Archive of Our Own ^beta

skew: (skyoo) n. Math Neither parallel nor intersecting. --Used of straight lines in space.

Skew Lives By Kelyn

"Blair," I stopped, again, unsure how to continue. I so tired-- both from the Miller stakeout all last week and from the fear that this conversation would destroy us forever. If either of us had been thinking clearly (or had more than a couple hours of sleep snatched here and there over the last week) who knows what would have been said? It was too late now, with Sandburg quietly waiting for me to gently kill this thing between us.

He told me he loved me.

I should have been ecstatic. I should have been relieved. I should have been kissing him so hard he forgot his own name. Instead I stood there, ricocheting between terrified and furious.

There was nothing I could say, 'I love you too' would be a prelude to complete disaster; while 'I'm not so sure about this', is an out and out lie, heading directly into the conversation I did not want to have. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

'Do you think this is a good idea,' wasn't any better than 'I'm no good for you Blair.' Sandburg didn't care if it was a good idea or not; if he had he would've kept his mouth shut. 'This is a surprise,' made me sound like a moron. I knew what was going on, I just didn't know what to do about it, which had gotten me into this mess. 'I don't know what to say,' was the prelude to a letdown I wasn't sure I wanted to give, and 'Are you serious?' was the worst kind of insult.

Screaming, 'why the hell did you have to ruin everything and say that' wasn't going to get me anywhere but an extended Sandburg-delves-into-Ellison's-subconscious session followed by the dreaded conversation. Bolting from the apartment was awfully tempting. Moving to Tahiti was a distinct possibility.

"I can just go, it'll be best," he said, anticipating rejection in my silence.

"No!" The word came out sharper than I intended. I had no right to order him around, not in this. "I just need a second, okay?" Sandburg looked at me expectantly, while I desperately searched for the words. Blair is the one who can shuffle his vocabulary to fit any situation. I'm a doer, except I had no idea what I was doing, other than letting the silence go on too long.

I hate words.

"Look, Blair, it's just that--" I was saved from further revelation by the phone ringing. My job means we can't not answer the phone, thank God.

Blair grabbed it, answering roughly, "Yes?" I was rude and listened to the other end.

"Umm, Blair, it's Julie. I'm sorry to bug you, but I need a favor." Julie sounded frazzled, more so than her three-month-old baby usually made her.

"How can I help," he asked, voice calm and smooth.

"My sitter canceled out on me. Bri and I really need a break. I was wondering if you would mind taking Stacey for a bit?"

Blair glanced over at me, I knew he didn't want to go, but he owed Julie. She had taken over for him more than once when he had to go off with me. I took the phone, and the decision, out of his hands.

"Hey Julie, it's Jim. Can you hold on for a second?" I didn't wait to hear what she said, putting the receiver face down on the couch, and turned Blair to face me. I could see he expected rejection, eyes slightly downcast and a studied look of nonchalance plastered across his features.

Poor, abused, beloved face. The harder I try to protect you, the worse I hurt you, Sandburg. How cliched is that?

"Blair, I am not upset," (lie) "and I don't want you to leave, or forget we had this conversation," (two, three, how many can you put in this sentence Jim?) "or anything else. But, I think you should go help Julie." I felt him deflate at that, his mask of disinterest slipping. "Listen to me, I need to get my head together before we have the rest of this conversation. You go play with the baby for an hour or two, while I shake loose some demons, and then we'll finish this, all right?" Maybe in an hour or two I could come up with something coherent to say, or a plan for not saying anything.

Blair didn't call me on any of my lies, just rescued the phone from the couch. "Should I come straight over?"

"I'm not interrupting anything you and Jim had going on, am I?"

"Nah," he said casually, proving himself to be the master obfuscator in the room.

"Thank you so much for doing this, Blair, I'll see you soon." He hung up, just standing there for a second, before walking over to get his jacket and keys.

"Chief?" He looked back at me from the door, a little scared at what I might say. "I will be here when you come back," assuming there were no flights to Tahiti in the next two hours. He looked so miserable that I had to add, truthfully, but against my better judgment, "I do love you, Blair."

For a moment hope and despair warred on his face, before the stoic mask returned. "You don't have to fight off all your demons alone, Jim."

"This round I do, you can come along next time, if you want."

"Yeah, strangely enough I do," and with that he turned and left. I waited for him to pull out of Prospect before caving in to the urge to run, grabbing my coat and keys, throwing myself down the stairs and into the truck. Driving, driving, driving, trying to figure out what the fuck just went wrong in there.

I knew the guy loves me, I've known for a while. He finally says so, and I'm furious with him for ruining the balance between us, for scaring me out of my wits. I know it's not rational. I used up the last of my rational convincing Blair to leave. Whether making him go was a smart idea is still up for debate.

I knew he had to love me: he stayed. There was no other reason to put up with dead bodies, junkies, murderers, extortionists, sociopaths, bomb threats, or psychotic blondes. Any sane person would have left, even someone as persistently loyal as Sandburg. I expected him to go, so I tried not to care, and failed miserably, but he stayed. He'll still try and stay, no matter what I say, but what we had is dead. He thinks it isn't enough to go on without words. He needs the words from me. He wants more.

