Canon Jim and Blair aren't mine. These. . . well . . . I'm working on it.

I'd like to thank Keerah and Delilah for betaing this puppy for me. I think V might have helped too. That's the problem with age and not posting these things right away. LOL!

For everyone who wanted to know what Jim was thinking.

This story is a sequel to: Resurrection

I still remember the day he walked back into my life. No, scratch that. He didn't come back; I had to go out and catch him. No, that isn't quite right either. It makes it sound like I forced him and if there is one thing I've learned since his reappearance is that I can't force him to do anything he doesn't ultimately want to do. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning.

I don't recall what day of the week it was, I just know that I looked up during a late lunch with Megan and spotted a man lounging against the brick building across the street from the restaurant we were eating at, smiling at what appeared to be me. As the figure turned away, something niggled at the back of my brain, a recognition of sorts. The further away the stranger moved, the more intense an ache within me grew. Without conscious thought, I stood, mumbled something to Megan and left the restaurant, intent on tracking my prey.

He wasn't hard to follow, as he wasn't trying to hide. He flowed through the downtown streets with an economy of movement, not drawing attention to himself nor appearing to be skulking through the crowd -- just an average Joe on the street. However, there was nothing average about the man. I guessed at the time that he was an operative of some sorts. An anger slowly built within me as I tried to figure out what he wanted with me, and wondered if he was leading me into a trap.

I decided to take the bull by the horns and confront him before he got to wherever he was going.

I muttered something inane like 'excuse me' to gain his attention. When he turned, a slight look of astonishment on his face, my breath caught in my throat. While I didn't recognize the stranger's face, I recognized the eyes. Those dark blue orbs had haunted my dreams for years. Blair. But yet again, not. It didn't make any sense.

"I'm sorry, I just thought you looked like..." I had started, confused. Blair was dead, had been dead for five years, shortly after the Ventriss matter. But the eyes....

The stranger shrugged at me as if to say no harm, no foul and turned to go about his business.

I recovered quickly, desperate now to reconcile my memory of Sandburg with those eyes. I knew if I could just hear the stranger's voice, if he'd talk to me, I could regain my equilibrium. "I'm sorry. I'm not harassing you, really," I explained as I reached out and touched his shoulder again, although in reality, that's exactly what I was doing. "It's just...that is...I'm sorry, Mr...?"

Several emotions passed ever-so-briefly through his eyes: amusement, fear, pride.

"Mallory," he responded in a harsh, broken voice. His voice grated on my ears and I quickly lower my hearing.

"Mr. Mallory," I repeated, acknowledging that he had responded to my request.

He smiled at me in a dismissive manner, then turned away, but I caught something in his eyes as he did -- smugness. I could tell that he believed he had successfully deflected my curiosity. For some reason, that conceit grated on me.

"Mr. Mallory," I called after him.

He made a big production about turning back to face me and suddenly I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was on the right track. Something was up and I was determined to find out just what it was. "Mr. Mallory, what are you doing here in Cascade?" I asked, trying for nonchalance, but when he raised an eyebrow at me I lost a lot of my indignation. He suddenly looked very much like a man who just wanted to be on his way but was too polite to tell this persistent stranger to shove it.

"Why?" he croaked in a mildly confrontational tone, resting his hands on his hips in an expectant manner.

I remember stuttering, "I'm...um...a detective with the Cascade Police Department."

He settled the full weight of his gaze on me and I realized that if he were just an average man on the street that I was probably going to make the evening news for harassment. Simon would have loved that. However, Mallory's gaze shifted a tad and a look of distress flashed briefly in those almost dead eyes.

"What's going on, Jim?" Megan asked so softly that Mallory shouldn't have been able to hear her, and yet I watched the stranger in front of me take notice of her, as if reading her lips, or understanding that she was talking to me at a level no one else could hear.

"I was just asking Mr. Mallory what business he has in Cascade," I explained, although my eyes never left his as I tried my damnedest to drill down into his psyche and learn his secrets.

