Archive of Our Own ^beta

Author's disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit, but for love, which is the only gold worth having. (and yet I still by lottery tickets...)

2) and The Sentinel by Blair Sandburg. I liked the episode, and I understood, in my own mind, where both of them were coming from. This is where I think (hope) they were heading to. Thank Shakespeare for the title.

Something Rich and Strange
by Brighid

"Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."

-Ariel, The Tempest, Act I, scene ii.

I wake, tense and shuddering, my body arching up off the bed, and even as I come back to myself I hear the low, choked noises I'm making. The sheets are twisted around me like a winding sheet, and that's too close for fucking comfort; I struggle against them and their clammy hold, writhing until I'm free, until I can draw a free breath. My heart is beating so hard I think my ribs might crack. My hair is soaked with sweat, and I've been crying again, so hard that my eyes are hot and swollen.

I hear the stumble and thump of Jim getting out of his bed overhead, his cane adding a third, ungainly beat to his stride. I swear softly; I really didn't mean to wake him, but it was inevitable, I suppose. Jim, being what he is, has been waiting for this. I sigh, swing my feet to the floor, scrub at my face and sweating chest with a dry corner of blanket, and wonder what the hell next.

The first time I remember having the dream was our last night before returning home from Sierra Verde. Unlike most nightmares, this one lingers with really appalling clarity. I'm drowning in it, but in water way deeper than the fountain, and it's not Alex's pretty artist's hands that hold me under, but my own clothes, twisting about me and pulling me down like my pockets are weighted with lead. That time, and for the first few that followed, Jim tried like hell to wake me up, to pull me out of the dream like he had the fountain. He always looked like shit when I came around, but only that first time did he make a comment.

"I could hear you," he said, teeth gritted and jaw so tight it was on the edge of locking down. "I could ... see you, Sandburg," and his voice was hoarse and horrified, and beyond that he didn't seem able to say much more; instead, he just crawled alongside me in the bed and held on for dear life. We spent a lot of those first few weeks holding on for dear life, when we weren't trying to avoid each other. The therapist Simon strong-armed me to called it a period of re-alignment. Whatever the hell it was, we got through it. Three years along, we've gotten good at getting through.

The dream started shifting about the same time Jim and I started moving back into synch. I was still caught under water, but I was a lot closer to the surface, and I wasn't entirely alone. Jim was reaching down, in, his dark head pushing through the surface, his mouth meeting mine, breathing his breath into my body. I was still caught, trapped, but I wasn't fighting to breathe, fighting to survive. I stopped waking up in sweat-soaked sheets, gasping in terror, but the dreams were still pretty damned unnerving. The imagery meant something, you know? I was surviving, but only on borrowed breath, and that's no way to live. No way at all.

Now all this has happened. All this. Pretty fucking pitiful words for my whole world falling in around my ears. I've lost everything I've ever had, you know? Everything I ever thought I was, and I've had to, like, totally readjust that little picture I carry around inside me. Not that the process wasn't bound to happen, or anything like that. I'm still vaguely in denial about everything, press conference notwithstanding, but I'm not delusional. Jim was right. There was no way we could have worked around this. There was no way for me to balance things out. Maybe, in another world, where people didn't get the shit kicked out of them for being a different colour never mind a whole other breed, you know? But not this world, the one Jim and I've both got to live in right now.

I just wish I'd had more time, that we'd had more time to work this out together. We're rarely at out best when things are shoved in our faces. Jim reacts rather than acts, and I...I waffle. I mean, the truth is, I never should've let it get to the point I needed a fucking press conference to sort things out. But that would've meant coming to terms with the end of everything and I just wasn't there yet. Still not, not quite, despite what I said to Naomi. I know intellectually, and even emotionally, that it's the right decision. I know that who I am has more to do with who I am in relationship to Jim than pretty much anything else. The whole gig, I suspect, was just to get me to the place where I could be what I needed to be, which is not a Ph.D., but a Guide. That is probably as much my genetic imperative as it's Jim's. We protect the tribe together, and I sure as hell can't do that leading student tours through South America or signing book and movie deals, like some sort of half-pint Wade Davis. And that doesn't make me less, not one bit, but I've got to learn that, prove it to myself, and that's gonna take time.

