KARMIC JUSTICE

by Wintersrose

“This is sooo not happening.”  

Leaning his head against the closed doors of the small elevator, Blair Sandburg sighed and cursed silently, the expletive finally exploding violently as he hit the door with both fists and stepped back away from the door.

Blair glared at the doors, at the control panel for the elevator and up at the ceiling – just enticingly out of reach to him – and screamed again.  He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath to calm himself, but found it nearly impossible. His nerves ate at him from within.   

“Damnit,” he took a deep breath.  How did he get himself into these things?

** ** *** ** ** * * ********* **** ** ** ****** **** **** **** ** * * ********

“I’m sorry, Chief, but…” Blair barely heard his partner’s voice coming from another room.  “Simon called and he needs me down to a scene – it looks like another vic, but I don’t know how it could be.  We caught the SOB yesterday.”

Blair started to get up out of bed to join his roommate but stopped short as soon as his left foot touched the ground.  He winced and resisted the urge to cry out – not that his mother hen, ears on sonar, over-protective partner wouldn’t notice.  One didn’t hide such things from a Sentinel, no matter how badly one wanted to.  Blair pulled his foot up and rubbed at the ankle, wincing in pain when he moved it wrong.  

“Great,” he sighed.   

Jim Ellison appeared in the doorway to Blair’s room, watching Blair as the younger man glared at his ankle.  “Make sure you ice that three times today – twenty minutes each time.  You know what the doctor said yesterday.  You’re taking the day off and staying off that foot – or else – Junior.”  

Blair frowned, then glared, at his roommate before peering down at the offending appendage.  The dark-haired young man sighed – he’d been  chasing a suspect through the park yesterday when he’d managed to not only fall but to twist his foot, hard, by catching it in the knot of a root of a really, really big tree.  He tried to play it off after he got up but when he couldn’t walk on it, he knew he’d have a trip to the hospital emergency room in his future.  

And that was what happened.  Jim – and their Captain, Simon Banks – insisted that he go to the hospital to get the foot looked at.  Simon told him to take the day off today and take care of the foot, backed up by the doctor, and Blair just knew he had a couple of weeks of desk duty.  Oh, thrill.  Yeah.   

Blair hobbled into the living room after Jim left, half-hopping, half limping, until he managed to seat himself on the sofa.  He, in defiance of any rules to the contrary, propped his bad foot up on the coffee table and flipped on the TV, looking for something decent to watch.  He settled for an episode of “Highlander, the Series” and settled in to watch Duncan MacLeod battling it out with the latest Immortal of the hour.  

About twenty minutes into the program his stomach started grumbling, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before, and Blair sighed, peering across the room toward the kitchen.   

Damn, he thought with a sigh.  What I wouldn’t give for someone to bring me the food instead of me going to the food.  

Blair got up and hobbled across the room, being careful with his bad foot on his way to the kitchen.  He slid to a stop in front of the refrigerator and opened it.  Great.  He was supposed to go the grocery store the day before, but forgot with all the mayhem from their latest case.  Chasing down Wayne Barrens had been a coup of the highest order.  Accused of killing five well-to-do women, all of them married to city councilmen, nabbing Barrens had made all of Major Crimes look good – but also made Blair forget, with the sprained foot, to do something about the lack of food within the loft.  

Blair sighed and looked around, considering.  He could throw himself on the mercy of his roommate and beg Jim to bring him something to eat on his lunch break, or he could just go downstairs to Java Bagel and get something to eat there.  It wasn’t that far and he would barely have to go outside.  He wouldn’t even have to put a shoe on his bad foot!  

Blair grinned, happy to have formed a plan, and went to the doorway, putting on his slippers in place of the single shoe and shuffled, slowly and carefully, into the hallway.  He sighed as he went down to the elevator and waited for it to come, wishing he dared to take the stairs.  No, better to take the elevator, much as he hated the thing.  Besides, it had been fairly good lately, no sense in borrowing trouble where none existed.  