Mallory smiled a cold hard smile. "Passing through." Succinct and to the point. His smile was almost feral when he noticed Megan flinch at the broken glass that was his voice.

"So why were you watching us at the restaurant?" I demanded.

Megan gasped quietly, not seeing what I obviously saw, seeing only my badgering of an innocent bystander. "Jim," she said in quiet admonishment.

Mallory quirked a curious eyebrow at me. "What restaurant?"

The question threw me for a loop and it took me a moment to respond. "Toreros," I said finally.

He smiled sadly at me and nodded his head as if lost in memory. "My wife and I used to eat there when we were in town."

Abruptly, all my certainty left me. He hadn't been looking at me at all. He had been lost in the memory of his wife. I felt like six different types of fool. But in all the years since Blair's death, I had never mistaken someone else for him. Sure, he had haunted my memories, my dreams, my nightmares, but I had never seen him in another's eyes.

Why was I thinking about Blair now? Now when the pain was almost gone? Now, when I could look back on our time together and remember the good times and not be shredded by what could have beens. I focused on listening to Mallory's heart, but it beat like everyone else's, no indications that he was nervous or lying.

Megan gently took my elbow. "I'm sorry we intruded," she apologized to the stranger.

Mallory shrugged again as if he had somehow missed out on the joke. "No problem," he said graciously.

Megan tugged on my arm, but not before I saw the disappointment in Mallory's eyes as he turned.

"Jim, have you lost you mind?" Megan hissed when I tried to follow the enigma. "What's wrong with you?"

"I wish I knew," I conceded, never taking my eyes off the retreating figure. "Look," I tried to explain as I hastily disengaged myself from her grip, "I can't explain right now, but I need to follow that man."

"You're going to end up being charged with harassment."

"No, I won't. I'm not going to confront him. I just need to follow him for a bit."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

Even though I was touched by her offer, I shook my head. "No, I'll call if I need backup. Just let Simon know I won't be in this afternoon." I tried to hand her my keys, but she refused to take them.

"I'll call a cab. No worries."

I nodded, dismissing her from my mind, and jogged after the mystery man, who continued to stroll leisurely down the city streets for several blocks before he turned into one of the downtown hotels; not one of the best, but not a flea trap either.

Standing across the street in the mouth of an alley, I tracked the man's heartbeat as he climbed the stairs, foregoing the elevator. He reached the sixth floor and wasn't even breathing hard. A fit man, no doubt.

I stepped back into the alley as I heard him open one of the doors facing the street. As I suspected, Mallory immediately moved to the window and scanned the view beneath him, even inspecting the alley I was occupying. His eyes didn't miss much as he studied the street. He stood at the window for several minutes as if he couldn't shake the feeling that everything was not quite right. He didn't appear to be in any hurry to step away from the window and I found my respect for his abilities growing.

When he finally stepped away, I could hear him gathering items from around the room. Packing, no doubt. I frowned, not sure why the thought of this man leaving left me feeling slightly bereft.

Once he was packed, he laid down on the bed. I could tell by his breathing that he was falling asleep -- no doubt planning on leaving town in the evening, under the cover of darkness.

He probably had a car nearby, although when I looked at the vehicles lining the street, I realized that none of them would qualify as a classic. But then again, a classic would be a give away. First rule of covert ops, hide in plain view.

While I was confident that he would sleep for a bit, I worried about the possibility of his waking and leaving if I went back for my wheels. But if I waited until he woke up, I would have no way to track him. I debated with myself for several minutes before I jogged back to the restaurant and got my SUV. A vehicle, I reflected, that Blair wouldn't know I had as my classic Ford pickup had died a valiant death in a high-speed shoot-out two years previously.

My heart beat heavily in my chest when I returned to the alley and pulled the keys from the ignition, but calmed immediately when I heard Mallory's steady breathing. I tried to remember what Blair's heartbeat sounded like as I waited during the waning afternoon, but no matter how precious it had been to me in the past, I found I couldn't conclude with any accuracy that Mallory and Sandburg were one in the same.

