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Betaed: Yes, Thank-You, God for R.M. Koske who took it, and me firmly in hand!

Status: WIP

The Sentinel
-- Situations, Part One --
written by Roy's Girl (September 2002)

~What do I got to do to make you love me?
~What do I got to do to make you care?

Though he kept his mouth tightly clamped against the harsh surges of emotion, Blair's full lips quivered slightly. Someone was singing a dirge in his soul, his shattered, aching soul. Blair Sandburg's lost-looking blue eyes were full of unshed tears, and his throat ached from the effort not to scream. He could see them down the beach, in a full lip-lock. There was no more doubt of his place, or rather the lack of one, in Jim's life. The only human being that Blair had ever been foolish enough to trust was engaged in a deep French kiss with Blair's murderess. HIS Sentinel, and a cop at that, was making out with the woman who had drowned Blair only days before.

A low moan of mortal anguish escaped the tight control Sandburg had on himself: He saw Jim's head lift, saw him stare at his distraught, suffering Guide, then return to what he'd been doing.

~What do I do when lightening strikes me,
~And I wake to find that that you're not there?

He stared in wounded incredulity for a long moment, then closed his eyes as he felt his heart splintering. Suddenly, all of the years devoted to Ellison, all of the pain they`d been through, the trying and everything that had come to define who Blair was, were dissolved into the insubstantial mist called `illusion`.

He had given Jim everything he had to give, there was nothing left. Nothing. He was empty: He couldn't even feel his own soul anymore, as if that, too, had departed.

Two Days Later

He had one chance, one shot: Simon knew as he aimed to kill the rogue female sentinel. He fired, saw her drop, roll, and lay unmoving outside the Temple.

Banks was not a happy man, both as an experienced cop and as a friend, Simon was frightened shitless for Sandburg, who had not been seen in two days. Not since right after the beach. He'd mentioned `needing to process' and had said he was `going for a walk' and that was the last anyone had heard or seen of him. Apparently, he had simply walked away.

Banks shuddered as he recalled the dull, lifeless eyes in the young man's face. He trembled again when he recalled Blair's voice.

"It's over, Simon. All of it, here's that expired pass: I won't need it anymore. Jim's...never mind." He took a deep breath before continuing. "I won't be returning to Cascade. Being that close to Jim, now...no. That would hurt a little more than even I can handle. Tell...him; tell him I said for him to have a good life." And had then just disappeared. He'd given Banks the impression that he'd already made other plans....

~What have I got to do to make you want me?
~What have I got to do to be heard?

"Gone? How the hell can he just walk away? Which way did he go?" Jim snapped at Conner when she told him that Blair had left.

"You motherfucker!" She snarled at him, enraged, "Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't anyone? He died for your sake, distracting that blonde bitch to keep Alex from hurting you, then he got up literally from his deathbed to follow you down here just to make sure you were safe while you dealt with that bitch." Megan was so furious she kneed the unsuspecting Sentinel in the balls, out of pure fury. He dropped to his knees in agony, but that didn't stopped the Aussie from continuing to rip James J. Ellison a brand new asshole.

"He saw you with her on that beach, damn you!" Megan raged. "He told me you looked at him and then went right on kissing that cunt! Oh you dealt well with her, didn't you, Detective Ellison? Didn't you ever realize that you are the only human on Earth that Blair's ever allowed himself to trust in his entire life?" She continued in a intense tone that was made much worse by its quietness. "That includes his mother, by the way." She said in a cold, cutting tone. "He told me once that he loves her, that he loves a lot of people, but he that he's never found anyone he could trust, until you. Just where the fuck do you get off hurting him like that? I sure hope you're satisfied, Yank. Do you have any idea what you just threw away? Or how rare it is to find someone who'll love you like that?" She paused to stare at him as though he were some kind of repulsive insect...one both ugly and venomous.