I do love him, no matter how much I tried not to. The little weasel has found bits of me that I thought were dead. When Death, that insufferable bitch, wouldn't take me along with everyone I cared for, I let the bits that loved them die instead. Left those parts behind to keep my men company in the cold earth-- until Blair Sandburg bullied his way into my life.

Damn him for making me care. I should have tossed him out on his skinny ass, while I still could have. Gone cold turkey trying to prove to myself that I didn't need him. Damn him, for waiting until I had begun to think we might be okay. He should have left me when I was accustomed to suffering, when I could have handled the loss. Everyone I loved has left, or been taken. That's not paranoia, exaggeration, or self pity-- it's truth, and it scares the hell out of me.

I can be brave with everything except my heart.

A call came on the radio; a violent disturbance at the university. I answered, afraid I would convince myself to chase Sandburg away, so I wouldn't have to face losing him. Even remembering what had happened last time I tried that particular trick, it still sounded easier than actually having that conversation.

Instead, I went to a physics lab at Rainier, and stood there for an hour sorting out what amounted to a domestic dispute between three of the faculty. Professors were fighting over resources, and time; the proper way to do their experiment; who was going to get the credit; and whose name was going to come first on the awards they were sure to get.

It was safer than going home.

A student had called in Security when things had started to get out of hand. It went to hell when one of the professors threw something at the security guard sent to calm things down. The cops were called in, to document the blood, the destroyed equipment, and the arguing. The academics wouldn't let us shut down the equipment, and we wouldn't let them touch the evidence, so the machines hummed in the background, beneath the shrieking. The entire scene was chaos.

The grad student who'd put in the call, Thom LeBlanc, was in shock at the behavior of his advisor, and the destruction of his work. I pulled him aside to make sure he was okay-- that's when it happened.

Thom and I were walking down near one end of the huge aluminum box they had on the table, peering through its window to see if anything inside had been damaged. Suddenly one of the professors, still arguing with anyone who would listen, knocked over the plate which had been blocking the laser light from going into the box. The whole window was suffused with colored light. I knocked Thom out of the way, and got myself out from in front of that window. I had no idea what was coming out of that box, but there were enough warning signs around the lab to make me nervous, big yellow signs reading 'danger' in half a dozen different languages.

"It's okay," Thom protested. " The laser is completely contained. "

"Sorry," I helped him up. "All the signs around here have me a little on edge."

"We want people to be nervous around the big lasers, it's safer. But this is just a little guy; the photons are at very low energy. We're using them as ensemble states for our experiments in quantum information and teleportation." He smiled sadly, "but I appreciate the thought. "

"Ensemble states?"

Thom gave me the look all graduate students have perfected, the 'do you really want me to explain my research to you' look. I nodded, and he started in on a well-practiced spiel.

"Everything in the universe is made up of particles, lots of really small particles. Quantum Physics makes rules for the relationships between energy and particles, so you can describe anything: a beam of light, a person, or a black hole, in terms of energy and particles. Those descriptions are called ensemble states. " He paused to check if my eyes were glazing over.

"Okay, everything is made of particles, what has that got to do with lasers?" Thom seemed reassured by my question and dived back into his explanation.

"Light is made of particles too, and light is a lot simpler than matter. In our lab we experiment with ensembles of photons, in what are called sculpted wave packets, which is a fancy way of saying we're controlling the light so that certain quantum states are more likely to be occupied. We then measure changes from the packet we started out with, and that tells us about the events the packet has experienced." He paused again, looking at me expectantly. I nodded to show I was still following him.

"Quantum is all about probabilities, so we've got to be able to repeat any experiment many times to get accurate information. Being able to duplicate ensembles is very important. Unfortunately that machine over there," he pointed at a piece of equipment whose LCD display had been shattered, "was the main part of our diagnostic equipment. Without it, we won't be able to identify much of anything."

Thom stopped and surveyed the remains of the system. There was no way he was going to get any work done any time soon, the place looked like a war zone. Bits of glass from the damaged TV monitors lay glinting on the table between damaged mirrors, and electronic equipment. Insulation on bits of wire dangling into the laser beam had begun to melt, giving off a terrible smell and tiny tendrils of smoke. The professor hadn't stopped arguing, or even noticed what he had done. Thom carefully replaced the laser block, and began shutting the system down, noting down the condition and function of each piece for my report.

"How close are you to finishing?" The question I'd avoided asking Blair for so long. Finishing the thesis had been more entry on the long list of reasons for him to leave me. No matter what I took from him, he stayed. Why did he have to ruin things now by demanding words?

Thom snapped me out of the downward spiral by answering my question. "I could write it up now, but I really wanted to get the results from this last experiment. It would bring the work to a good stopping point. I just needed a little more data." He sighed. "I'm not going to get that data, am I?"

No, Thom wouldn't get the money, or the help, to repair the box and finish the experiment if this hit the press, and three faculty members arrested for brawling would definitely make tomorrow's news. I didn't have to tell him that the deans weren't going to look kindly on what had happened tonight, or that graduate students were the perfect, expendable, scapegoat at Rainier. The look on Thom's face, as he quietly ran a hand along the edge of the aluminum box, told me he already knew. But something about the kid made me want to make sure that he got out all right.

