This is my first *ever* outing into fanfic. The story came about when I challenged a friend to write a scene from Blind Man's Bluff - so she counter challenged with a request for a Cypher based scene. The following story is the result.

rating G

And If You Fall...
by Shelly

Afternoon light crept across the city, bathing the streets in breezeblown shadows. Jim Ellison leaned his elbows on the railing of the balcony and clasped his hands together....waiting.

It had been three weeks now since they had rescued Blair from Lash...and still the kid had not spoken of it. Shrugging off all attempts by Jim to get him to open up, Blair had insisted that he was fine.

"Give it a break, man. I'm okay...I'm better than okay. You know me. I bounce back!" And he smiled, but the smile never did reach his eyes.

Jim sighed. A person's impression of Blair, at any given moment, was governed by those eyes. They were so blue, and when he smiled, they danced instantly with their own amusement, the lines around them crinkling in concert. Now....those eyes were wary, hurt. Fear had grasped him too tightly, slowing his step and eclipsing his spontaneity. The Sandberg he knew, with his flights of enthusiasm and unerring instinct for the small gestures of friendship, was no longer there. Somewhere within his friend, pain cried its price...pain that he couldn't, or wouldn't, share.

Jim looked at his watch...five hours....Blair had been out 'walking' for five hours. Tuning into the noises of the street below, the Sentinel sifted through the twilight sounds until he touched at last upon that familiar heartbeat. Blair was walking slowly down the street, towards the loft. Head down, he gave off an impenetrable aura of solitude that made Jim's heart ache.

Moving back into the apartment, Jim stood listening, following the sounds as Blair trod wearily up the stairs. The door did not open.

On either side of the door, the two men both held their breath and then released it almost simultaneously. Jim could hear Blair trying now to breathe calmly, and sensed that he was putting on that damn disguise. When the door opened, the Blair Show would be *on*.

Blair would smile and make a joke, and try his hardest to show that he was okay...he was coping... don't worry...

Jim whispered under his breath, "Kid, you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that for me." And he turned to step back out onto the balcony.

"Hey, Jim. How's your day been? You were there when I left....must have been a major zone out!!!" Blair fought to keep the treacherous desolation from his voice. Keep it light, man. Keep it light.

Jim heard the struggle, closed his eyes, dropped his chin to his chest and then pasted a smile upon his own face before he turned around.

"Hey yourself, Chief! The only zoning I'm gonna do is from that damn new conditioner of yours. Think I'm going to call you Carmen Miranda since you wear a fruit salad on your head!!!"

And the pattern of their evenings had begun again. Light banter. Touch on nothing that could harm. Small talk over the meal, watching Blair push the food around on his plate, as if dispersing it would make it seem as though he was actually eating. Discussion about what video to put on. And so it went.

As Blair cleared the table, Jim saw how frail his guide was becoming. His jeans hung low on his hips, and whenever his T-shirt moved against his body, he was all sharp angles and protruding bones. Every movement he made seemed to be planned and tightrope tense.

The Sentinel thought back to pre-Lash times when Blair had attacked every facet of life with such glad grace. He embraced everything wholeheartedly and it was infectious. His laughter was a shining thing, like pewter flung high in the air. Lash had taken that spark and all but extinguished it.

Sitting down with a cup of coffee in front of the video, the Sentinel and his Guide both turned to their own thoughts. Occasionally they made an inane comment about the movie to reassure the other that they were really watching. This too was part of the pattern.

Blair returned to that day. He remembered each detail like a recording that played on an endless loop. The drug being poured down his throat and how he tried to spit it up, spit death away. Taunting Lash with words and praying that it would buy him a little more time. Jim carrying him downstairs to the ambulance, talking quietly all the time. Telling him it was going to be all right. Concentrating on staying awake. Fighting the insistent tiredness that pulled at him so seductively, thinking that if he could only keep his eyes open, somehow he would not die.

Even with Jim sitting beside him in the hospital room, he fought the immense weariness, equating it with death. Through the night he dozed off only to be awoken by the recurrent nightmare that he was drowning. As he reached out of the darkness, Jim's hand would be on his arm, reassuring him, coaxing him back, telling him that he was safe, that it was all over....but it wasn't.

Jim watched Blair out of the corner of his eye. He looked exhausted, spent. He knew what the night would hold. They would watch their movie and then go off to their respective rooms. Jim would hear his partner moving quietly around the room for hours. Then, sleep would finally come. Jim would wait. After an hour Blair would be caught in the nightmare again... calling... reaching... and Jim would be there to wake him. Blair would pull away from him mumbling "Sorry" and then turn to the wall drawing his knees up tight, and clutching his pillow. And neither would sleep. And this too was the pattern.

Blair feigned a yawn, stretching his arms wide and glanced across at Jim. "Man, I'm beat. I'm going to bed. You can tell me the exciting ending tomorrow." His voice quivered slightly but his face gave nothing away.

Not taking his eyes from the screen, Jim replied with studied casualness. "Night, buddy. Sleep well."

The door to Blair's room was carefully closed and then the waiting began again. At 3.00a.m. Jim tuned into Blair and the steady breathing told him that his guide was finally asleep.

