Spoilers:  None

Rating of Story: PG

Characters in Story:  Blair & Jim, Major Crimes Crew and an OC

Warnings: Language, Angst & violence

Plot Blurb:  Blair is attacked by a detective at the station.

Special Note:  This story is dedicated to my two compadres, Dreamweaver & Red.  You're the best, ladies!

Feedback:  Wintersrose craves, needs and wants your feedback, much like she craves and wants chocolate!  Please, keep her writing!  

 

*****

PROLOGUE

Time passed.  

When it passed, it brought with it changes.  Some planned for, some not planned for.  Some that he was more than happy about.  

Others he would just as soon forget about.  

Blair Sandburg stared out over the bright lights of the northwestern city of Cascade, Washington, standing to one side of the small balcony outside of the apartment he shared with his best friend and roommate, sipping idly at the cup of tea he held in one hand.  Blair sniffed occasionally, inhaling the sharp scent of chamomile, allowing the scent, as well as the taste of the tea, to calm and relax him, washing away the burdens of a hard day.  He smiled, brushing his long, chestnut curls back behind his neck again and closed his eyes, listening, reaching out beyond himself to see what he could hear or smell or simply feel.  

And he wondered, again, what Jim felt and saw and heard when he stood out here.  His best friend, Detective Jim Ellison, was not only an awesome man but he was a sentinel – a man with senses much more enhanced than a normal humans.  While Blair could hear the cars on the street below – or maybe on the next street over if he really listened, Jim could hear the ocean a few miles beyond.  Blair could smell the Cascade air but no individual scent – Jim would be able to tell him exactly what every scent was.  

Blair smiled, his dark eyes were filled with wonder.  Even five years after meeting the sentinel, Blair couldn’t shake the wonder he felt when he thought of what Jim could do with his senses.  He saw it in action every single day – sometimes just in minor ways, like when Jim cocked his head to one side when he smelled a new coffee scent coming from their Captain’s office – or in major ways, like when Jim was able to identify the etching on sheet of paper found at a crime scene and track it to the culprit who had killed four people over a period of four days.  

Blair grinned.  Those were the days he felt the most pumped.  Watching Jim Ellison, Sentinel of the Great City , protecting his city thrilled the younger detective like nothing else did – and Blair was privileged,  privileged to be his partner, his friend, his roommate – and his guide.  

It had taken what seemed a long time, including a period of over a year when he thought he and Jim were growing more and more apart rather than together – but now… now he’d done it.  

He’d found a place where he belonged.

 

PART ONE  

For the first time in a very long time, Jordan Avarin knew he was in the right place – maybe even for the first time in his whole life.  Having entered the Police Academy when he was merely eighteen-years-old, Jordan had worked hard and long over the intervening years – something like fifteen of them – before he was able to get where he had meant to go for a long time.  

The Major Crimes Division of the Cascade Police Department.  

Jordan had worked in another precinct in North Cascade, working his way slowly up through the ranks, marking his record with distinction and commendations, ones that he knew would ultimately get him where he most longed to be.  He’d gone to night school for several years, attaining a degree in Criminal Investigation and ultimately became a detective shortly after that.  

But his ultimate goal and dream had always been Major Crimes – he knew that was where he belonged and nothing was going to stop him from attaining that dream.  

Jordan sighed as he looked around the currently empty bullpen and wondered where everyone was.  He would have thought that, on his first day in the department, that he’d be greeted by Captain Banks, if not someone else.  Even the department secretary was gone.   

Strange, he thought. Almost as if they’ve disappeared off the face of the earth.  

Jordan sat down at one of the desks, feeling awkward and out of place as he waited for someone to show up, looking up expectantly when he heard the elevator start up toward the seventh floor.  Usually, he was disappointed as the elevator stopped a floor below or continued on past the seventh floor.  

However, he was happy when it finally opened on his floor – only to lose the same happiness when he saw the person getting off the elevator.  