"I'll never work on the same shift with you again, I promise you that, mate. You just bloody well proved that a body shouldn't ever turn their back on you. If you`d do that to Sandy, God help anyone else!" She snarled the accusation angrily, "Poor Sandy! Do you really think he, that anyone would have stuck with you through so much shit, and as much grief as he has for you, if he didn't adore you? Oh God, how the hell did you ever make detective when you're obviously stupid!" Megan stunned him again by slapping the shit out the big cop, and marching toward the hotel, fury in every stride.

~It's sad (so sad)
~It's a sad, sad situation
~And it's getting more and more absurd.

Blair had walked for days, always heading deeper into the rainforest. He was past thought, past memory. What remained of is mind, was blank. All that was left was pain and instinct. He nibbled on a wide assortment of leaves and berries, as the survival instinct insisted he fill his belly with something. The danger was that he could eat something poisonous, but without having a functioning mind, this was ignored. He just kept going, drinking stagnant water when his body forced him to take in fluids, and was therefore ill from it, but it didn't matter to him: Nothing mattered anymore.

His clothes were ripped and tattered, his feet bare and bleeding, his arms and legs deeply scratched and dotted here and there with puncture wounds. He felt none of it. He was totally unaware of the fact he had a fever, and he would not have cared it he had known. Blair was a man without hope or love, a man who no longer cared what happened, either to himself or to someone else since his place in the world was gone.

As would any mortally wounded beast, he was looking for a quiet, hidden place to die undisturbed.

Forty-eight hours later

Jim was getting close, the trail was fresh; but what a trail! He grieved at the sight the pus-filled, bloody, slimy thing he followed. Near liquid feces pointed the way, as had bits of Blair's clothes, the pieces of his shoes long abandoned, long, thin strips of flesh from Blair himself. Now and then he found a swathe of the long, curl-filled hair that was Sandburg's Hallmark, that had been caught on a bush or in a tangle of thorns and which had been cruelly ripped away. He saw the signs that told him where his Blair had fed and on what, he knew where the Guide had drank, and was terrified for Sandburg.

He thought sanity was quite gone from his Guide at this point. Ellison knew he needed to find his partner fast.

~It's sad, (so sad)
~Why can't we talk it over?
~Oh, it seems to me
~That 'sorry' seems to be the hardest word.

When he found him, Blair was slowly stumbling through the edges of a swamp, ignoring it's dangers as unimportant. He finally caught up, grasped Blair's alarmingly thin upper arm and turned the Guide to face him, halting his forward motion.

"Chief?" Jim questioned, then hissed in open horror as he saw the wreck that Sandburg had become. "Oh no, no, oh God no, what have I done?" Every instinct in him, whether it was cop, sentinel, or simple human decency screamed at him. His soul seemed to shrivel under the onslaught.

His sickened whisper had brought no response, and the other man didn't even know he was there.

"Jesus, Chief...come on, Blair. Let's get you cleaned up. Then I'll get you to a hospital!" He said softly as he lifted the other man. Tears flowed freely down the Sentinel's cheeks as he carried Sandburg to a cleaner area to dress and bind the wounds he now bore. "Christ, you can't weight more than sixty pounds..." Jim Ellison wept as he got some of the clean clothes he had brought along for Blair on his heartbroken Guide. He cried even harder when Blair finally did begin to respond to his nearness.

Sandburg clutched pathetically at Jim's shirt, plucking weakly at it. Low, pleading whimpers begged Jim not to abandon his Guide. The words of a barely remembered song rasped from Blair's long unused, rusty sounding voice. It was the same song that had echoed in his soul from that moment on the beach, when Jim had rejected him. Unfortunately, Jim knew both the singer, and the song. He sobbed in answer.

"Don't do it, Jim. Don't leave me." "Oh God, Chief. No, I'm not going anywhere, I won't leave. No, I'm here. I'm with you. I've got you."

~What do I got to do to make you love me?

"Oh shit, Sandburg! I do love you!" Jim cradled the three-quarters of the way, dead, man tightly in his arms.

~What do I have to do to be heard?

"Oh man, I'm listening, I'm finally listening, love. Oh Jesus, what I have I done to you, baby?" He had always thought Elton John had a way of summing things up nicely, but hearing this song from Blair as he tried to apologize to for what wasn't even his fault, was slowly killing Jim.

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