Although she flees in terror from the word, Shellie is my most precious beta-reader. She consistently distills the essence of my meandering thoughts; in the truest sense, she is my creative guide. Thank you!

Transitions 7 - Rogue (Epilog)
-- by Mackie

He stood just inside the closed French doors, his face so close to the glass that his breath cast little circles of condensation on the pane. Behind him, the loft was dark and quiet save for the normal background hum of self-regulating appliances. In front of him, the dark skyline of high rises, their glass faces blank at this late hour, created geometric angles against the lighter pallet of cloud and sky. Beyond stretched the black ribbon of the Pacific Ocean.

He'd been standing there for a long time, at last a half-hour, the cup of coffee in his hand long cold. Unable to sleep, he had finally admitted defeat and padded downstairs to brew a fresh pot, only to pace restlessly at first, then finally light by the window for this silent vigil over his sleeping city.

His feelings were hard to define. It had been easier during the long afternoon, when endless questions by faceless bureaucrats had left him short-tempered and irritable. After Brackett's capture and subsequent arrest, the rogue CIA agent had been whisked away by Agency stooges to answer to charges of espionage. Explaining Brackett's plan and its failure had been the easy part of the interrogation. What hadn't been so easy had been fending off the incessantly repeated 'Why?' Why had Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg been necessary to Brackett's plans? How had a supposedly tamper-proof security system been by-passed so easily?

The same questions had been repeated over and over again, worded differently each time in an effort to detect inconsistencies in their answers.

Although they had been questioned separately by agents of the CIA, Jim had tuned in frequently to hear how Blair was faring. Like Jim, the young anthropologist had dissembled, and the fact that he seemed so insignificant to the plot lent weight to his protestations of ignorance.

Jim had been proud of his partner's ability to cloud the issue and answer at great length without actually revealing a thing.

His own questioning had been a little tougher; he was, after all, ex-Special Forces with past links to the CIA. The Agency was worried they had a leak at their top-secret skunk works that Jim had used to defeat the security setup. He'd managed to deflect their probing without revealing any hint of his hyperactive senses.

Brackett remained a wild card, of course. Surely, under questioning, he'd bargain knowledge of Jim's sentinel abilities into a reduced charge or a lighter sentence. Maybe the CIA wouldn't care...or maybe they would.

At the moment, Brackett and the CIA were not the cause of Jim's troubling thoughts.

Throughout the afternoon and evening, he'd gradually come to terms with what had happened. Anger had given way to a tingle of suspicion, which had eventually turned to fear. It wasn't a huge fear, merely an annoying little one, the kind that settled in the belly and took the guise of indigestion. It was a nervousness that brought about restlessness, and sleeplessness, and created a hovering sense of grim inevitability....

He'd been standing there for another twenty minutes before he finally heard a key turn softly in he lock.

Sandburg entered like a wraith, closing the door behind him with great care, placing his keys gently in the basket so as not to create even the tiniest noise. He removed his jacket slowly so the fabric would not rustle and hung it on its hook, then bent to remove his shoes so he could cross silently to his room.

When he turned around and saw the figure silhouetted against the windows, he jumped hard enough to smack into the door. "Jesus, Jim!" he protested, catching his breath. "You scared me half to death!"

"Sorry," Jim returned, smiling slightly. "It was kind of fun watching you try to be quiet."

"Yeah, well, I figured you'd be asleep," Blair retorted, crossing to the sofa but not sitting down. "Why aren't you asleep?"

"Insomnia."

"Ah." The wordless syllable bespoke volumes of sarcasm.

Jim shrugged. "Too many thoughts running through my head," he admitted finally, moving away from the French doors to stand at the other end of the sofa, unconsciously placing it between them as a sort of barrier.

The significance of this defensive body language was not lost on Blair. "About today?"

"About a lot of things."

Blair nodded just as if he understood. He was in the dark in more ways than one, but there was something he could do about part of it. "Mind if I turn on the lamp?"

"Go ahead."

Blair switched on the small table lamp, which had a low-wattage bulb that cast a soft, dim glow. Even that was enough to make Jim blink against the sudden glare.

Blair looked at his friend and didn't like what he saw. Jim's anger and impatience he understood, and he'd taken the brunt of misplaced irritation more than a time or two. But what he saw now was not anger. It was uncertainty tinged with something that looked uncomfortably like fear.

He stepped over and gently removed the forgotten coffee cup from Jim's hand. "Why don't I pour us a couple of cups, and we'll talk this over."

"I don't know if I want to talk it over."

Good, a trace of the old Ellison stubbornness was familiar territory.

"Sure you do."

Jim grunted. "I do?"

"Sure," Blair assured him, practically bounding into the kitchen to fix their mugs. "Why else would you wait up for me?"

Well, that assessment had been pretty much a slam dunk. "How was your date?"

Blair handed over a fresh cup of coffee, then sat down on the sofa. "It was great -- the good doctor has an insatiable curiosity about primitive tribal medicine, and she has all these neat theories about how it fits in with today's modern forms of treatment." He took a sip from his cup, put it down on the coffee table, and leaned back. "Now sit down and tell me what's bothering you."

Almost unwillingly, Jim obeyed. Still, he figured, maybe it was better to get everything out in the open and examined. At least it would help eliminate any unpleasant surprises further down the road. "OK, maybe it starts with what happened today," he began uncomfortably, not really certain where to begin.

"Are you worried about the CIA finding out about your sentinel abilities?"

Jim grimaced, then shrugged. "Yeah, a little. But that's not it."

Now it was Blair's turn to be surprised. He'd felt certain he'd figured out the basis for Jim's anxiety. "So it's not about Brackett and the CIA?"

Jim shook his head, then put down his coffee cup and returned his gaze to the view through the French doors, although the scene had been muted by the soft light from the living room lamp.