I remember sitting in the SUV wondering if I'd lost my mind. Why was I doing this to myself? I had seen the dental records, had them compared to the ones in our safety deposit box -- a precaution Sandburg had insisted on after Bracket had so thoroughly disrupted our lives. He had been convinced that the ex-agent would talk to someone about my abilities, would use my gifts as a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card. I had humored him when he had suggested it, a part of me not as convinced by my nonchalance as I had pretended.

The film had been the final nail in my coffin of disbelief. Even after I conceded publicly that the burned-beyond-recognition body found at the bottom of a cliff had to have been Blair's, I continued to search for him; a part of me wondering if he had been taken. I even paid all my debts and tied up my affairs, expecting the same people to come for me. But it never happened.

On what would have been his thirtieth birthday, nearly a year later, I conceded that he was gone. I had gone into his room, trying to find his scent, when it finally dawned on me that I was never going to see him again. I systematically destroyed the larger pieces of furniture in his room, although I was careful not to smash the various knickknacks that Naomi had left behind.

She had only taken the photo album of his childhood, his degree certificates, a couple of the artifacts he had gathered in his world travels, and left the rest to me.

Naomi had been my rock after Sandburg's death. She came for his memorial service and stayed for three months. She cooked, she cleaned, and she poked and prodded me until I exploded with my grief. She reminded me that Blair wouldn't have wanted me to withdraw, that he would have wanted me to live each day to the fullest, and that he would have expected me to continue to protect my tribe.

She worried though about my senses.

Apparently, she had found Blair's journals and had read them as a way to process her own grief. It was only after I had assured her that Connor and Simon knew about my abilities that she felt comfortable enough leaving me to my own devices.

I almost made love to her the night she left, so desperate to have one last connection with the other half of my soul. But as she melted against my body, surrendering to my passion, I heard Blair's affectionate, embarrassed, aggrieved voice laughing in my ear. "Jim, that's my mom, man."

Naomi had smiled her understanding as I set her on her feet. I think both of us were a little embarrassed to discover that we were each seeking the same thing from the other, and yet both knew that while Blair would have understood our desperate need for connection, he wouldn't have been happy about our actually doing the deed.

She makes it a point to call me every month. In fact, she usually stops by at least once a year to reconnect. We get together for dinner, drink wine and tell our favorite Blair stories. She tells me about his travels while studying and I have finally opened up and told her about some of our cases. Her pride in her son is an awesome thing to witness.

"Jason!" a voice shouted from the room above.

I started, my heart in my throat, my fingers whitening around the steering wheel. I heard Mallory gasp and lurch out of bed, heard the quiet "shit" as he realized he had awakened from a nightmare, and could hear flesh rubbing against flesh and realized that he was scrubbing the sleep from his face.

I tracked his movements as he stumbled from bed into the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face. He took several deep breaths to calm his racing heart, then stripped out of his clothes and took a shower.

Twenty minutes later, he had turned in his room key, paid his bill and had thrown his duffel bag in the back of an old beater.

After he had driven a few blocks down the road, I pulled the SUV into the street, never turning on my lights. I expected that he would get on the highway and head out of town, so I was surprised when he instead wound his way through the side streets.

My heart beat in painful anticipation the closer we drove to Rainier. I frowned when I became aware of a noise in the vehicle, before I realized it was me. Even today, I wouldn't be able to identify the sound, other than to say it was as if my body could no longer keep the prayer it had been whispering all evening silent a moment longer.

Mallory parked his vehicle in Sandburg's old spot, not a difficult thing to do considering it was two in the morning in June. Mallory sat in the car for several minutes before he finally got out and moved unerringly toward the fountain -- as I knew he would.

I parked my vehicle at the back of the parking lot and followed at a discreet distance. He stopped when he reached the fountain and released a long deep sigh, sounding as if it had emanated from his toes.

"All of my rescues are gone," he whispered into the summer night.

