confiding in his Guide. //Look what happened the last time I didn't tell him about this feeling.// The thought made him shiver.
"You're right, Chief. There is something up with me. And I'm sorry. I should have told you about it when I first noticed it. I guess I was hoping it was just the stress of the whole situation. But it's not, I realize that now. I have the bad feeling again. The sense that something's terribly wrong. I had it up on the roof with the doctor. Now it's pretty much all the time. Not real strong, kind of vague, fuzzy, like whatever 'it' is...it's still distant. But coming."
A measure of curiosity stole into Blair's expression, something Jim hadn't seen in months. "Do you think it has something to do with Elizabeth?" his partner asked.
He shook his head. "I don't think so, Chief. Not directly at least. I don't get the bad feeling *from* her, not like she's the cause of it, but maybe a little like it's *about* her, like she's in danger. That's how it was up on the roof. The situation just looked wrong. I felt almost...protective of her. I wanted to help her. But the bad feeling is not *just* for her. It's a bigger sense of threat than that."
Blair fell quiet a moment, puzzling it over.
"Ellison! Sandburg! Where's my update?"
"Better go give Simon the latest before he busts something," Jim said, getting up from his desk. "Come with me, huh Chief?"
Blair hesitated a minute, then recognized the silent plea in Jim's expression.
"Okay, big guy." He grabbed Jim's sleeve before they went into Simon. "Don't worry, Jim. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out."
Elizabeth felt like she was going to jump out of her skin. She wished to God she *could* jump out of her skin. That way she could get away from the grotesque crawling feeling she had all over her body. //Something is so unbelievably wrong. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's that the memories are starting to come back to me. But I am going to go seriously insane if this doesn't stop soon.//
She paced back and forth between the dresser and the chair on the other side of the room. Sam was lying on the bed, pretending to read, maybe even trying to read, but she knew he couldn't help watching her. //Well, I am acting like a lunatic. And I'm a trained professional, so I ought to know.//
"Beth," Sam said softly, pliantly, using the soothing voice. "Why don't you try telling me what's wrong?"
She shook her head. She wasn't ready.
"It would help you."
"I don't want to remember," she confessed, staring at the floor. She, of all people, knew better, knew she didn't really have a choice. The mind didn't actually forget. It just provided much needed protection in the traumatic moment, a thankful blankness to aid in the fight for survival. All of the events of the past month were still a part of her, all the pain and terror and fury. They were as much a part of her as her bones and blood and her very cells. They could not be ignored with impunity. They would have their reckoning, one way or another.
"But you are remembering, aren't you?" he asked.
She shut her eyes tight and stopped mid-pace. She nodded her head.
"Come lie down with me, love. Let me hold you." She hesitated. "Come on, sweet. Give the carpet a break. You've nearly worn a hole in it, as it is."
He smiled, the impish grin that showed his dimples, that she loved so much. It was the first thing she had noticed about him, that day in New Mexico, even through the panic and pain of her runaway senses, a smile so beautiful that suddenly it had seemed absolutely wrong to even consider killing herself. She took a deep breath and thought much the same thing she had back then, when she was first learning to manage her senses. //I can do this. I can do this. I can stand it. I can do it.// She met his eyes, and they both knew she would tell him.
She lay down beside him, and he curled his body around hers. "I wouldn't ever push you, you know that. If you're not ready, all you have to do is say so," he reassured.
"It hurts, and it scares me. And it's all mixed up in my head. It's so hard to make sense of any of it," she said.
He pulled her closer, rubbing his hands comfortingly along her arms. "I know, sweetheart. You just do the best you can." The voice was lilting and curvaceous, deep and rich, the second thing she'd noticed about him, the way that voice got inside her and gave her a feeling, like safe haven, restoring sense to the world gone so horribly awry.
In the comforting arms of her husband, her Guide, her other half, she found the courage to step out into the darkness, to let the fractured images churn back up from the black well of lost things. She let them rise to the surface and find their way out, telling her Guide in halting, stumbling, choked, sobbing, torturous words the splinters and shards she could recall from the past month. She felt him cringe against her back as she told him about the pictures in her head, all the terrible, bloody things they wanted her to do, that they tried to convince her to use her Sentinel senses for, nothing she would ever, ever agree to, fighting them, determined to die first.
And then there was the punishment, which she would probably have kept from him, if the words hadn't developed a momentum, almost a will, of their own. When she put up resistance, refused to see things their way, fought the brainwashing, the punishment was always the same, the excruciating idea they planted in her head, the image that seemed so much like reality, of Sam lying crumpled on the ground at her feet. And the blood on her hands that would never come off. And the absolute, soul-shattering belief--the very stuff hell was made of--that she was the one responsible, that she, a Sentinel, had killed her Guide, that she had done the one unforgivable thing.
"Oh, my God, Beth. My poor, poor Beth. I'm so sorry, baby. Oh, sweetheart," Sam kept saying, over and again, holding her so tightly, rocking her so tenderly.
There was something wet on her face, and she didn't remember when she had started to cry. It was silent, just the tears streaming down her cheeks. And it was just like her pain, voiceless, because no words could ever properly convey the magnitude of her suffering.
"Close your eyes, Beth. That's good. Just rest. You just did a very hard thing. It's time to rest now. It's time to remember you're safe. No one's ever going to hurt you like that again, sweetheart. I promise. Oh God, I promise, Beth."
Sam was her Guide, and she listened to him, closing her eyes. His hands were folded across her chest, and she reached for them, holding them, like a lifeline. As she was drifting off, another fuzzy image floated across her mind. It was her office in San Francisco and a woman, someone who was only vaguely familiar, someone she couldn't quite place. The woman was asking for help, but Elizabeth couldn't, wouldn't, help her. And there was the same edgy feeling of menace she'd been experiencing all day. And she'd sent the woman away, feeling so relieved when she was gone. In her mind's eye, the woman was obscured and out of focus somehow. She couldn't get a clear view. At the same time, there was a name that kept moving through her thoughts.
//But who is Alicia Bannister?//
Part III
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