Blair hopped into the elevator when it arrived and leaned back against the back wall until it landed on the first floor.  He managed his shuffle step down to Java Bagel and got himself one of each – a frothy iced cappuccino that he was positive he deserved after such a rotten day yesterday and, along with that, an herb and cheese bagel slathered with herb cream cheese.  His mouth watered as he settled in one of the seats and enjoyed every single, fat-filled bite, eyes closed with bliss.   

The cappuccino took longer – but it was just as good as the bagel had been.  He sighed, happily, as he finished it off and stared outside, watching as a small crowd from a business down the street came through the open door and went up to the counter.  Once they were clear of the door he got up again and hobbled back toward the door, then down two doors to the entrance to the apartments in the building.  He smiled confidently as he waited for the elevator again.  

It happened just after the ding for the second floor sounded.  The elevator lurched, spasmed twice, then died, knocking Blair to the ground as it did.  Blair stared at the door in dismay before he got to his feet, leaning heavily on his right foot to spare his left.

Just great.  

------- --------- - - - - - -------- - - - ---- --- - --- -- - ------ -- -- -----

I should have taken the stairs.  I should have taken the stairs.  The stairs.  Easy.  Safe.  They don't depend on a pulley system fourteen thousand years old..

Blair felt panic welling within him as he looked at the door and wondered why an elevator that had worked so well for months suddenly decided to break down – while Blair was in it.  He rocked back and forth a moment, keeping most of his weight on his good leg as he tried to figure out what to do.  He had to get out of here.  He didn’t like elevators – and he knew exactly why he didn’t like elevators.  

---- --- --- -- ------- -------- ---- ------- ---------------- --- ----- ----

“Chief…” Blair looked up at the Sentinel as he came up to Blair’s desk and perched on the corner, peering over Blair’s shoulder at the computer screen.   

“You need something, Jim?” Blair asked as he settled back in his seat and pulled off his glasses.  He knew that expression on Jim’s face.  It was the ‘I have something to tell you that I don’t like and I don’t want to tell you because I don’t want you to worry and I don’t want you hurt’ look.  OK, maybe it wasn’t all that but Blair knew it and knew it well.  It was Jim’s ‘overprotective’ expression.  Grim, lips tight, worry clear in bright blue eyes.  

“Yeah,” Jim admitted finally.  “I just talked to Simon.  He said that Rachins is already up for parole.”  

“What?!” Blair exploded out of his chair.  Frank Rachins, otherwise known as Galileo, had held four people – five counting the unborn baby - hostage in a rigged elevator – one of them being Blair himself – and nearly killed Jim and his own brother.  There was no way the man could be out on parole already.   Could there?  

“Don’t worry,” Jim said.  “There’s no way he’s getting off.  I spoke with a friend of mine in the system, and Rachins has not remotely been the model prisoner.  It helps that Wilkinson is throwing his weight around.”  

Blair nodded but worried anyway.  Just because people threw weight around didn’t mean that Rachins wouldn’t go free.  The man was certifiable; he should be in a mental facility somewhere rather than jail.  

“Should we go and testify? Would that help?” Blair asked.   

Jim shook his head.  “Wilkinson is there, his daughter is there and two of the other victims are there.  If they needed us, we would’ve been told already.  Simon just wanted us to know what was going on.  I just wish he could tell me how Rachins managed to get a parole hearing already.”  

Blair shrugged and put his glasses back on.  “I don’t know…. But hopefully they keep him where he belongs…”  

------ --- --- -- - - ------------ --------- ---------- ------------- ---- --- -

“Is that what happened?” Blair asked out loud.  “Rachins got out of jail?”  

He looked up at the door overhead again and bounced up on the toes of his good foot, straining for all he could to reach it.  Why, oh why wasn’t it working?   