I couldn't even begin to imagine what he was thinking about. I only knew that I couldn't let him face it alone.

I moved closer, silently cursing myself when I kicked a pebble, causing it to skitter along the sidewalk behind him. Mallory turned so fast that I didn't even see him move. He pointed an automatic straight at my heart and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was more than capable of pulling the trigger.

We stood for nearly a full minute, neither one of us so much as twitching.

"Do you have a permit for that, Mr. Mallory?" I asked nonchalantly, thankful that I was the sentinel in the group and he couldn't hear my heart thundering in my chest.

A smile teased his lips, but he didn't lower his weapon.

I decided it was time to put up or shut up and took a step closer to him, hoping he wouldn't see it as a threatening gesture, but hoping that I might be able to get near enough to disarm him so that we could have a proper discussion. Without blinking, he flicked the safety off with his thumb. I swallowed hard, but stopped, understanding his silent promise.

His face was granite, revealing nothing. I began to feel a bit of doubt creep into my consciousness, but I ruthlessly shoved it down. "I didn't believe it for the longest time," I said wanting him to know that I hadn't given up hope right away, that I had held on as long as possible.

He remained silent, although I heard the softest sigh escape him when he realized I wasn't going to leave.

"It was only when the dental records were compared to the set in our secret safety deposit box that I finally conceded you were gone. I kept telling myself if you were dead, I would feel it, somewhere down deep within myself. And I never felt that. Simon didn't understand. Hell, no one did. How could I explain the merging? How could I tell them that you were my light and I would know on a cellular level when it was extinguished. For over a year after I publicly accepted your death, I still investigated on my own. But I couldn't find anything. No trace. No whisper. Nothing."

I was beginning to feel vaguely foolish, standing in the middle of a deserted campus, babbling at a man I prayed was my dead partner. Mallory sighed again, and holstered his weapon.

I took his disarmament as a sign of encouragement. "I tried to retreat, but Simon and the others wouldn't let me."

"They were always good friends," he said after a moment of silence.

I don't think anything has ever sounded as sweet as the concession in those whispered words, validation that I wasn't going insane.

I swallowed hard, but managed to get out. "Yes, they are." I waited for him to say more, but he remained stubbornly silent in the face of all my unasked questions.

"So the conspiracy theory that you were always worried about..." I speculated aloud, but stopped when he simply nodded, understanding dawning with sickening clarity. He hadn't left me willingly. He had been ripped away, taken against his will. But why didn't they take me? Why would they leave the sentinel behind and take the guide? "And I was..."

"Too old, too dangerous, too valuable as a hostage against me."

An icy fist gripped tightly around my heart. Oh my God, they had used my freedom as a means to keep him in line. He acquiesced to their demands to keep me safe. An anger grew within my chest, a fury at the faceless bureaucrats who had torn our lives to shreds, but a realization also dawned that he wouldn't be standing in front of me if they still existed. "And now, they're gone?"

"Yes," he said simply, then added after a moment's hesitation. "At least the ones with power."

"How?"

He shrugged like it was no big deal. "Me."

A lump grew in my throat as I began to wonder how he had managed to gain his freedom. I didn't know what to say, but wanted to acknowledge his accomplishment somehow. "You know the rumor around the station used to be that I was a hard ass, but everyone knew better than to piss you off."

He smiled at me and I have never seen anything in the last five years as sweet. After a moment, his eyes told me that his thoughts were wandering a bit. I wanted to bring him back to reality, back to me, so I asked, "Where are you going?"

He shrugged, which made me frown.

"Why did you come back?" I asked, needing to know.

He took a deep breath and released it slowly. I didn't think he was going to answer, but then he finally said, "Closure."

Realization slammed into me like a ton of bricks and I dropped my chin to my chest, unable to meet his eyes. I gasp quietly for breath, suddenly unable to get enough oxygen in my lungs. "You didn't know?" I asked in horror as I realized that he didn't know we all thought he was dead. They hadn't told him. They had let him believe that we had given up on him, that I had given up on him.