Sandburg has made me hopelessly sentimental.

"Finish with what you have, and get out. Go where they care about the science, not the prestige. If you care about the work, the rest will come." I waved at the arguing scientist, now being handcuffed by the uniforms. "You deserve better than this." I don't know if Thom believed me, but at least I tried.

When I finally made my way to the truck, I found it wasn't parked quite where I remembered leaving it. I dismissed the fact, thinking my lack of sleep was finally catching up to me. I had more important things to worry about-- like how long I'd been out for. Blair was going to have a fit if I wasn't there when he got back.

I didn't see his car when I got back to the loft, and was a bit relieved, until I walked into the apartment and looked around more closely. The loft was empty. Sandburg was gone, leaving no trace behind. No papers strewn across the living room, no lingering stench from herbal tea, no sneakers flung carelessly beneath the coffee table, no exotic music playing in the background. None of the stuff that had been there when I left.

Nothing.

I hadn't thought he would leave before we finished talking, but the evidence was in front of me. The man was gone. I felt myself beginning to zone, as I searched harder and harder for some trace of him in the apartment, and I didn't care. I had lost him, scared him away because I was too terrified to tell him the truth when he finally blurted out his heart to me, too stupid to tell him, 'yes I know you love me, and I love you too,' and just run with it.

The sound of the door, behind me, startled me back into reality. I spun around, hoping desperately that it was Blair, that this was all a dreadful mistake. Instead a girl, barefoot, carrying a basket, came through the door. I had my gun out before I had really thought about it.

"Whoa, relax there. I come bearing laundry." She said calmly, continuing to walk into the apartment, apparently unfazed by the gun and comfortable in her surroundings. She looked sixteen or so, fair skin, light eyes, and a long rope of pale hair hanging down her back. Why is it always blondes with me?

"Who are you and why are you here?" Had Blair sent her?

She snorted, "You're hysterical. I am your household slave, sahib, performing menial tasks in exchange for shelter. And if you don't remember to leave a message when you get called out, I'm gonna use that cheap-o itchy detergent on your sheets and leave you to suffer."

A quick glance at the basket confirmed that those were, in fact, my clothes, or at least some of them were my clothes. Some were most definitely not. Nobody who was supposed to be living in this apartment wore anything made by Victoria's Secret. Welcome to the Twilight Zone. I wished, hopelessly, for Sandburg. I was too tired to be creative, and he knows how to handle this kind of thing.

I had only two choices: keep the gun out or put the gun away. I didn't really want to shoot a kid in my apartment, and she didn't seem to be reacting to the gun as a threat. The gun went away before I asked again, "Who are you?"

"What is up with you? I'm the same person I've been for the last year. The kid who follows you around, and annoys the hell out of Simon? The girl who pays rent on the back room?"

"No, Sandburg annoys Simon and lives in the back room." Except he didn't want to live in the back room anymore. "Who the hell are you?"

"Jimmy," she said gently, putting the laundry basket down on the kitchen table, "stop. This isn't funny."

"Who are you and where the hell is Sandburg?" I insisted, being nastier than I had to be. I hate being called Jimmy.

"He's around here somewhere." She looked furtively up the stairs and out towards the balcony, muttering, "Where the hell are you?"

A chill ran down my arms as I replied, "You and I are the only people here, and you know it." You didn't need Sentinel senses to feel the unnatural quiet of the apartment. The entire place felt alien to me.

"Well, duh, but Blair's around. He's always around when you're here."

"You've got ten seconds to start explaining yourself kid." The girl was running on pure bravado; I could hear her heart racing. I figured she would bolt, instead she started walking towards me.

"Jimmy." She was slowly stepping closer, like she was gentling a wild animal. "What year do you think this is?"

Huh? "1999."

She nodded, "Okay that's right, but you don't know who I am, or where Blair is." I shook my head. "If this is a joke, I'm going to kill you." I didn't react, so she put both hands on my arms, and spoke slowly, as if to a confused child. "Jimmy, Blair died over a year ago."

"No, we saved him! He lived." I struggled to get free from the girl. She was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked, but the body remembers. When the brain is on vacation, or sunk into the depths of exhaustion, the body remembers. I went onto autopilot and broke free of her, following through, just like I'd been trained. I hadn't meant to hit her, but the girl slipped on a rug, (we don't have a rug in front of the door, do we?) and caught my elbow next to her eye as she went down hard.

She looked up at me, stunned, for a few seconds before pulling herself together enough to say, "You hit me," in that tone of injured betrayal only teenagers can manage.

I didn't think she'd believe it was an accident, so I said nothing. The kid was going to have one hell of a shiner, but she was the one who had broken into my place. (And done laundry?) I didn't have any sympathy for her. We stayed there, studying each other for a long moment before she climbed to her feet, and stalked into the kitchen, still glaring at me. She grabbed an unopened package of frozen peas from the freezer, and put it on her face. That's when I really lost it, because after everything that had happened she was still acting so fucking calm. I grabbed her arms and started shaking her.

