Well now you've gone and done it. You've made me write my own ending.
Warning: Bad things, bad thoughts, graphic descriptions and death be here.
Balance
by Margaret
The optimist sees the glass as half-full. The pessimist sees it as half-empty.
I see it as holding hydrochloric acid and you're trying to trick me into drinking it. I guess that makes me paranoid, huh?
Everything in nature has a certain balance. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
Light and dark.
Good and evil.
Jim and Blair.
Blair and Jim.
I know he thinks I hold the world record for denial, but he's wrong. I've never tried to deny what happened. He's the one living out in the fucking middle of nowhere with the squirrels.
I'm the one sitting in the loft surrounded by the memories. Used to be they were good ones. But that changed after what happened. That's when the bad stuff started seeping in. And I held it back for as long as I could, but I'm only one man. I'm a Sentinel, not Clark Kent.
Since he left, the seepage has turned into a flood. I can see it pouring out of the walls. Looks a lot like blood. My blood, Blair's blood, the blood of my buddies who died in the copter crash. Incacha's blood, Simon's blood...hell, there's probably a little bit of Caro's blood mixed in with it. The blood of every person I've hurt, everyone who's suffered and died because of me, every mistake I've ever made. It's all here now and I'm drowning in it. I'm going down for the third time and there's no one to pull me out.
Sink or swim, Jimmy? Do we sink or swim?
I pick up the knife setting on the bed next to me. The blade glints in the faint light. I consider a minute where to start, then lay the edge across my left wrist and push, watching in fascination as the slow trickle turns into a steady stream, dripping onto the hardwood floor to mix with the blood already there. The sound seems loud in the silence, but not loud enough to drown out the voices calling to me.
I smile and turn my attention to my other wrist. I've got the rest of eternity to get it right, Blair. The rest of eternity to atone for what was done.
I just wish you were here with me. It's so goddamn cold.
FIN
You know... I've liked the continuations that set out to leave a hopeful (at least) ending. I *prefer* hopeful endings. But in some ways... the way the original story was set up, this is the only valid ending for Jim.
But it still needs what Blair does after Simon tells him.
Bluewolf - who rarely does dark.
Addendum to Balance
by Bluewolf
Blair stood at the door of the cabin watching as Simon's vehicle disappeared. He knew Simon was puzzled by his response to the news that Jim was dead; that his suicide attempt had succeeded.
He had simply looked at the older man and said quietly and unemotionally, "Thanks for letting me know."
And in truth he didn't know what he felt.
Grief that the man he still loved was gone? Perhaps, but he felt he had lost Jim months previously.
Guilt that he had never told Jim he loved him? Perhaps, but he knew Jim could never have accepted the word 'love' directed at him by another man. Hell, Jim couldn't even accept the word 'love' directed at him by a woman, because he didn't believe he deserved to be loved.
Anger that his own sacrifice had - in effect - been thrown back in his face? Perhaps, but he had never really expected to be thanked for it.
Relief, perhaps, that he no longer had to struggle to make anyone think that he might one day recover from everything that had happened.
As he had said once to his mother - now he knew what to do.
Without haste, he entered the cabin. He found paper and a pen, and wrote a short letter to Simon.
"Thanks for trying to help me, Simon. I've appreciated your friendship, and I'd hate you to think that you'd ever failed me.
"I failed myself; myself and Jim.
"Since you rescued me, I knew I had to survive while Jim lived. He would have felt too guilty if I'd finished things then.
"Although I refused to see him or respond to him, it was for his own sake. What would the world have thought if it became known that the victim of the fraud was still speaking to the perpetrator of that fraud?
"But now there's no need for me to struggle any more.
"Tell the guys I... No. Just give them my best wishes - for what those are worth.
"Goodbye, Simon. Believe me, this is the only thing left for me.
"Blair."
He sealed it into an envelope, wrote Simon's name on it and put it on the table, weighing it down with a mug. Then he walked out of the cabin, closing the door carefully behind him.
He walked steadily the half-mile or so that took him to the top of a nearby cliff, and without hesitation, walked off the edge.
And the only sound was the hollow thud as his body hit the ground two hundred feet below.