"I didn't know," he said simply.

"Christ," I whispered, feeling as if someone was filleting my heart with a dull knife. I had to tell him, he had to know. "I would have come for you if I had..."

"Believed," he said when I hesitated.

I remember falling to my knees as all my nightmares reached up and choked me. All my fears that he had been taken and was being tortured confirmed. I had lived my life, never realizing he was in hell.

Just when I thought my chest would burst in agony, I felt his hand run tenderly over my head, toying with my hair. I had dreamed of his touch for so long that I couldn't help but lean into his hand. His movements hesitated and I realized he was getting nervous. "Please don't leave."

It was obviously the wrong thing to say. He immediately dropped his hand and took a step away from me. Terrified, that he was going to run, I gained my feet. "You have no reason to leave."

"No reason to stay either," he countered.

God that hurt. But then I remembered who I was when I came back from Peru. I was so full of rage at the time, wanting to hurt anyone who even looked in my direction. I reached out for him, knowing what he was going through, but he knocked my hand away.

Pain is nebulous. It's hard to reach out to someone in agony because there is absolutely nothing anyone can say to make the pain go away. But anger, anger I could deal with.

"So, you can just walk away?" I demanded as I started to circle him, taunting him, letting him know that he had met his match, that he wasn't frightening me with his anger.

"Third life's a charm," he countered, keeping me in his sights at all time, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet to stay mobile.

I figured I'd take him down quick. I don't think I thought much past that point. All I knew was that I had to get him to concede to a higher power so that he'd come home with me. I feinted to the left, but he anticipated the move and suddenly we were in frenzied hand-to-hand combat, each jabbing and blocking like some kung fu movie. I admit now that it never dawned on me that he might actually be good at self-defense. That's not to say that Blair couldn't take care of himself, but he never had the moves. It always seemed like the bad guy du jour somehow managed to get him in a headlock, so I was a bit surprised when he held his own against me.

I didn't want to pull out my covert ops tricks, but if I was going to end this quickly, I knew I was going to have to do it. Imagine my surprise when he smiled ferally at me and countered each move with his own. It slowly dawned on me that he was playing with me; that he could end our confrontation at any time. Just as I had that thought, he swept my legs out from under me, causing me to drop to my knees.

I scrambled to get to my feet, but he used my hair to pull my head back, forcing my spine to arch backward. His eyes blazed with anger and he growled quietly in his throat as if preparing to say something. But instead of speaking, he bent down and gave me a brutal kiss.

I never hesitated; I simply opened my mouth, and gave him everything I had in that kiss. He loosened the grip in my hair and brought both hands up to frame my face while he deepened the kiss.

I moaned, wanting more. My hands gripped his legs for support, but once I had it I ran my hands up and down the inside of his thighs. Growing bolder, I brushed his scrotum through his jeans, feeling him tremble as the passion boiled up within him.

But instead of giving into the passion, he pushed me away, hard, and took several steps back. "This isn't who you are," he shouted angrily.

If only he knew. "It's who I've always been...for you," I countered.

He shook his head in denial, then turned and jogged toward his vehicle. I knew, knew to the very bottom of my soul that if he got in that car, he would be gone forever. I also knew that I would burn in hell before I let that happen. I scrambled to my feet and ran after him, slamming him into his car and pinning him to the trunk, grinding my pelvis against him as he struggled for leverage.

"We danced around the truth for so long that we convinced ourselves it was just our imagination," I told him.

In the evenings, after work, as I unwound from a hard day, I often speculated that we would have eventually become lovers. I knew after Sierra Verde that we were destined to be together. I always found it ironic that after I had purged myself of my anger, he had found his. But I truly believed we would have eventually work through all our problems.

"I've always wondered what would've happened if I had taken the plunge when you asked me to join you in the water. Would it have made our bond stronger? Would I have felt you with every atom of my being?"

