Rated: probably PG - R
Warnings: Blair angst galore, AU-land, this sure isn't Kansas (or Washington) anymore.

"Mom...uh...Ms. Sandburg, you're right. I'm *not* your son. There are a helluva lot of things I don't understand, where I am..."

"In a room off the First Aid Center of the..."she interrupted, as she sat next to him as he lay on the bed. He squirmed over to give her more room.

Blair took this Naomi's hand in his clasp, brought her fingers to his lips, brushing them gently across the bruises. He kept his eyes steadily on hers, not chancing a diverting look at that snake bracelet. "No, I meant, this is not my home, oh, hell, I'm usually so articulate, Jim says I can talk myself out of just about anything; he said once I probably could talk him into committing murder, but I'm confused, so damned confused. Where this is, the blue stuff..."

Ms. Sandburg removed one hand from his tight grip on her wrists. She moved it across his cheek, then feathered it across his brows, on up to the riotous curls. Curls soaked with dewy perspiration. Still it was the same. His naturally curly hair with its whirls and twirls and highlights, exactly the same. The softness. The eerie, eerie sameness.

When he mentioned Jim, she looked at the snake head for one brief moment, then shook her head at it. "Slow down," she smiled, and man, oh man, for a moment, this was "Naomi" smiling at him; that same little quirk in the corner of her upper lip, that he used to push his index finger into when just a baby. Did her Blair ever...

"Slow down, and what may I call you? I'm a little uncomfortable calling you by my son's name. You see, we don't know where he is, if he's been mind-hurt, lost somewhere with no way to reach out to Jim. Perhaps Kincade's men kidnapped my son on his orders, thinking he would reveal information about the SNGRF."

Her voice wavered, a sob threatening to burst forth. "He won't, he won't give anything to them, never," and her words were a plea for someone...the not-stranger to understand. To understand her conficting feelings--pride she had in his courage or fear for her son's well-being and possible death. Alone, out of his Sentinel's protective arms and his mother's soothing touch. For a guide, to die alone! She was...A mother whose only son could be dying, in horrific pain. The "Patriot" was not renowned for gentleness towards his captives.

"He's been trained never to...Even under torture, they wouldn't learn anything vital with which to threaten us."

This time he witnessed vulnerability in this alien world. Tears rained from the corners of her eyes, slightly marring the perfect makeup. Her shoulders hunched as if expecting a whip to lash her from behind. Blair eased the folds of the bedspread upwards, making sure it was securely tucked under his sides before reaching out to her.

"Mom," the word escaped before he could recall it. Dammit, she's not my mom and yet...It always tore me up to see Mom cry.

Ms. Sandburg felt the gentle touch on her elbow, his hand a comfort and not, because he was here and he was not her baby, but those sad, sweet eyes giving her such sympathetic looks, her emotional pain reflected in the blueness of his eyes touched her heart. But he was here, and her son not...Jim said the link was fractured and he couldn't find Blair in his mind. Alicia was proposing that they tor...torture this sweet man in a psychic interrogation to learn if he had anything to do with her father's missing Guide.

Alicia. Alicia, and Naomi shuddered. A bitch, her coldness and Nordic beauty, her savagery in dealing with anyone infringing upon her or her parents' territories, she frightened Naomi.

She looked into the guileless pools of blue and knew this young stranger with her son's face could not be part of the plot that Alicia so staunchly proclaimed. That yellow-haired little bitch would have it that her son's beautiful empathic "twin" was part of a plot to infiltrate the CPD, dupe them into thinking he was Guide Sandburg, a mole, worming his way into the heart of the organization, infiltrating and deceiving, to learn all their secrets.

Alicia hadn't put a name to the particular author of this plot, although Kincade's and the Ventriss family's names spewed out frequently. Alicia had mockingly laughed, giggled like a school girl, "Those fuckin' fools! They don't know shit about guides, and if they only knew how close Daddy and the real Blair are to each other emotionally as well as sexually, oh!" Blushing at the thought of her Daddy having sex, having fits of adolescent giggling, Alicia had danced up and down behind her father's office chair.

Licensed immaturity carrying a gun!

And what of Jim and the pain flickering in his own eyes? His daughter so callously ignoring the hurt he must, no, was going through, at having his heart ripped out with his Guide's sudden disappearance. Not only the Sentinel lost without his Control, but her son-in-law, cut in two without his soul-mate. Jim, who must begin a search for the body...

Naomi had winced at the sight. Alicia's mother never carried on this way! Certainly never pranced and tittered and shrieked like a blond banshee, gloating over her triumphant detective work. The child was pleased at the thought of inflicting pain on others. She'd seen the purpling bruises on B...his throat. When the woman had to, she was rough and cruel, efficiently brutal, but insanely happy, laughing like a child receiving gifts, at the anticipation of delivering pain with her fists or gun?

No, Alicia was nothing like her mother.

No, not like Alex Barnes.

Not Sentinel Barnes.