A hippy.  Not only a hippy but a long-haired, ear-ringed hippy at that.  Obviously a drug addict of some sort – or just a regular punk, Avarin glowered at the doorway as the younger man entered the Major Crimes room and headed unerringly toward one of the desks.  He tossed the laptop case he carried onto the desk and took his leather jacket off, tossing it onto a hook behind the desk he chose.  Avarin watched in dumbfounded amazement as the young hippy punk made himself at home at the desk, acting as though he’d lived there his whole life.  Like… like he belonged there!  

Cerulean blue eyes looked up as the young man sat down and a smile creased the face of the creep.   

“Oh, hey, man,” the punk stood up crossed over to where Avarin sat, holding out a hand.  “Blair Sandburg.  Nobody’s here to say hi?”  

Avarin stared at the hand as if it were poison – and in fact, Jordan wasn’t sure if the kid wasn’t trying to kill him or something – and he stared up at the beguiling face of the younger man.  

“Hey, man, I don’t bite,” Sandburg lowered the hand he had offered and crossed his arms in front of him.  “It’s just nobody probably told you that most of the staff is at a training seminar.  I’d be there too except I just had the class when I was at the Academy last year so I didn’t have to take it again.  If you want, I can show you around and walk you through everything.”  

“You… you’re a detective?!” Avarin demanded, glaring up at the young man in disbelief.  

“Well, yeah,” Sandburg grinned, still affable.  “As of about a year ago.  Long story if you weren’t there for it.  So, about that tour?”  

Avarin couldn’t believe it.  He’d worked his heart out to get here.  He’d…  

…waitaminute.  Sandburg.  He knew that name.  The fraud.  At least, that’s what the initial story was.  A new story came out a few weeks later, about how the whole ‘dissertation/Sentinel’ fiasco had been an elaborate story that had been planned to capture Zeller.  The fact that several people had been nearly killed because of it had been ignored.  And now Sandburg was a detective.  A detective in Major Crimes?  

“I’ll wait,” Avarin glared at the man, his expression cold.  “Thanks.”  

He didn’t mean the thanks.  In fact, he was going to get out of here as soon as he could, at least until the others showed up.  No way was he associating with this… this person.  A detective.  There was no way this man was a detective.  

There was no way this man was meant to be a detective.  

Sandburg shrugged.  “Your loss, man,” he walked away toward his desk.  

Avarin struck before he knew he was even going to do anything.  He slid a large paperweight off of the desk next to him and crossed over behind the man.  With the thought of ‘you don’t belong here’ in his mind and a profound sense of injustice, he slammed the paperweight into the back of Sandburg’s head.  

He watched in satisfaction as Sandburg turned slightly in shock, then toppled to the ground.  

PART TWO  

“That… didn’t Sandburg say that was an interesting class?” Henri Brown complained as he came off of the elevator onto the seventh floor of Major Crimes, his gaze wandering over to the culprit’s desk.  He frowned when he saw Sandburg’s jacket and his laptop case on the desk but didn’t see the young man.  

Must be in the break room or something,  Henri thought with a shrug.  

“That’s what he said,” James Ellison, erstwhile Detective and Sentinel of the City of Cascade, pulled off his own jacket and tossed it onto a hook behind his desk, landing it perfectly onto the hook as he looked around, a frown marring the features of his handsome face.  “That’s weird…”  

“What is?” Henri asked as he watched their Captain, Simon Banks, go past them and into his office.  Henri crossed over to his own desk, putting his coat onto the back of his chair and watching his partner, Rafe, brush back his hair and frown over at the doorway.  

“He’s not here…” Jim said as he looked around.  “I smell blood…”  

Rafe and Henri exchanged a glance; a glance that read, clearly, that ‘Sentinel Voodoo’ was happening.  They’d all learned the secret the year before, during the whole ‘dissertation fiasco’ and managed to hide their surprise every time Jim did something spooky.  At least – most of the time.  

“Blood?” Henri asked as he got up again, crossing to the other man to look around.  “From where?”  

“Here,” Jim said.  “Right here.”  

The man knelt down and reached a hand toward the floor.  He rubbed the floor, then held his fingers to his nose.  “I smell blood – and cleaning fluid.”

“Sandburg?” Henri hated to ask it.  Rafe came around his own desk to stand beside them.  “Maybe we should look around.”  