He remained silent and I knew that I needed to see his eyes, which have never been able to lie to me. I flipped him onto his back and forced his legs apart to keep him from pushing me away. He tried to sit up, but I slammed him back down before he could gain any sort of leverage. I brutally slammed my hips against him and he arched off the trunk, gasping with pleasure.

Blair had always been a hedonist, something I doubted seriously that Mallory was. His reaction told me everything I needed to know.

"He's still in there, Mallory. I can feel him. They haven't destroyed him completely," I taunted, slamming into him again.

Mallory stilled, laying flat against the trunk, the fight suddenly drained from him. "Sandburg's dead." He released a deep breath. "As dead as he was in that fountain."

"Ah, but I brought him back from the fountain," I reminded him even as I shimmied against him.

Sandburg began to struggle in earnest and it was all I could do to keep my grip on him. Realizing he was going to end up sliding off the trunk if I wasn't careful, I pulled him up and held him tightly to my chest.

I whispered nonsensical words to him, trying to get him to calm down, but he was lost in an internal struggle. Finally, I bit his ear to try to break through his thoughts.

He gasped in shock.

"Come on in, the water's fine."

His acquiescence was as spiritual as it was physical. As we had nearly five and a half years earlier, we morphed into our spirit guides and raced toward each other. There was a desperateness in the way he scrambled toward me and it became the most important thing in my life to reach him. I jumped as soon as he was close enough and sighed as we flowed into each other. I could feel his pain, his loneliness, but most of all I could feel his undying love for me and I swore I would never give him any reason to doubt that I felt the same way.

His heart beat steadily against my ear and I hummed with contentment.

"You couldn't have stopped what happened by taking the plunge back then," he told me quietly.

I sighed deeply against his chest. "I know," I admitted, but wondered if I would've been able to track him or if I would've known beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was still alive.

"I can't go back," he said quietly, breaking through my thoughts.

I pushed myself up until I was straight-armed over him and searched his face. The bouncing grad student was gone, but as I looked into his face I knew Blair still existed. "I know."

"So...what?" he asked, looking up at me, expectantly.

"You could always become a cop." Hell, I had.

He smiled, but then the smile grew to a chuckle then to an out and out guffaw. I knew he couldn't see it then, but it was actually a good line of work for him to go into. However, that aside, I was desperate to hear him laugh again. So I said in a fairly earnest voice, "I've always wanted to be the good cop in the good cop/bad cop scenario."

He literally curled around my arm laughing. After several moments, he looked up at me, a tender, but sober, smile on his face. "I don't know if I can be a cop."

Fair enough. "Whatever we do, we'll do it together," I told him. Then gripping his forearm, I demanded, "Promise me." For I wanted his word that he would never leave me again.

He searched my face for several moments. I don't know what he could have seen in the faint light, but whatever he was searching for, he seemed to find it. "Okay," he finally whispered.

I don't remember pulling him to my chest. I only remember pouring all the love I had for him into that slim body. He returned the hug with equal ferocity. After several moments, he pulled back, but before I could protest he put one hand over my forehead and the other over my heart.

"It's not going to be easy," he promised after several moments of silence.

"Easy is for wimps," I countered, which made him chuckle.

He melted against my chest and I was content to just hold him. I don't know how long we stood there, but I would probably still be standing there if he hadn't asked, "So, now what?"

"So, now we go home."

He blinked almost convulsively, trying to rein in long forgotten emotions. "Okay." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'll follow you home."

"No," I told him as I stepped back and pulled him off the trunk. "You're coming home with me, now."

A slight smile twitched at his lips. "But my stuff."

I walked around his car, pulled his duffel bag from the back seat, grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the SUV. I knew life wasn't going to be perfect or even smooth anytime in the near future, but there wasn't any way in hell I was ever going to let him out of my sight again either. If he thought I used to be overprotective when he was just Blair Sandburg, he was in for one hell of a surprise.

~~ End ~~

End Resurrection: Counterpoint by Dolimir: Dolimir@aol.com

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