"Enough with the 'Its a Wonderful Life' routine. You tell me who you are," shake, "what you are doing here," shake, "and why you were lying about Sandburg." I shook her again, when she didn't say anything, "Now, dammit," I roared. Slippery little brat was twisting around, breaking my grip expertly, and dashing across the room. I stood there, realizing she was gone, and that the peas had landed on my foot. It was the only thing about the whole crazy mess that seemed real.

The peas were cold.

The kid probably could have made it out of the apartment, but she stopped to snag the phone before dashing towards the fire escape. Dialing while trying to run slows you down. I had her again before she got out of the living room, pulling the phone out of her grip before it connected. I was about to hang up when I recognized the tired voice on the other end barking, "Banks." I hung up without saying anything, praying Simon wasn't using caller ID.

"You called Simon." The girl stopped struggling, and stared at me.

"You're in the middle of some kind of violent post traumatic repression fit, which is scaring the hell out of me, and you're asking for Blair. Who the hell else do you suggest I call?"

A shiver ran through me. She couldn't be right, and yet nothing else made sense. There was nothing of Blair in the apartment. One way, or another, Sandburg had left the building, which made me feel even colder. I wondered, as I walked the kid back into the living room and sat her down, which was the dream: my life with Sandburg, or this life without him.

"All right, let's start over." The girl glared at me in sullenly, but stayed seated. "My name is James Ellison, I'm a police detective, and it's 1999." She nodded. "You live here and Blair is dead."

"Yes."

"What's your name."

"You call me Star." I must have given her a look of disbelief, because she explained, "Naomi started it, she was doing tarot, and said I was the gifted child, the star. You decided it fit better than my given name," adding, while making a face, "Shirley." She was right, or I was right, she didn't seem like a Shirley.

I rubbed a hand across my face, trying to figure out if I was dreaming this, or had forgotten it, or forgotten that I had dreamed it. When I looked up again Star's face, aside from her nascent black eye, had faded to the color of paper. She reached out and took my hand, turning it first one way and then the other, before looking up at me again, asking, "Where's the scar?"

I must have looked confused because she explained, "The one on your hand, the burn," as she pushed my chin to one side, looking for something she couldn't find. "Take off your shirt."

"What?"

"Take off your shirt." The girl was already pulling at my T-shirt, pushing it up so she could see my ribs.

"Please tell me we're not involved or anything." I couldn't possibly have tried to replace Sandburg with this child. Even dreaming, I wasn't that stupid.

"God, Simon would kill us." she said distractedly, still searching. In the space of an eye blink the girl went from worried-but-contained to openly terrified, as she let my shirt drop. Her voice shook as she said, "You're not the most cautious person in the world, Jimmy, that's left marks, but none of them are there, not even the really old ones. Where have all your scars gone? Why are there new marks I've never seen before?" She pulled away from me, asking, "Who are you?"

I hate being called Jimmy, my father called me that. Jimmy was the reckless child, the freak, who would do anything to earn his father's approval. I left him behind when I joined the military. Afterward, when I wasn't Ellison, I was Jim, that wasn't a dream, I was sure of it.

"Jim Ellison." She shook her head, and shrunk further back into the sofa.

None of this made sense. "Look, when was the last time you saw me?"

"You're not--" she started.

I cut her off, "The last time you saw Jimmy."

"Jimmy left yesterday, for his shift on the Miller stakeout. I haven't seen him since."

"As I remember it, Sandburg and I nailed the bastard and came home, just like always." Except 'always' had ended earlier this evening. "I told you, Alex Barnes didn't kill him." Star didn't look like she recognized the name. "Alex Barnes, the one who tried to drown him, about a year ago. Psycho woman, trying to steal nerve gas?"

"Nerve gas? You mean Bannister, the one who broke into Oberon?" I nodded. "She was caught shortly after that. You told me she had some heightened senses, maybe all of them, but you weren't sure. Bannister was way out of control, major spikes and zones, which's why she was easy to catch. You weren't able to help her get herself together, she ended up in the mental ward instead of going to trial."

Without Sandburg, Alex Barnes -- Alicia Bannister -- hadn't been stable enough to pull off the theft of the nerve gas. Star seemed uncomfortable with the whole thing, or maybe it was the chill in the air of the apartment. I looked around to see if any of the windows had been left open.

/She doesn't like being reminded that the senses made her, you, and Bannister crazy,/ came a whisper at the back of my neck. It sounded like Blair.

"She's a..." I trailed off as I looked around, realizing I was talking out loud to someone who wasn't there. "You're a Sentinel?"

Star nodded, saying bitterly, "Bannister wasn't the only one you've tried to keep out of the loony bin. Guess you failed with me too, huh?"

Naomi is a hell of a lot smarter than she acts. I had felt the scar on Star's wrist during the mess in the kitchen; it was no more than a year or two old. If Jimmy had brought her here, into this absence of Sandburg, then the Sentinel bullshit, on top of whatever else teenage girls go through, had pushed her over the edge. The kid probably needed all the positive reinforcement she could get. So they called her Star, to remind her that she wasn't crazy, that she wasn't a freak.

Blair does that for me. If he's dead who's keeping me-- or Jimmy-- sane?