Blair swallowed nervously when the elevator gave another slight lurch and he felt his stomach tumble, threatening to spill out the bagel and cappuccino he’d eaten earlier.  Blair tried a deep breath to calm himself but felt the fear ebbing through him again.   

“No, no, no, you’re not doing this, Blair,” he said.  “Come on, Sandburg, get with it.”  

He shivered nervously and settled down on the floor, continuing to rock back and forth, nervous energy coursing through him.  He felt the walls of the elevator closing in on him, felt the roof overhead threatening to box him more fully into this tomb-like.  Blair felt totally foolish for his feelings and yet he could do nothing about them.  He wanted out of here.  

Galileo.  Rachins could have gotten out on parole and he would have to know that Blair was one of the reasons why he hadn’t been able to get his big pay-off.  Blair had kept the elevator from blowing up by using a blowtorch to take out part of the floor of the elevator in the Wilkinson Building and had managed to save himself and his fellow hostages by doing it.  What if Rachins was out on parole and this was his way of getting revenge.  

Blair’s emotions mocked him; he knew how stupid he was being and yet, he couldn’t help it.  He wanted out of this elevator now!  

Blair sprang to his feet and began to pull on the doors, pushing his fingers into the cracks to try and pull them apart.  He let out a sharp cry when pain shot through his bad ankle and he collapsed back to the ground again, holding his ankle and rocking back and forth, eyes tearing with pain.  He squeezed them shut and tried to stop the tears that way – no way was he going to start crying now, not because of a stupid, stupid, STUPID elevator!  

“Let me out of here!” he yelled and banged his hand on the door, wincing in pain when he felt another acute pain, this time shooting up his hand.  Great, just great!  

“Give me a break, here,” he begged no one in particular.  “Rachins, if this you I swear I’ll make you wish you hadn’t been born.”  

That was nicely melodramatic, he thought with a sigh, leaning back against the elevator, relaxing.  He was really glad the elevator hadn’t moved for nearly a half hour now; maybe it was just his imagination that it was Rachins.

No more did he think it when the elevator slipped again, at least a good five feet.  Blair, pushed back against the wall behind him, held on tightly, as an involuntary scream echoed off the walls.  He squeezed his eyes shut yet again and waited.   

The elevator stilled again.  

Jim, this would be a good time to come home, Blair thought, but he knew that Jim was busy with other things at the moment.  There was that dead body that had precedence over Blair stuck in the elevator.  Blair hoped – prayed actually – that Mrs. Blacklock, who lived down the hall from himself and Jim, would decide to go somewhere this morning.  She didn’t handle stairs well and got all over maintenance whenever the elevator quit working.  If she went somewhere, she would call maintenance, they would come fix the elevator, and free him.  

** ** **

Blair’s heart pounded in his chest and his skin became clammy with fear.  It had been a long time since his last panic attack but he knew the symptoms – clammy skin, fast respiration, fast heart beat, the inability to think reasonably. 

I haven’t lost that part at least, Blair thought.  It’s close, though.  I hate elevators.  I’m never getting in an elevator again, as long as I live.  I’ll climb the stairs to the top of the Seattle Space Needle first.  I’ll climb the stairs to the top of the tallest building in the world before I’ll take another elevator.  I hate elevators.  

This is obviously repayment for going out of the loft when I should be at home, tucked up in my nice, warm, comfy bed.  Blair wiped the sweat pouring down his face with the end of a sleeve on his shirt.  “This is obviously karmic justice of the nth degree.  Someone is making me pay for my misdeeds of the morning.”  

He tried to still the butterflies flittering about in his stomach by concentrating on something else – the multiplication tables first, starting with eights and working up to fifteens.  15, 30, 45, 60…  

Blair swallowed, dry mouthed, wishing for something to drink.  He sighed and went back to his tables.  16, 32, 48, 64, 80…  

“Chief?”  

The voice echoed outside of the elevator and Blair looked up, not sure he heard what he really heard.  