The dream, though. Shit. It's back again, and it's shifted over the last few nights, and it's getting into seriously weird territory. It hasn't really changed that much, not so you'd notice. I'm still underwater, though closer still to the surface. I can see sky through the waves. I'm still weighted, though it's easier to move than any dream before. And Jim's still coming in for me, still covering my mouth with his. Only this time, we're sharing a hell of a lot more than air, and that's what's woken me up. I can still feel his mouth, the way it just, oh man, swallows me whole and the hum of awareness that it jolts through me in the dream. My whole body is on fire with the memory, and there's an ache inside that feels like I'm going to come apart and I want...I want...

Jim.

That's the part that has me wigging. Wanting Jim. Not the whole sexuality thing, because I've always sort of figured that's something that we're built to be flexible about, regardless of social conventions. It's the...the shift that it implies, the fact that I've changed and changed and still there's more to do, more to give. I don't know if we can do this, too, if we can weather one more change between us; and yet, I'm still under water, here, and that just can't go on, either.

I hear him moving about in the kitchen, the sizzle as he lets the wet bottom of the kettle connect with the element, and the sound of him rummaging through the loose teas. There's a part of me that's gotta laugh at that, at the quiet ritual that has somehow shifted from me to him. When we first paired up, he woke up with the sweats, and I went and made him tea.

I find it oddly comforting to see a bit of myself in him. It's nice to know this transformation isn't just one way.

I wait awhile longer, and he's there, in the doorway, a dark, solid shape, more real even than the dream that's still got me by the balls. "It's been awhile," he says, his voice pitched low and rough with sleep. He sounds like he's growling, but it's a comforting sort of noise. "I guess the last few days stirred up a few things, huh?"

I nod, knowing that he can see me clearly even through the darkness; he closes the distance from door to bed, pulls me to him, and I suddenly realize that I'm shivering so hard that my teeth are chattering. He just sort of folds me up into his side, somehow managing to pull me in so tight that his body heat suffuses me. "Do you want to talk about it?" he offers at last, awkwardly but sincerely. I shake my head, and instead just let myself curl into him, let him hold me and soothe me. He presses his face against the top of my head and I can feel him breathing me in, making me the absolute center of his universe.

That's almost as scary as making him the center of mine.

He gets up after a time, and I hear him reach the kettle just as it starts to whistle. I force myself to get up, pull on my robe and go out to the living room, to the couch. I stare out the windows to where the first pale fingers of false light are touching the sky. He brings me a mug with the tea ball still in it, sets it carefully on the coaster, then sits beside me. This time he doesn't touch me, but he's still close enough that I can feel the heat from him, and it helps. It really does.

"I'm sorry, Blair," he says at last, and I'm not sure which surprises me more: the fact that he's apologizing or the fact that he's using my first name.

"For what?" I ask when my tongue finally comes unglued.

He's looking straight out the window, seeing things that no one else can see, but I don't think he's really seeing them just now. There's just enough light from the kitchen that I can watch the muscles twitch in his jaw and neck. "For being a self-centered asshole," he says, swallowing hard. "I didn't listen to you, y'know? I treated you like crap, acted like I'd gotten a knife in the back and pulled your prints off of it, and didn't even listen when you tried to talk to me. Last time I did that, I got you killed. And I managed it again this time, just didn't leave a body, is all." He fidgets, shifts his gaze to stare at his hands, clutched together in his lap.

"I understand, Jim," and I do, I do understand. "I seem to recall you and I having a discussion about your tendency towards fear-based responses. This was just another classic case, y'know? I can't say that I appreciate how you were treating me for awhile there, but I've got a pretty good idea of why. And I missed the boat a few times, myself. I knew, I think, that the diss was a dead end. Should have known, at any rate." I shrug, sip at the tea Jim's made. Ginger and chamomile. Warmth and relaxation. Apparently I've taught the big guy something besides 'dial it down'. Good to know.

"You should have told me about what Naomi did," he says quietly. "I should've heard it from you, do you understand? After I got over the first bit, I would've dealt with it. We could've managed it before it managed us, Chief."

"That was a betrayal," I admit. "It was your life, and I had no right sitting on it. I just kind of hoped it would go away, you know?" It sounds so stupid, saying that, knowing that I had actually thought that. It seems like a different life.

Maybe it is.