Jimmy was fighting to keep this kid from going Alex's road, and I'd barged in with stories of talking to Sandburg yesterday. Star thought she was nuts, or I was crazy, or maybe we'd both lost it. Good job, Jim; so much for positive reinforcement. I tried to soothe the kid's fidgets with, "Star, you aren't like that woman. You're not crazy, Jimmy wouldn't have let you stay if you were."

"Neither of us were in real good shape when I moved in, umm," she paused looking confused.

"Jim. I'm Jim, he's Jimmy."

"And I believe you," she shook her head mournfully. "Are you sure we're not crazy?"

No. "Positive."

That got a reaction, the kid snapped, yelling, "Dammit, you don't even think I'm real, do you? What am I then, some hallucination you can banish quietly before the men with the white coats and the Haldol get here?"

"I didn't say that." I certainly suspected this was all a nervous breakdown, or spirit guide induced hallucination (they've done it to me before) but I hadn't said anything.

"Don't you get it? You can't lie to me: I'm a Sentinel, and I know you."

Well, actually she didn't know me, but that was the point. I took a deep breath as I looked around for something to prove my point. The slight whiff of my own adrenaline gave me an idea. There was a sweater sitting on the stairs to my room. I got up and brought it and my jacket over to where Star was huddled. I handed her the sweater, ordering "Smell."

"It's Jimmy's."

"Right, now smell this one." I handed her my jacket. She inhaled obligingly, shutting her eyes while she sorted out the subtle differences between them. "They're different aren't they?" No response. "I'm willing to bet you're a smart, creative, kid, but would you come up with a hallucination that looked and sounded just like your roommate, but smelled differently?"

She opened her eyes and studied me, clutching Jimmy's sweater like a lifeline. "How did you know?"

"I don't think either of us is crazy. If Jimmy and I are two different people, even if the base scent is identical, we eat different things-- especially since Sandburg cooks half my meals."

"And part of personal scent is based on what you eat, I've already had that lecture thanks." She took a moment to compose herself and then addressed me in an almost business like manner, the only think that gave her away was the deathgrip on the sweater. Poor kid was still freaked. Then again so was I.

"Okay, we're not crazy, and you're not Jimmy. We know that you were where you were supposed to be during the Miller stakeout. Something since then has changed things." She looked at me expectantly, "So what happened?"

"Umm, Sandburg and I got home around dinner time, we ate, we talked."

"Ate what? Talked about what? Come on Jim, we can't put it together unless you give me the full story here." I could barely talk to Sandburg, and now I was supposed to tell all to some teenager dancing on the razor edge of panic?

/I trust her,/ came the voice again. I thought I saw a glimmer of something over in the yellow chair, but when I turned my head it was gone. Maybe the voice was right, and we were both crazy.

"We ate spaghetti, and we talked about our partnership." Star quirked an eyebrow, I stumbled on, "He got called out, favor to a friend, and I went for a drive."

"So, you were pretty freaked by the discussion." I must have looked startled, because she explained, "When Jimmy loses it, he goes for a drive. I swear the only reason he keeps that rust bucket is because it feels like driving, not steering an armchair on wheels. What on earth did Blair say to get you so worked up?"

"It's got nothing to do with this," I said defensively.

"Jim," she cut me off, "You have to remember, and tell me, everything that happened tonight. We don't know what'll be important."

"I appreciate what you're trying to do Star, but what Sandburg and I discussed isn't relevant."

"How do you know that?"

"I just know, okay?"

"So, you and Sandburg had a fight and now you're feeling guilty because he's not here, and you have to admit you were being an ass. If you want to get back and fix it, quit whining, and concentrate on what happened. It's not like I can tell your friends or anything, can I?"

I'd have been outraged, but what would it get me? "He surprised me tonight, he wanted to talk about us." Star gave me a look that said I was restating the obvious. "I mean us, like a couple, which we aren't, but he wants there to be. I don't suppose you know if Jimmy and this Sandburg, well..." I trailed off as the kid rolled her eyes at me. She knew I was stalling.

"What did you say that was so awful?"

"I didn't, I left."

Star groaned and covered her face with her hands.

I tried to explain, "He'd wrecked what we already had, and that pissed me off. I just had to get the hell out of there." The kid was shaking her head in resigned amusement, laughing at me. "All right, I overreacted. I've got terrible track record with relationships. I really don't want to screw up with Blair. I can't screw up with Blair." I couldn't stand it any more, "What is so damned funny?"

"You are, Jimmy's just as bad. You expect people to disappoint you. When they don't you think you're just being set up for a bigger fall." She giggled, "Trust me, he may be the only one, but you can get away with screwing up with Blair."

"Then how come he's dead here? I blew it didn't I?" I couldn't help it, the words came out angry. I had lost Sandburg without even having the chance to mess it up; that didn't seem fair. "Sandburg never would have been at risk if it wasn't for me, I mean Jimmy."

"It had nothing to do with Jimmy, or the police work, or anything." Star said, with the profound patience of someone who has already beaten a subject to death, as she worried at the sweater in her lap. "It just happened. Blair ended up saving a lot of people's lives... Jimmy's proud." She cocked her head, as if listening, then shivered slightly before admitting, "Okay, he's proud when he's not angry at being left behind, or sad." She looked around the loft, "The place is just hollow sometimes, y'know?"