“If anything happened the cameras would have seen it, wouldn’t they?” Rafe asked.  “Let’s go look in the security office.”  

That was the best idea Jim heard all day.  “You two take care of that.  I’ll talk to Simon and we’ll see if anyone in the building has seen…”  

“Ellison!” the door into Captain Banks’ office flew open.  “Have you listened to your messages yet?”  

“My messages?” Ellison turned to his boss.  “No…”  

Banks sighed and shook his head.  “I got a message from Phillips.  He says he came in to drop off the mail and he found Sandburg unconscious on the floor, with a head wound.  You’d better get to the hospital.”  

Banks needn’t have finished the comment.  Henri saw the other detective already racing toward the door to the stairs that would take him down to the lobby and, ultimately, the Cascade P.D. parking garage.  Banks cursed and chomped down a little too hard on his cigar, then turned to the others.  

“He’ll call when he learns again.  Get to work, all of you!  Find out who did this to one of our own.”  

PART THREE

 

“I’m looking for Blair Sandburg,” Jim Ellison spoke frantically to the woman at the front desk of the Cascade Memorial Hospital Emergency room.  They’d almost know him on sight by now; he and Blair spent way too much time at this hospital for one thing or another.  “I was told he was here.”  

The pretty receptionist nodded.  “He’s still be looked at by the doctors, Detective.  If you could have a seat in the chairs, the doctor will come speak to you as soon as he can.”  

Jim sighed.  He hated waiting, absolutely hated it.  He would much rather go in and find out what was going on now but he also knew that would only upset the doctor and keep the doctor from tending to Jim’s injured friend.  Jim took a deep breath, trying to use the meditation techniques that Blair taught him to calm his ragged nerves.  

Damnit, Chief, he thought.  How can you get hurt in the bullpen?  What happened?

Jim sat for a few minutes, then got up to pace, trying to work off excessive energy, trying NOT to overextend senses that could send him into a zone-out.  Scaring the bejeezus out of a doctor or the other staff of the hospital was not on his agenda.  

“Jim? Anything?” Simon stormed into the waiting room a few minutes later.  Jim looked up at him for a moment, then shrugged and shook his head, pointing toward the room where the doctors still worked on his partner.   

“Nothing,” Jim said.  “Not a single damned thing, Simon.”  

Simon took a deep breath, about to offer some words of comfort when the door down the hall opened and a gowned doctor came out, pulling off a mask and a pair of gloves that were tossed into a refuse bin.   

“Detective Ellison?” the doctor said enquiringly to Jim.  “Why don’t you come with me and have a seat; I’ll tell you what’s going on with Blair.”  

Jim wanted to tell the doctor to just tell him now but said nothing as he followed the doctor to a private room to one side of the emergency area.  The doctor poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down in a chair, then waited for Jim and Simon to settle themselves before he spoke again.  

“First of all,” Doctor Paul Smythe said.  “Blair is going to be fine.  He sustained a level one concussion – it could definitely be worse.  He was hit at the base of his head where it joins with his neck.  The better part of his injury is actually to the top of his neck but there’s no damage to the spine area.”  

Jim inhaled sharply when he realized he hadn’t been breathing.  

“He’s going to need to wear a cervical collar for a couple of weeks,” Dr. Smythe continued.  “While he doesn’t have spinal injury he does have muscular damage; it’s going to be very painful.  Also, he has fifteen stitches from a severe cut caused by the blunt trauma.”  

“Is he conscious?” Jim’s voice was dry but he managed to speak anyway.  

“He woke up for a while but we’ve got him on a painkiller and an antibiotic.  He’s probably fallen asleep again already.  When he wakes up again you can bring him home but he’s going to have to be off duty for at least a week.  Light duty after that for another month while he recovers.”  

Simon exhaled next and nodded.  “Fine,” he said.  “That’s fine.”  

Jim agreed.  Sandburg had managed to beat the odds – again.

“Can I see him?” Jim asked.  “I need to see him.”  

Smythe nodded and Jim got immediately to his face.  “Don’t wake him detective.  Sleep is the best thing for him now.  We’ll wake him in a couple of hours to check his responses.  You can talk to him then if you want.”  

