Labyrinth - Jim - End of Everything
The apartment was very quiet after the rowdiness of the wake. Simon and Naomi had stayed to clear up, and they watched covertly as Jim moved around the kitchen, cleaning and tidying as though that were the only thing that concerned him at all. Ellison had been stoic and dry eyed in his dress blues at the funeral. Blair's coffin had been carried by the men of Major Crimes, Jim at their head. Nothing that happened seemed to touch the man, it was as though he was insulated with cotton wool, safely away from the pain of reality."Jim, come and sit down," Naomi said, patting the couch next to her. "I'll do that."
Naomi had wept when Blair died. When Jim spoke his eulogy at the funeral. When the coffin had been lowered into the ground, and she had dropped a white rose on the polished wood, beneath the dark clay that covered it too swiftly from human sight. Now she had no more tears, and now anxiously watched the man who had held her, himself silent and unemotional, throughout every break down.
Jim reluctantly turned away from the washing up, and dried his hands on a towel as he walked across and dropped onto the sofa beside her.
"How are you, Jim?" she asked in her soft, sweet voice.
Jim breathed in, going past the perfume and soap to the scent of Naomi herself, almost close enough to that of Blair's that she could almost be him. Almost. "Naomi, I need you to do something for me."
"Of course, how can I help?"
"I've put everything Blair left, and everything I own into a trust. I want you to be the trustee."
"But Jim, I don't need--"
"Hear me out. Simon, I'm resigning from the police. I had my reactivation notice a week ago. I'll be picked up in a couple of days. After... I can't guarantee what will happen to me, so I'm giving Naomi control of everything. When..." he coughed, clearing his throat. "When I get Blair back, we'll need it, and I don't want it absorbed by problems of probate and so on. When you get word of my death, hang onto it."
"Jim, I think you're..." Naomi began anxiously, interrupted by Banks' furious voice.
"What do you mean you're resigning, detective!" Simon's bellow drowned her completely and she watched warily as the two men faced off. "I'm not accepting your resignation. Especially not now." His voice softened. "I know it's tough, Jim, but you can't go on like this, trying to deny what you saw - what we all saw."
Jim stood and walked to the window. He spoke as though he hadn't heard either of them. "Simon, I'm not making you a trustee because I think it will be easier for Naomi to disappear. Blair's copies of his dissertation are safe, but I expect someone will break in trying to find them. Naomi, stay visible until that's over. Then leave, stay with people you trust."
"Jim, I'll help you any way I can, you know that, but you can't be serious. I know it's hard, but Blair is dead." Naomi reached to put a hand on his wrist, "Let him go, Jim."
He swung to face them both. "I'm rejoining the army because if I don't, you'll hear about my tragic suicide in less than a month. And no," he put up his hand over their exclamation, "I'm not considering suicide. You've got to understand this. Blair is *alive*. I *know* this, like I know how to breathe. I'd feel it snap if he died. The only way I have to save him is play their game. And be careful. They're listening and watching all the time."
"If that's true, Jim, and I'm not saying I'm buying into any of this," Simon asked reasonably, "Why are you saying this out loud, won't 'they' find out?"
"They need to know that I've told someone, it's the only way to keep both of you safe. Steve knows as well. So do a couple of other people that you don't know about, who can be *your* insurance, the way you're mine. As long as you act normally, nothing should happen to you."
"Act normally!!" Naomi said furiously, "I loved him too, and I know you want him back, but Jim, this isn't healthy."
Jim shrugged. "If you prefer to think of it as a grief induced fantasy, that's fine too. It'll have me dead sooner though."
"Don't you dare lay this at Ms Sandburg's door, Ellison," Simon roared. "I don't care what dumbass idea you've gotten into your head, but you get rid of it." his voice softened. "We're trying to help here, Jim, we really are, but you're making it very difficult. Look, why don't you go to bed, it's been a long, hard day, and we'll discuss it in the morning."
Jim gave him an odd smile. "No, we won't Simon," he said quietly, and walked away up the stairs.
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Sometimes it frightened him. Despite the bedrock certainty with which he had ploughed through the difficult talk with Simon and Naomi, he still sometimes doubted himself. Perhaps Blair *was* dead, and he really was wallowing in a grief engendered illusion..
After all, everyone else believed it. It was written across the headstone, in the few short clippings about the young anthropologist turned fraud turned detective who had died so pointlessly. The rest of the world was moving on, accepting the passing of one man as nature's inevitable will. He hated that. It shouldn't be like that. Didn't they know that the world had stopped, might have stopped... no, hadn't stopped, not yet. Jim shrugged away the threatened flood of grief. He wanted to reach for his friend, his guide... a man whose life had melded so all encompassingly with his own that he couldn't feel the loss, the surest proof that Blair lived yet, just beyond the door, the other side of a street, rushing through life with joy and passion and all the things that death had taken away from him. Would take. Might take. Had not taken. He was alive. He was.
Jim shivered in his bed, curled deep under the covers, the only truly hidden place, and cried.
The expected envelope was in the mailbox the next day. It took only a day or so to finalise his arrangements. As far as possible he made sure that he and Blair would have something to come back to, one day. The loft was sold, the proceeds into the trust. Everything else into the care of Simon or Steve, both worried, but agreeing to look after his and Blair's things, however dubious they were about Jim's sanity.
He walked away from Cascade without so much as a backward glance, taking the train to his rendezvous point. His new unit greeted the cold, silent man without comment, hesitant at first about accepting the command of someone so recently a civilian.
The old life came back easier than he had thought it would. The unchanging ritual of the army was almost comforting - it did at least mean he did not have to think during the days, and was too tired at night to dream.
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The Labyrinth: Jim: End of Everything |
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