"I know," I could feel it in the apartment. The loft had always felt that way before Sandburg. There were a few attempts to make the place less empty, a few pictures, and a seashell from some southern shore. A frame that should have held a picture of Sandburg, Simon, and me on our last fishing trip now displayed Jimmy, caught at the beginning of a smile, while Star, grinning, whispered something to him. I wondered if I was imagining the sadness I thought I saw in his eyes. Jimmy had to care for the kid, she wouldn't still be here if he'd just felt obliged to explain the Sentinel thing. But the imp in that picture couldn't fill the emptiness here.

I'm not sure anyone could.

"Enough old history," Star insisted, "Blair spilled his guts, you panicked, and then what?"

"I did not panic." I protested. She made a dismissive gesture, ignoring my protest. "I went for a drive, ended up answering a call over at the university, bunch of professors acting like pre-schoolers. One of them beaned a security guard with a block of stainless." I held out my hands to show her the dimensions. "Then the professors all started throwing things and trashed the place. Security called in the cops, and we shut it down. It was all pretty normal, except for the high tech toys. When I came out my truck wasn't where I thought I had parked it. I found it, came here, and found you instead of Sandburg."

"And we both freaked."

"Look, I'm sorry about that," I waved my hand toward the kitchen, where the peas were making a puddle on the floor.

"It's okay," she shrugged. "Shit happens. So, things were obviously normal when you left to go for a drive, and not normal by the time you left the university. Something weird must have happened either in the car, or at the university. "

"The experiment at the university, was only partly broken, there was enough left to get a light show before, the grad student shut it down."

"What kind of research did you say they were they doing?"

"Quantum something... teleporting? It sounded really Star Trek to me."

"Quantum teleportation?" I nodded. "So you were in a room with a quantum teleportation experiment, that might have been broken, and when you left everything was a little bit different?"

"I guess so." That meant something to Star, even if it didn't help me any. She set aside Jimmy's sweater and started pacing around the living room, talking excitedly.

"Shit. I mean there are theories, parallel reality stuff. Somehow you've changed quantum states, we need to figure out what you were hit with and come up with the opposite value, which hopefully would put you back where you started."

"Back up, how is any of this possible?"

"Anything is possible in an infinite universe, some things are just more probable than others-- at least that's the basis of most Quantum theory. Simultaneous massive energy shifts are improbable as hell, but possible. You just managed to hit the jackpot."

"Uh, huh. How do you know this stuff?"

She stopped pacing, put one hand on a hip, and quipped, "I read, unlike some people."

"I read," I protested.

"Sure," Star smirked, "but the score from the Jag's game tells us diddly about quantum theory. It came up in physics class at school. I don't know enough math to follow it all, but the theory's pretty cool. Do you think you could find the grad student again?"

"He was staying to clean up the lab," I checked my watch. It had only been an hour. "He's probably still there."

"All right, we've got to go back. You need to bring Blair." She walked towards the French doors. I could see past them, inside, to the room that really wasn't Blair's. There weren't wall to wall hearts and flowers, but it was definitely a girl's room. It was eerie.

"But he's dead," I said, rubbing my arms against the chill, as I tried to figure out what she meant.

"Hasn't stopped him so far," she called out.

/Don't worry about it,/ the voice was back. /Just relax and I'll take care of it./

"Blair?" I whispered cautiously.

/Who else would stick around to keep you out of trouble?/ the voice replied.

Score one for Star. We're all crazy, every single hypersensitive one of us.

Luckily, Thom was still at the university when we arrived. He looked a little surprised when he found me knocking on the door of the lab, and a lot surprised when he saw I'd brought a teenager along for the ride. I decided it was safest to start simple, saying, "Sorry to bother you again Thom, do you mind if we come in for a second."

"Uh, no." He stepped aside to let us into the room, adding "I'm Thom LeBlanc," for Star's benefit.

"Star Andrews. I had a few questions for you about your equipment here."

"Are you with the police?" Asked Thom, sizing her up.

"Not exactly." Star explained that I had somehow been hit by a large quantum event, probably in the lab, and I wasn't the Detective James Ellison who was supposed to be here.

Thom thought about it for a moment before asking, "Do you know how crazy that sounds?" Star nodded, and he continued, sounding a little disgusted, "People have theorized that quantum indeterminacy can lead to parallel universes but there is no evidence for any of it, and no way to test for any. It's just science fiction. I've stood exactly where he did a thousand times and nothing strange has ever happened to me."

"Nothing strange? How sad. All I knows is that he, " she pointed at me, "doesn't have any of the scars that he did when he left the apartment yesterday. He remembers things that never happened, and has no recollection at all of things that did."

Thom eyed the two of us, "You live together?"

"Not like that, geez." Star made a face, and Thom seemed to relax marginally. "I'll explain later, right now we need to figure out if we can put Jim back."

"I can certainly get parts of the experiment running, at least in the condition they were when the detective left. But we have no way of knowing what the state of the wave packet he was hit with. My diagnostics are shot," he waved at a pile of broken electronics, "and the laser has been turned off since you left. It'll restart in a completely different phase space, which means different wave packets."