Quietly, Jim walked to the door of his friend's room and pushed it open. Blair lay sprawled upon the covers, one arm thrown up over his head, fingers curling gently into his palm. The other hand held an open book. Pale moonlight slid across the young man and showed, even more clearly, how tightly his pallid skin was stretched across his bones. How much weight had he lost in the past weeks?

"Jesus, Sandberg. What are you doing to yourself???"

Blair sighed and became unsettled, lost in some vast and lonely place. His fingers moved as though he was reaching for something, and his head rocked back and forth. Jim stood and watched his guide's chest move up and down. He was unaware that his own breathing was pacing Blair's, trying to breathe for him...willing him to keep it steady and not fall into the nightmare.

Clenching the bed covers in his hands, Blair arched backwards. Lash was pouring that stuff into his mouth. He mustn't drink it.. mustn't swallow. He held his breath till he had to gasp, and the liquid spilled into him, and around him, and on him, until he felt like he was drowning. Then the chair tipped further back, the chains fell away, and he started to rise up into the blurred and splendid night. The sky became a slippery dome on which he could not find footing. His hands and feet grappled for some kind of hold... but he was slipping...falling...screaming..

Blair's hands flailed in the air sculpting terror.

"Noooooo.......help me.....falllinnnggg..."

The Sentinel reached out and encircled Blair's wrists with his own big hands, and pulled his friend into a sitting position.

"Come on, kiddo. I've got you. You're okay."

Looking disorientated for a moment, Blair stared up at Jim and took a deep breath.

"Jesus.., what a dream...I'm sorry I woke you." He moved slightly away but the Sentinel still held him.

"Want to tell me about it, Chief?" Jim asked quietly, gently.

Blair twisted his wrists to loosen Jim's hold. "No...I don't want to think about it..please... Jim....I don't feel so good."

With a final wrench, he freed himself and ran for the bathroom. He knelt on the cold floor and vomited milky strings of saliva into the toilet bowl, cradling his empty, protesting stomach with one arm.

He allowed himself to be led back to the bedroom. Once there he pulled away to lie on his side, with his arm shielding his face. He made a sound then, laughing or crying, Jim couldn't tell.

"The other day upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn't there

He wasn't there again today

I wish that man would go away."

Blair's voice faded to a whisper as he said the poem in a singsong voice, and then laughed bitterly.

"That's me, man. I see Lash everywhere I go. I see him just out of the corner of my eye... I spin around but he's not there. I see him in my dreams. God, I don't want to feel like this anymore. I feel like ...... It's just so shitty, you know?"

Sitting beside him on the bed, Jim waited, not wanting to interrupt the flow now that his friend had finally started to open up. He dared not even move.

Blair rolled over onto his back and lay the crook of his elbow over his eyes. "I just feel....I just feel like nothing is safe now....everything is falling and I'm falling away with it...." And the young guide began to cry.

Watching him, Jim felt his own throat ache. He reached out to touch Blair's arm.

"Don't...." Blair shrugged Jim's hand away.

After a while the tears stopped and he lay quietly. Letting out a long sigh, with his voice muffled against his arm, he whispered, "That was dumb."

Jim smiled at the childlike wording. "No it wasn't. It's okay. Chief....*why* are you turning this whole thing into a defeat?" His voice was quiet, but the comment fell through the air like a stone.

There was a breathing silence. Blair's heart hammered against caging ribs. At last, he moved his arm to look up at Jim. "Is that what you think?" he answered with a spark of anger igniting expression in his voice.

"Could be. Maybe?" said Jim, letting the question hang between them like a fragile thread.

Blair raised himself on his elbows, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "That day....I...I never thought that you would be able to find him...beat him..." He dropped his chin to his chest, hiding.

"I didn't beat him. That was *you*." Jim ducked his head to catch Blair's eyes.

Blair made a noise in his throat. "No. I blew it..."

Jim stood up in exasperation. "Jesus, Blair. You were like a warrior that day!!!! You fought him with *words* for Christ's sake! You won....*you* won. Don't let him beat you now!!!!"

"How do I stop him?" said Blair, with just a little catch in his voice. He sat up and looked steadily at Jim with huge, luminous eyes.

"You've already stopped him, Chief. You just have to let yourself *know* that."

Jim watched as Blair lay back on the bed, saying nothing, closing his eyes. Then, a moment later: "Afterward, when it was over, I wanted to thank you, only I couldn't even think what to say. I feel so...I can't seem to think right anymore."

Blair covered his eyes with the palms of his hands. He was exhausted. His whole being ached. He felt as if he had just run a marathon. But the hard work was over. He didn't have to pretend anymore. Jim knew....he always knew. And curling through the gnarled and knotted darkness within him grew the realisation, that tonight, he had found rescue in the sanctuary of friendship.

Jim sat down on the bed next to his friend. "Sleep..." he said with quiet insistence. Blair closed his eyes, then opened them again.

"Still here," smiled Jim. "Sleep..."

The young Guide murmured, "I'll fall...," and then covered his eyes with his arm. Jim reached out to lay a hand gently on his friend's chest. And this time, Blair did not move. This time, he did not pull away.

The Sentinel whispered "And if you fall, Chief, I'll catch you...I'll be here to catch you."

And he was.

oooOOOooo

finis