"Jim, please -- I really want to help."

For how long? Jim was grateful he hadn't spoken the words out loud, although they'd come close to tumbling from his lips. It was too early in the conversation -- hell, it was too early in their relationship.... "My zone out on the bridge," he confessed quietly. "It's the worst I've every experienced."

"Can you describe it?" Blair prompted gently, settling himself comfortably under the mantle of researcher.

Jim sought the words. "Everything just sort of warped out of shape, like a puzzle that's been put together wrong. And then it all faded out, and I simply wasn't -- connected -- any more."

"Where did you think you were?"

"Nowhere." Jim spoke the word in a whisper. "It was like being unconscious, only instead of blackness, there was this immense, white void surrounding me."

"Did you feel anything?" Blair persisted. "A sense of fear, peace, anger -- anything?"

"I don't think so. I was just there, not here." He flexed his shoulders a bit as if to relieve growing tension. In a bemused tone, he added, "It was your voice that brought me back."

He didn't explain the relief he'd felt at hearing the voice of his partner, or his puzzling, almost instinctive need to follow it back from wherever he'd been lost.

Blair took a deep breath. "If you hadn't heard my voice -- or someone's voice -- urging you to come back, do you think you would have stayed zoned out?"

Jim nodded. "Yeah, I do." Only it wasn't just someone's voice -- it was your voice, and I obeyed it without reservation. What the hell is happening to me? "It was just -- blank space. There was nothing to focus on, nothing to draw me back. There was no anchor to link me to reality."

"OK, we know sentinels are at risk of zoning out," Blair said, trying to sound reassuring. "You did it the day we met -- with the Frisbee."

"Not like this," Jim insisted. "That time, I was zoned on my sight. It was a major distraction that took my attention away from my surroundings, but I never felt I was in danger of staying there. I'm sure I would have eventually seen something, even if it was just the Frisbee being caught, that would have jarred me out of it." With a tiny grin, he added, "Large garbage trucks killing me on the spot notwithstanding."

"But this time, you're convinced you wouldn't have come out of it on your own?" The thought was frightening, Blair admitted to himself. No wonder Jim was freaked!

"Right." Risking injury or death in the day-to-day course of his job was something he'd accepted long ago; losing his mind -- losing himself -- in some empty netherworld was a different matter altogether. The possibility terrified him. "What was it Brackett called you -- a guide?"

Blair felt a tiny stirring of discomfort, but he couldn't put a finger on its cause. "That's what he said," he admitted softly.

Bluntly, Jim asked, "Is that what you are?"

Sitting up and hunching over, elbows resting on his knees and he fidgeted with his coffee cup, Blair murmured, "Uh, I'm not sure I understand the question."

"You read me that passage from Burton's study -- you said sentinels always had someone to watch their backs while they worked. I thought you just meant a partner, an extra pair of eyes to monitor the big picture while the sentinel focused on the details of what his senses were telling him."

"That's sort of what I thought, too, except I knew about the zone outs, of course." Blair didn't know why he suddenly felt defensive, but he started to withdraw into himself, as if to shield himself from whatever was coming.

"All this time, while I thought you were studying me, helping me to understand and learn to use my senses, were we really forming some sort of bond -- some sort of symbiotic relationship where your voice guides me to use my senses or brings me back from a zone out?"

"I'm not sure I understand -- " Blair began desperately.

"Just how far are we going to take this thing?" Jim interrupted, finding his anger at last. Over the past few months, he'd gradually come to accept Blair as his partner and his friend, but he was too saturated with new input to come to grips with the idea that he might actually need Blair on a more permanent basis.

Hell, he'd started out ignoring most of Blair's attempts to help him. Just a few weeks before, an over-the-counter cold medicine has sent Jim's senses into overdrive. He'd been desperate enough then to seek his friend's help, but his own anger and pain had gotten in the way of his willingness to listen. It wasn't until he was holding on for his life beneath the speeding train that he'd finally admitted he needed help. Earlier tests Blair had conducted had enabled him to overcome his sensory helplessness. Remembering those tests had probably saved his life.

Still, this idea of a guide was rapidly becoming the felling straw atop the camel's back. It was going to take a long time to absorb the implications.

Blair was silent for a long time, and then he managed a nervous laugh. "Jim, you're making me sound like a seeing-eye dog," he protested. "You're not becoming dependent on me." But he didn't sound convinced. It occurred to him suddenly, in one of those blinding moments of lucidity that seemed obvious in hindsight, that perhaps this little foray into his study of sentinels was about to turn into something a lot bigger. He wasn't at all comfortable with the idea, and it was clear Jim also felt a strong aversion to the bond that seemed to be forming inexplicably between them. Blair certainly wasn't ready to deal with the idea of a long-term commitment; this was supposed to be a dissertation, not a career change.

"So this is just some mutually beneficial study," Jim concluded softly.

"Absolutely."

Jim accepted the assurance because he wanted to. "Good. I mean, we're fine as friends and partners, I'm not complaining about any of that, but I'm just not comfortable with the thought of us becoming dependent on one another." Me. I'm not comfortable with the thought of me becoming dependent on you. On anyone.

Blair let out a pent-up breath. "Yeah, you're not exactly my idea of the perfect spouse either," he admitted, trying to find some lightness. But the anxiety in his gut refused to go away. "Long-term commitments, a symbiotic partnership -- uh-uh. That's not what either of us wants, right?"

"Right, because if that's the road we're heading down, I want to stop now."

"You do?"

"Sure -- if being a sentinel means I need a guide, then that's a whole area I don't want to explore."

We may not have a choice, Blair thought reluctantly, but all he said was, "I agree completely."

One thing was certain: he wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight either....

THE END