“Jim?” he called back.  

“Chief, what are you doing in the elevator?” Jim’s voice was clear; he was obviously close by somewhere.  

“Looking for my marbles, of course,” Blair quipped back.  “I lost them this morning and I’m looking for them.  I’m not gonna replace them with substandard marbles you know.”  

Blair thought he heard a chuckle. I must not be dying, he thought.  Not if Jim can laugh.  

“Would you like to stay in there hunting for your marbles or would you like out?” Jim asked, calmly, as if it were an option.  

“I’m done hunting now,” Blair said, carefully.  “I’ll just try the mail order brand.  Can we go home?”  

“That’s where you’re supposed to be, Junior,” Jim declared.  “I seem to recall orders to that effect this morning, before I went to work.”  

Blair sighed.  “Can we discuss this AFTER I get out?  I swear, I keep hearing Rachins laughing.  I’m totally creeped out here, man.”  

“The maintenance guys are here, Chief,” Jim said.  “They’ll have you out in a jiffy.  You may have to hop up a bunch of stairs.”  

“Gladly!” Blair would hop up all the stairs in the Statue of Liberty if it meant getting home.  He felt his heart calming a little.  He was going to be getting out soon.  Soon!

** ** **

“Here you go, Chief,” Jim settled his roommate back onto the sofa and propped the younger man’s foot up onto a pillow set atop the coffee table.  Jim carefully packed three ice packs around the injured ankle before handing a bottle of water to Blair along with two painkillers.  “Take these.”  

Blair nodded and took the pills and swallowed them swiftly before he finished the rest of the bottle of water.  Jim tucked the afghan from the back of the couch around him and smiled.  

“What do you want to eat?” Jim asked.  “I’ve got sandwich stuff.”  

“Whatever, man,” Blair said.  “I’m beat.  Who knew being trapped in an elevator was so exhausting.”  

Jim smiled affectionately at the younger man and tousled his curls, despite cries of ‘not the hair, man’ from the anthropologist-turned-detective.  It only took a few minutes to make turkey sandwiches with all the trimmings and set the plate carefully onto Blair’s lap.  A bottle of water was set on the end table right next to Blair.  

“Eat every bite, and then take a nap,” Jim ordered.  “I’ll have to leave in a few minutes but I want to make sure you’re OK.  Are you OK?”  

Blair nodded, still feeling slightly shaky inside, but better than he had in hours.  Jim smiled and tousled his curls again, taking a moment to sit beside Blair and watch him eat the sandwich.  

“Rachins was refused probation,” Jim said.  “They found out he wasn’t even due to be up for it for another ten years; you won’t have to worry about him anymore.”  

“Thank God,” Blair breathed.  “That lunatic doesn’t ever need to get out.”  

“I agree,” Jim grinned.  “Chief, next time you’re injured and you want something, just call me, all right?  Promise me.”  

“It seemed silly to call you just because I wanted better coffee and a bagel, Jim.  I’m not going to pull you away from work for that.  I am going to avoid more elevators from now on, though, I can promise you that much.”  

Jim shook his head.  He should have known better, really.   

Several more bites of sandwich disappeared into Blair’s mouth, followed up by more swallows of water.  Blair finally finished the sandwich and handed the plate to Jim.  

“Take that nap, Chief, I’ll be home this evening,” Jim said.  “And so you don’t have to cook, I’ll pick up supper on the way.  Thai good for you?”  

Blair nodded, grinning.  “Great, man.  Thanks.  Noodles?”  

“Of course,” Jim laughed.  “See you later, Chief.”  

“See you later, Jim,” Blair got more comfortable and closed his eyes.  He was asleep in seconds.

THE END

Disclaimer:  The Sentinel is the property of Pet Fly Production and UPN.  We've only borrowed the characters for a few frolics in the sun.  
We promise to return them where we found them when we're done.