Back into the Water
Danae
Disclaimer: Not
mine. No money made, no harm, no foul, and all that other stuff.
Warning: Spoilers for S2 and this is not
betaed. Rated Pg-13 for a bit of language. That should
do.
It was supposed to
be simple. It was supposed to be a walk in the park kind of
arrest. Just show up, walk in, pull out the handcuffs, and take the
bad guy in. That was the way it was supposed to be. That
is not how it happened. And Jim Ellison found himself sitting in the
hospital waiting room, wondering where the hell it went wrong.
The Starlight Inn
used to be a Holiday Inn. It was one of those cookie cutter two
story motels built back in the 1970's. They all looked the same.
Room doors on the outside of the buildings, the buildings built around the
pool. The fucking pool.
Randy
"Ratman" Martin was turning himself in. Easy
shit. There was not supposed to be a fight at all. But
apparently, the "Ratman's" associates had different ideas about what
the "Ratman" should be doing. Jim had the man in custody
when all hell broke loose. One minute, Blair was standing on the
walkway outside the room, making jokes about Jim's last really bad choice of a
woman. Old hat and nothing unusual, right? The next minute,
he was gone and some guy that Jim should have heard coming was calling him out.
Jim came out all right, with his gun drawn and zeroed in on the man's head.
There was just one problem. His head was behind Blair's head.
"Let him
go!" he ordered.
"I don't think
so. You just drop your gun and back up. I just want
Martin, cop. That's all. You give me Martin; I'll give
you your partner. Fair deal if you ask me."
"I'm not
asking you." Jim locked eyes with his partner, who was trying
to telegraph a silent apology with his expression. Jim smirked at
him. Old hat, nothing unusual here either. Blair always
seemed to find a way to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time. Briefly, Jim wondered how much of that was Blair and how much
of it was Blair's association with him. And then the
"Ratman" decided he needed to quit the scene. Problem was
he had to go through Jim, which was exactly what he tried to do. He
head-butted Jim in the stomach and the fight was on. The next few
minutes were chaos. In the end, Jim had two more prisoners in hand-cuffs and
Martin was babbling about how sorry he was, he was just scared, please don't
press charges for resisting arrest, he had enough on his record already and Jim
realized that Blair was gone.
"Sandburg?!" No
answer. "What the hell? Where's my partner,
asshole?" he demanded from one of his prisoners. The man gave
him a sneer as an answer. "Shit!" Jim opened his senses,
listening for his partner's voice, a getaway car, anything. What he
heard was the soft lapping of water against the sides of the
pool. The fucking pool. A feeling of dread and déjà vu
swept over him and he turned to look over the
balcony. "No." It came out as a
whisper. Suddenly, he could not draw a breath. His mind
flashed back to that morning and a fountain. The memory overlaid
itself on the present. "Not again!" he screamed without even being
aware of the words leaving his lips. He ran. No, the
stairs were too far. A half a second of hesitation which he would
berate himself for later and he jumped over the railing, launching himself into
the water below. He surfaced, gasping for air as much from panic as
from his dive. A few strokes and he closed a hand over Blair's
jacket. It was a different jacket, of course. Blair had
tossed that one out. He complained that he could not get the
chlorine smell out of it. Jim knew better. He had not
seen the rest of the clothes Blair had had on that morning again
either. Another jacket for the trash? And these jeans
were new, he thought, realizing even as he did that the thought was absurd
given their present situation. He flipped his guide onto his back,
getting his face out of the water and then swam for the side. He
pulled himself out and reached back for Blair. Again, déjà vu hit
him hard and he struggled to catch his breath.
He was not
breathing. And there was blood this time. He had hit his
head or one of those bastards had hit him. "Oh please, dear
god. Not again," he mumbled as he tilted Blair's head back.
"What's going
on?" the desk clerk came running out of the office.
"Call an
ambulance!" He commanded. That was all the attention he was
willing to give the man. He had something more important to
do. "Breathe, Chief. Please
breathe." He started the CPR and prayed aloud in between
breaths.
An eternity later,
Jim was still praying. Blair was breathing but he had not regained
consciousness. They had finally let him come in and sit with his
guide. The doctor was guardedly optimistic. The x-rays
had not shown a skull fracture. Oxygen had not been cut off for
long. A concussion, that's all, they said. "Old hat,
nothing unusual here either, Chief." There might be a few
problems associated with the drowning though. Blair's lungs had scar
tissue from his first time in the water. Pneumonia, pleurisy, diminished
capacity were just a few of the things they mentioned.
"Jim?"
He turned to meet
the gaze of his captain. "Hey, Simon. You guys get
Martin and his buddies squared away? Sorry about just abandoning
them there."
"Yeah, they're
squared away. It was funny as hell actually. Martin was
holding your gun on them when we got there." He pulled Jim's
gun from his coat. "Here it is, by the way."
Jim took it from
him. "I had Martin in cuffs."
"Yes, you
did. But somewhere in the scuffle, you lost your gun and Martin got
it. The 'Ratman' knew he was safer with us than with his former
associates."
"I'm gonna
have to superglue this damn thing to my palm one day." A smile
ghosted over his lips for a moment before he turned back to man in the hospital
bed. "Blair has threatened to do it a couple of times, you
know?"
"Jim,
sometimes, I have considered buying it for him." Simon pulled
up the extra chair. "So, how is he?"
"The doctor's
worried about his lungs. I'm worried that he's not awake."
"He'll be
okay. He always is. He's tougher than he looks."
Jim only nodded a
little.
"What say, I
get you some coffee?"
"Thanks,
Simon."
"Not a
problem." The big man clasped his shoulder as he rose and then
left the room.
Jim stood up and
moved to bed slowly. This sucked so very much. He had had
a lot of time to think in the waiting room. A lot of time to
remember. The first time he was here, he shut Blair
down. The first time, he had turned away from his
guide. He had made a few really bad jokes and trusted Blair to
accept them as an apology. He had read somewhere that life was a
series of lessons. If you failed at one lesson, it was presented to
you over and over again until you finally got it. Well, he would not
repeat this lesson again. It was too damn hard on his
heart. "Okay, Chief, here's the deal. The way I see it, this is
some cosmic payback for the way I screwed this scene up the first
time. The gods, powers that be, whatever felt I needed to learn a
lesson so they sent you back into the water. Well, I get it now.
I've learned now. I'm ready. You hear me,
Blair? I'm ready to take that trip with you, buddy. Come
on, Chief. I need you to lead the way. I'm ready to go,
anytime you are." Jim smoothed back unruly curls from the precious
face of his best friend and his only real family and moved back to his
chair. He was just about to sit down when he heard it.
"Jim?"
He spun around and
saw deep blue eyes regarding him with curiosity and
affection. "Hey there, Chief. It's about time you
rejoined the world."
"I heard
you. You were talking about a trip. Are we going
somewhere?"
"Yeah,
anywhere you want, Chief. As long as there's no fucking pool within
a 100 mile radius."
The End