Dreams
"Jim, I want to try something..."
Ellison grunted interrogatively.
"That thing we were worried about... You know?" Blair grimaced worriedly, eyes flicking nervously around the room as his friend blinked vaguely at him. "Come *on*, Jim. You know. Spooks."
"Feds?"
"Or worse..." he ended ominously, and almost too quiet to be heard. Jim's hearing opened up to catch the next words. "We've gotta sort something out..."
He faded for a moment, his face turning pale and bloody, almost as he had last seen him...
Jim moaned in his sleep, shifting uneasily. "No... Sandburg, you can't, you can't... Not--not happening..." His voice was slurred, and he half woke himself up, then fell back into uneasy dreaming.
"You've gotta trust me, okay?" He was wide eyed and earnest, and Jim felt his face give him away.
"Thanks - I promise you will think this is a great idea... or you would, but I'm not going to tell you, so you can't tell anyone... in fact, if I get it right you won't remember even this much..."
"Blair..." A hand brushed over his forehead, soothing, and he shook it off restlessly. The skin was all wrong, not like Sandburg's.
"Go to sleep, Jim. Go to sleep and remember what I told you."
"Can' 'member. For---got," he said around huge yawns. "Tol' me to."
"What did I tell you to forget, Jim? What was it?"
"Eh'thin'."
"I told you to forget everything?"
"Mmhmm." Jim shifted and his sleep deepened again until he was dreaming again.
In his dreams the wolf joined him, bounding up and placing two big paws on his shoulders. Blue eyes peered deep into his, and the form wavered for a moment, but settled back into the wolf.
//Better that you remember only dreams...// a voice murmured in a voice that sounded like Blair's - except Blair was dead, or missing, and he realised he couldn't remember which, and he began to panic, there was something important, something he had to remember - had to forget... He roared with frustration, and noticed, with the strange clarified disjunction of dreams, that he was a big cat.
//A jaguar, my friend. It will help you. Trust it.// The wolf's tongue lolled out one side of his mouth. //Let's run for a while.//
"Where?" Jim asked, willing enough to stay with the strange creature.
The wolf rolled its back in a full body shrug. //Wherever the path takes us!// it said, laughing at him, and it leapt away, and Jim bounded after it. It was always a little ahead, sometimes he could almost touch it, stretching out playfully at its tail, but every time, somehow, the animal maintained that little bit of distance.
Finally, they came to a gorge.
//Does it look familiar?// The wolf sat back on its haunches, eyes curious.
The cat shook its head, swatted at his eyes as though to clear them. "Maybe. No. Yes. I don't know, do I?" he finished pleadingly.
//Hmm. Took better than I thought.//
"What? What are you talking about?"
//Calm down, Ellison,// and the commanding tone was so familiar that Jim jolted all the way out of cat form to find himself sitting naked on damp earth and stone, bits of leaves and twigs pressing against his bare butt. The big canine padded over to him, and sat down, the warm fur pressing lightly against his side. //You calm?// it asked, with a grin in its eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm calm. What the hell is this, Sandburg?" There, Jim thought, that almost sounded like me... and why am I not slurring everything anymore.
The wolf growled low in its throat. //You're od'ing on the stuff they gave you. They read the damn thesis, and then assume they know better than the living expert. *I* knew this would happen. I *knew* it.// The wolf continued to rumble, and Jim smiled, slinging a companionable arm over the irritated creature.
"Sandburg, what gives?"
//Oh, you know. Same old same old,// was the non-committal reply.
"You're not exactly being helpful here."
//I know. I'm sorry, but I don't dare be too plain. Some of the trigger words are primed, and when you need the knowledge you'll have it, I swear-// the form wavered, and suddenly Blair himself was there, grey streaks in his hair, eyes tired, face half covered by a beard, the little that was still visible thin and pained, as though from a long illness. "I swear it, Jim. You just have to trust me. Just a little longer."
"I know," Ellison whispered, his free hand lifting to Sandburg's face. "I will - I do." but his words were distracted, all his attention on the sight of the man before him, on the feel of his skin, the soft tangle of his hair, the rough bristle of the beard. He tugged, once, gently at it.
"This is new."
"They won't let me have razors, and I won't let them near me with sharp objects." He shrugged. "It was an acceptable compromise."
"Strange." He cupped Blair's jaw in both hands, letting the feel of it settle into his bones. "Weird. I don't know if I like it or not."
"Not, man, totally not. You ever tried *eating* with one of these? and the studies on beer wastage I could tell you about!" Blair's eyes were laughing. He wrapped a hand over Jim's left wrist. "It's only surface. Okay?" He squeezed on the hand. "Okay?"
Jim nodded. "Okay."
Blair sighed with relief. "Good. So, Ellison, what you doing here?"
"Talking to my best friend," Jim smiled serenely at him.
"No, Jim," Blair's eyes were serious, and weighted with more than just human strength. "What are you doing here?" Blair's body receded from him abruptly, and he was standing, no shift in position, just sitting/standing, before the temple that had haunted the outskirts of his dreams. The cat sprawled across the doorway snarled at him, and stretched, up, and up, into himself once more.
"Why are you here, Sentinel?" his double demanded, dressed in the combats, muscle top and filthy bandanna that he'd had in the jungle.
"Because they've drugged me," he said matter of factly.
It nodded, "But why are you *here*?"
"What, there was somewhere else to go?"
"There is the universe. You have no Guide, you have no home - you lack your freedom. And you come here."
"Well, I guess I'm supposed to think the *answers* are here, alright? I mean, subconsciously, and all that crap."
"Why are you here?"
"To find him..."
The words had the strangest double echo, and suddenly his vision blurred. For a fraction of a second he saw out of some one else's eyes, staring up at a metal ceiling, the fluorescent lights harsh on his aching head. Cold metal under him, restraints tight about him, electrodes taped to his body, the body not his... Blair's... and the moment was gone, and he was jerked under again, towed by the currents of high dosage drugs into oblivion. The last thing he heard before everything shut down was the whistle of a heart monitor flat-lining, and the scrape of furniture as people scurried to save his life...but the strange thing was, he didn't know if it was his heart that stuttered and stilled, or Sandburg's.
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The Labyrinth: Jim: Dreams |
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Page last updated 18/09/2004.