Star wrinkled her nose, "I hadn't thought of that."

"It's not something that comes up in science fiction."

"Hey," she shot back indignantly, "I am not some kind of trekie weirdo coming in here with expectations of black box technology, okay? I know what I'm asking here, and how it sounds. This whole situation is insane, but it's the only plausible explanation I can come up with. You want to do the Occam's razor bit, be my guest; you'll end up with the same conclusion after wasting a lot of time. The longer we wait the greater the probability that something will change in this ensemble, making it impossible to undo whatever happened."

Thom replied irritably, "Look, I have better things to do with my time than to indulge some underage Lolita with delusions of scientific competence."

"Time out, " I interrupted before Star could say something she would regret. "Cool it Star. Thom, please bear with us, and assume, for the moment, that Star's theory is correct: something in this lab changed me. Is it, or is it not, possible to reverse that effect."

"Hypothetically, if it really was a quantum packet that caused this... shift? Information theory says it is possible to reproduce the original state. Problem is, in order to do that, you would need to know something about the original event, which we don't. People are too complex to be described on a quantum level, and we have no idea what came out of the system when you were in range. So, hypothetically, sure. But practically? No way in hell."

/So take the problem out of the physical, and deal with it in the metaphysical. You'd be amazed what becomes tractable out here,/ chimed in Blair.

"What do you mean?" I asked too quietly for Thom to hear me. Star might be used to me talking to ghosts (or rather ghost) but Thom didn't need any more evidence that we were nuts.

/The spirit realm is mostly metaphorical representations of abstract concepts. We just need to find the representation of the particular abstract that you're looking for, and you can follow it all the way home./

"So you're saying my spirit guide will bail me out again."

/Something like that,/ the voice chuckled.

"Thom would you mind starting up the system anyway, maybe having it running will help us think of something."

Thom grumbled a bit, but went ahead and did it anyway. As the machines started humming again I let Blair guide me towards the spirit world. I followed the glimmer that was Sandburg down and away from the noise into chill darkness, coming out on a cold and rocky slope. I could hear, faintly, behind me Star telling Thom not to worry, I was fine.

I had expected the jungle, not exposed mountainside. What I truly hadn't expected was Sandburg's absence. Without his help how was I going to get home?

I looked around and decided that uphill was my best bet, and began scrambling up, over, and around the boulders that studded the hillside. Even after I had climbed what felt like a few hundred feet, little had changed. When I finally spotted a cave some distance away, the change of pace was a welcome relief. The cave did not, geologically, belong on the rock face, so I figured it had to be one of Sandburg's abstracts made physical.

Sure enough, once I stepped into the cave the slope behind me began to fade into insubstantiality. There would be no backtracking on this particular trip. I walked farther and farther into the cool darkness, wondering what the spirit world was trying to get into my thick skull this time, when the Jaguar showed up. I should say that's when I noticed him; it's not easy to see a black cat in a black cave. As soon as I did notice him a faint light, just enough for a sentinel to see by, bloomed around us as Jaguar became Jungle Jim.

Just what the situation needed, another version of me running around.

"I can't do this without Sandburg," I told it. "Did you bring me here to learn that lesson?"

"You chose this. A sentinel is a sentinel as long as he chooses to be."

"What does choosing to be a sentinel have to do with being here?"

Jungle Jim morphed into Star as he/she continued, "Assume there are infinite possibilities in the universe. At a certain point, statistical improbabilities attract. Now, add the Batman Dilemma: does Gotham have villains because of Batman; or does Gotham have Batman because of villains? Do unusual things happen because you're a Sentinel; or, because you are a Sentinel, the unusual occurs? "

"So all of this is because I'm a Sentinel?"

"No, because of free will."

"What?" And the creature changed again... now Sandburg was giving the lecture. I hadn't realized how much, even in a few hours, I could miss him.

"Free will is about choices and consequences. By denying the consequences, you negate your choices."

"So you're saying I chose to run away to the university, so I ended up here, instead of where I was supposed to be."

"That's one interpretation. Perhaps you chose to be at the university, and were needed here. The consequences of your choice allowed the creation of new choices here, a chance for two sentinels to meet without confrontation; or a chance for a Sentinel to meet a potential guide; the chance to reconsider your choices. Or, perhaps someone, somewhere, sent a quantum ripple across the universe and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Meaning is what you learn from your experiences. Purpose is what propels you to make more choices, and only you can determine what that purpose will be."

I remembered Star's comments with a wince, "So I should quit whining and get on with things."

"That's the problem with free will, only you can decide." He began to withdraw into the shadows.

"Wait, how do I get back."

"What did you see when you arrived?" What had I seen?

"Colors, colors coming out of Thom's box."

"Remember them." I thought on the rainbow I had seen shoot across the window as I moved away. Brought back the richness and depth of the color, as only a Sentinel can see them. When I opened my eyes Jaguar was back, batting a ball of colored light. He swatted it toward me, hitting me squarely in the chest. When it intersected me the colors I remembered from earlier scattered away from me, and I was falling into the darkness.

Everything was falling away.