Jim nodded.  He just needed to see for himself.  See that Sandburg was all right.  He was out of the room in moments and walking down the hallway, silently opening the door into the room where Blair slept, turned onto one side, his left arm tucked under his head, his neck encased in a ungainly cervical collar.   

Still, for all that, the young man looked almost normal.  Asleep, huddled under the light hospital blanket, eyes closed, it was almost as if he were in a regular sleep.  If it weren’t for the collar, Jim would think Blair was in his own bed at home.  

Jim touched the younger man’s hair, being careful to not make contact with Blair’s scalp so he didn’t wake his partner.  Blair continued to sleep… and Jim closed his eyes, zeroing in, contacting with the heartbeat of his friend.   

All was well here.  

PART FOUR

 

Surveillance cameras.  

How in the hell had he forgotten that all of the major departments in the Cascade P.D. had surveillance cameras posted all over the place, cameras that covered every conceivable angle and showed everything and anything that happened.  

Jordan Avarin, who had finally had his dream achieved of becoming a Major Crimes Detective, was going to lose the dream anytime now.  Three of the Major Crimes detectives were currently in the surveillance room, going over the tapes of the bullpen, looking for any signs of what had befallen their friend.  Avarin knew that he’d messed up royally – not only by attacking Sandburg like he had, but by not bothering to make it look like the other detective had been in another area of the p.d.  

Or by attacking him in the building at all.  If he was going to be an idiot, he should have done it somewhere else.  

But, damnitall!  The punk – the kid – acted like he owned the place.  Avarin had sweated blood and tears to get here.  He’d worked for over fifteen years to attain his position and the kid – who couldn’t even bother to be regulation, hadn’t done anything.  And the way the kid acted – Jordan knew he’d lost it.  He knew he’d done the wrong thing.  And he knew he was about to get caught.  

It was all ending.  The dream.  The plan.  The years of work.  He’d end up off the force entirely – if not in jail entirely.  

It didn’t even occur to him to run, not even when three angry detectives came out of the surveillance office and across the hall to where Avarin sat at his desk, studying the smooth metal surface.  

“Why’d you do it?” the voice was a low hiss and Avarin looked up into Henri Brown’s angry eyes.  

Avarin shrugged.  “Don’t know, not really,” he admitted.  “I just… I lost it….”  

Brown looked thoroughly unimpressed.  Avarin shrugged again and held out his hands.  

“Jordan Avarin you are under arrest of the assault of Blair Sandburg,” Joel Taggert said.  “You have the right to remain silent….”  

As he was read his rights, Avarin could only think.  I just wanted a place to belong…

“Why did he attack me?” Blair wanted to know as he shifted – very carefully – on the couch and tried to get comfortable.  While he wouldn’t admit it to his roommate and partner, Blair would admit to himself that his neck really hurt.  The base of it seemed to throb in time to his heartbeat as he tried to settle back against the pillows settled against one arm of the couch.  

“Seems he lost it,” Henri took a drink of the beer that he’d been offered.  “He doesn’t know why himself why he did it.  Just that he hadn’t been able to stop himself.  I don’t know if I believe him but, anyway, he’s off the force and he’s going to get a psych eval done.”  

“So he can get off on a psych disorder?” Jim demanded.  He wasn’t amused and Blair raised a hand.  

“Give it a rest, Jim,” Blair said.  “If there is something wrong, he needs help.  It’s obvious he has issues, something that maybe came out when he saw me in the bullpen.”  

“He could have killed you, Chief, I don’t have to give it a rest,” Jim retorted as he settled into the couch opposite his partner.  He sipped at his own can of beer and watched Blair get comfortable again.  “You could have died.”  

“Melodramatic much?” Blair grinned.  “Seriously, Jim, I’m all right.  He didn’t kill me.  I’m good.  And I’ll be good as new in no time.  I just want Avarin to get the help that he needs.  And since I AM the victim here….”  

Jim sighed and muttered something about ‘liberal bleeding-heart’ but his words were offset by a smile.  

“Well,” he admitted.  “I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way, Chief.”  

The three friends settled back in their seats.  

They had a place where they belonged.

 

April 4, 04