"Yeah, well, we both know how well that works," Jim grunts wryly, and he stretches out a bit, laying his arm over the back the couch, almost touching me. "But still, you gave it all up for me, and that's...that makes me feel pretty fucking ashamed, Chief. I was pissing and moaning about what would happen to my life, how I didn't know who I was anymore, and then you turn around and just...remake yourself, to save me. To protect me. I don't feel worthy of that, Blair. I have nothing to offer you in return, you know? A badge and a gun just don't add up to a Nobel Prize, the recognition of your peers. You earned that degree, that acclaim, and I feel like I took it from you. I'm happy as hell that I still have you, but I'm just waiting for you to figure out what it cost," he says, and his voice is thick and rough. The guy that grabbed me around the neck and knuckled my head is long gone, replaced by a man who sounds suspiciously close to crying.

"Bullshit, man!" We're both a little startled by the vehemence, the loudness. "Bullshit," I say again, softer. "Jim, the thing is, that's not who I am anymore. I've been going along with it because it was the picture I had inside my head, you know? What I had always been. But the last three years, I've been changing, my focus has shifted, and I was just hanging onto all that like a security blanket. Yeah, I'm always gonna be a learner, a teacher, 'cause that's a big part of my personality. But this whole thing, it made me realize that this," I smack my chest, then his, "is who I am, now. This is what I was meant to become, and it's not any less me than accepting a fucking prize or getting a movie deal. We've both changed, you know? We've...redefined each other, become something more than we were when we started out. Yeah, it hurt along the way, but in the end, it's worth it. I wouldn't trade it, just maybe change a few of the minor details, y'know?" His arm moves then, slides down a bit so his fingers can touch my hair.

"Like dying?" he says. "Come on, Chief. If you're so damned okay with all this, then why are you dreaming that again? Why am I hearing you drowning all over again?" His voice is harsh, angry, but this time I understand that it's not directed at me.

"I think," I say carefully, really damn carefully, "that it's part and parcel of this whole rebirth thing. In many cultures a shaman goes through a...a ritual death before he can assume his duties. In some, so does a warrior. It's like drowning in the fountain began something, a process, and it's been carrying through over the last few months. The dreams are me sorting through it, making sense of it. I'm still finishing the transformation. I'm growing into it. It's a...growing pain, not a regret. I don't regret this, I don't regret you, d'you hear me, Jim?" His fingers tighten in my hair almost painfully, and his eyes are shut, his jaw tense. I reach over, stroke his face. "When you pulled me out, pulled me back, we both saw the same vision, right? The jaguar and the wolf, merging. You and me, becoming one. That's who we are."

He pulls me over so that we're leaning into one another, temples pressed together. He feels real and solid and right against me. "That sounds a hell of a lot like a marriage, Chief," he says, and his voice is shaking, hanging there in that funny place between tears and laughter.

I choose laughter. "Then I suggest we register somewhere, quick. I've always wanted a professional quality food processor. This might be my only chance." That tips the scale for him, too, and he's chuckling into my ear. I turn then, to say something else, but he's leaning in and our faces brush, and hell, I'm in the dream again, with Jim's mouth over mine, hot and hungry and as necessary as air. It takes me a minute to realize this is no dream, that Jim's leaning into me and kissing me like he can somehow swallow me whole, merge with me like the panther did the wolf. His hands lace into my hair, while mine flounder almost helplessly against his sides, plucking at the terrycloth of his robe until the kiss renders them nerveless, boneless.

At last he pulls away, chest heaving, mouth wet with our spit, eyes half-slitted and glazed. I reach up, touch my swollen mouth, then his. "What the hell was that, Jim?"

He shakes his head, as though clearing it, then gives up and rests it back against mine. "A lot of things. Love, mostly," he says, still breathless. His voice is a growl again, and this time I not only hear it, but I feel it rumble through me, and it's good. It feels good.

He kisses me again, softer this time, and suddenly, for the first time in frigging months I can breathe. I'm sucking in air by the lungful and everything that's been dragging me down just falls away as his mouth slides over to kiss the side of my jaw, up and over to lick the sweaty hollow behind my ear. I break the surface, breathing free at last, and it's so bright after the darkness that I think I might go blind.

"Love works," I say raggedly, hungrily, before finding his mouth again, giving him my breath, my heart, my goddamned life.

An End.
A Beginning.

End Something Rich and Strange.