Falling back into the world. All of the machines were humming in the lab, and Star and Thom were discussing something beyond my grasp of the science. But I knew how to get home, Jaguar's colors had to be the answer. "Thom," I croaked. My throat had gotten dry in my absence. I wondered how long had I been gone. I swallowed and tried again. "Thom, would you mind adjusting the box? Change the state coming out somehow?"

Thom just stared, but Star shooed him in the direction of the controls, asking, "Did you figure it out?"

"I think so." We stood to one side of the window while Thom started adjusting things. I called out directions, more one way, no go back, until I could see a rainbow identical to the one in my vision. It wasn't there if I just looked in the box, but if I looked with more than sight, somewhere between Sentinel vision and staring into the spirit world, I could see the colors.

"Do you see them?" I asked Star.

"I think so, so many colors," she whispered. I nodded.

Thom perked up, "You can see the difference between quantum states?" We nodded in unison. "And this is part of that hypersensitivity thing you were trying to explain to me? Do you know how much help being able to identify states would be in my research?" What is it with grad students wanting to use Sentinels to complete their Ph.D. research? I was a bit surprised that Star had already let him in on the Sentinel thing, but I suppose that he deserved an explanation, and it was her choice.

See, I was learning.

"Talk to Star, I've got a wave packet to catch." I turned to the young lady in question. She looked pleased at Thom's anxious look, and a little sad. "You'll be all right, Star. Sandburg'll look after you 'til Jimmy shows up." I felt a cool tingle of assent from the ghost.

She answered sarcastically, "Oh so now I get the bossy ghost telling me not to eat French fries, thank you so much." She laughed. "It was good to meet you Jim, I hope you work it out with Blair."

"So do I. Do you think groveling will work?"

"Can't hurt. Keep it simple and be honest, you'll be fine." Star paused for a second, unsure of her next comment, then said it anyway. "If we ever do meet, Jim, be kind." She said it in such a quiet, hopeful, way it nearly broke my heart. Then she stepped forward and kissed my cheek, whispering, "Good-bye."

There was nothing left to say after that. I thanked Thom again, and stepped into the polychrome light. At first nothing seemed to have happened, then the sound of the machines faded away to silence. I looked around the room, everything seemed in place. Star and Thom were gone, and the laser system was turned off. I left quickly.

My truck was where I thought it ought to be, a sign that all was now right with the universe. Happily I jumped in and headed home. I reached out, when I pulled up, and could hear Blair pacing in our apartment, muttering nasty things about me, but he was there. I raced up the stairs and into the loft.

"Where have you been?" he hollered as I came in.

"Crash course in applied physics and free will."

"What?"

"Not important." I took off my jacket and sat on the arm of the couch. Sandburg was too busy wearing holes in the floor, gesticulating wildly, to notice I had taken his favorite perch.

"You tear out of here, you don't leave a message, you don't take your phone, you're not here when I get back and it wasn't important? Don't even try and tell me about the university, I called the station, they said you'd left the scene hours ago."

"Blair, I got back here as soon as I could. I know you didn't plan on me freaking out. I didn't plan on me freaking out." I could almost hear Star laughing in the background at that one. "I'd like to try having that conversation, but it's really up to you."

He stopped dead right in front of the sofa asking, "Up to me?"

"Applied free will, Chief. Everyone gets choices and consequences."

"So what are my choices?"

"Infinite. But the top three would be: you could leave; we could talk; or we could postpone talking." I grinned at the last one, all sorts of interesting ideas running through my head.

Sandburg caught the grin, and gave me a questioning look before answering, "I'll take door number three." I was so glad he said that, it gave me the opportunity to do what I should have done in the first place. I pulled him closer and gently kissed him. Blair didn't show any signs of backing off so I let the kiss deepen until we both had to pull away, gasping for air.

"Oh definitely door number three," he murmured as we tumbled onto the couch. "Why did you have to leave?" He asked, exploring my face with one careful hand.

"I thought if we changed things, we would lose everything we already had. If I screwed up then everything would be gone."

"So what changed?"

"I realized that you don't expect me to be perfect. The only way I'd lose everything was if I decided not to try to fix things after I messed up. It was time to stop whining and get on with things."

Blair laughed at that, I kissed the top of his head.

"So will we? Lose what we had before, will we?"

I settled Blair more comfortably against me, "Only if we chose to."

"Good," he said, and kissed me again.

Exhaustion, panic, worry, and finally relief had taken their toll. Not so very long after we settled on the couch Blair was snoring gently into my chest, and to be honest I wasn't going to be very far behind him. Anti-climactic? Maybe, but honest, and simple. We'll still have that conversation... but I can't bring myself to worry about it now.

I still have to figure out how to explain what happened: Star, the cave, the ghost, any of it. At the very least I'll have to explain the picture which fell out of the pocket of my coat. Star, Jimmy, and a completely filthy truck, laughing and soaking wet, in the middle of a battle with garden hoses. I can tell from the impressions that she has written on the other side 'Proof we're not crazy--Star.'

No Star, we aren't crazy, and I won't be as long as Sandburg is here. I tightened my grip on him, and he obligingly snuggled closer. He was here, and the apartment was full of the sights, the sounds, and the smells of him. Secure in that knowledge, I closed my eyes, and went to sleep.

end.