Archive of Our Own

Author's disclaimer: Pet Fly. Paramount. You know.

The Next Life
by Cinzia

I stare at it. And stare. And then I stare some more.

And it's just a fountain.

Right.

And I don't really remember how I ended up in it...

Whoa, stop right there, Blair. This is so not the way to go, man. Not right now, not when you're here, doing this... cleansing ritual... staring at the damn water. Obfuscation will get you nowhere, this time; neither will outright lying.

I remember so clearly.

Night was fading fast. I saw the sun coming up just when we got out of Hargrove Hall -- going down the few steps, and the air was cool, the first glimpse of gray light like a shiver on my skin. No-one around.

Well -- except for her, right behind me.

Down the steps. Over to the fountain.

And I remember...

Watching. Thinking.

Jim.

Expecting to see the blue and white truck showing up any second now. Then knowing -- fucking knowing -- it wasn't going to happen. No truck. No Jim.

So, no more Blair.

And the thing was, I was really, really pissed. Yeah, and scared, for sure. But pissed too, nearly as much. 'Cause I hadn't seen this coming, and I should have. I mean... two Sentinels, right? And one guide. One fucking guide.

Some guide.

I'd let my Sentinel down.

Oh, yeah, sure -- I fucked up, but Jim fucked up, too. That I knew. He was wrong as much as I was, and I had the right to be mad at him. He had the right to be mad at me.

But I was the one about to die.

And Jim wouldn't show up in time. And he'd find that out, eventually. And then he would be sorry, he'd be hurt, start feeling guilty as hell -- for not showing up in time, for not being there for me -- and he'd forget what a jerk I could be and that he had the right to be mad at me.

I would let him down. I would let him be alone with the guilt.

That was so not the cool thing for a guide to do.

That's when I began to fully realize it, and started to turn around trying to tell Alex, maybe try to finally talk her out of it -- and that's when she whacked me and we were right up over the fountain and she was holding me...

Down, down, down.

I think she figured the noise of the shooting would be too painful for her.

And then. After that. I just remember...

The jungle. The black jaguar, running. Towards... well, me.

But I didn't really...

I didn't really know if I could go back.

'Cause after all, things at that point were pretty damn nasty; had been for quite a while, actually. Since that day Jim got shot at the convenience store.

After he'd said he loved me.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- he just said it, okay? In the truck, right there in the fucking parking lot of the fucking convenience store. Before getting out I'd turned to look at him sitting behind the wheel and said, Hey man, we eating at home tonight?, and he said, "You know Chief, I really think I love you."

Just like that.

We'd been on our way to the station that morning. A gray morning, not raining, but almost there. Windy. I'd seen the store passing by the window and mumbled to myself, Some day I'll have to remember to stop by, and he just flung out his right arm over my chest and made this nasty U-turn and then we where in the parking lot and...

And that was why he hadn't said so much as a word to me over breakfast?!

Except, he'd said it then.

So I ran.

Because, well... that, I had seen it coming. A long way off. I just... just hadn't ever expected him to come out (in a damn parking lot, for god's sake) and actually say it aloud. So I got scared, not because he said he loved me, but because I knew he did.

Because I just knew...

I knew that without him, I just couldn't love anymore.

And that was so scary.

There he was, his usual silent self after having oh-so-casually dropped his goddamned bomb, staring ahead of him at the store... And there I was -- staring ahead of me at the store.

Like, totally silent.

That was when it dawned on me that I'd already begun to run away.

Then came the robbery, the shooting. He was shot. Hurt.

He never said it again.

And Alex came along. Came to my office. Looked down at the stern face of the Sentinel in Burton's monograph. Walked with me across the campus, needing me to get back her control. Looking at me as if she couldn't believe I knew.

I never really stopped running. And that was about it.

When I first came back to myself, I was in the jungle -- and still running.

Everything was bathed in a grayish shade of blue, and so cold. But I knew light was there, somewhere, and so there had to be warmth; I just had to find it, to get it.

And yet, I kept being distracted.

There were all these weird... things, for lack of a better way to describe them: like, tiny sparkles. White in the blue.

White and blue and I'd been watching for it, but he was never gonna come and I knew it. I... just... knew.

But there. White little sparkles in the jungle, all around me. Cold. Had to find the light, find the warmth. But those sparkles. So, so tiny...

... and suddenly, they became noise. Like really faint noise, white noise -- in the blue -- faint, but there. All around.

And the black jaguar, it was roaring. Something... Beating.

Double-beating.

Faint -- but there.

The pounding of the jaguar's paws as it began running on the frozen jungle floor -- breaking up the blue ice -- and then the wolf -- Wolf? -- was finally stopping -- turning -- looking up -- paws pounding too, like an echo in the silent jungle -- running again.

Running back.

And there it was, the light.

So warm.

I'm staring at the damn fountain, and I'm starting to get all these funny looks from the people passing by. And I'm really starting to feel like waving at them and saying, Hey, it's all right. I died in there, you know? But then my Sentinel -- and I did say, my Sentinel -- showed up, after all, and came in there too and dragged me back and gave me back my life.

Or his.

Not so sure about that one.

But, he came and brought me back; and here I am.

The bastard simply refused to carry all the guilt alone.

Hmpf.

He showed up. He came to me. He took me back.

And the night after that he went after Alex, and she took him...

Down.

Searching for the light in a fountain -- of sorts. There was water. There was Jim, in the water. Dreaming about Incacha -- about a guide who couldn't guide him anymore.

A man who had died.

And then he dreamed some more.

Afterwards he told me, "When the dream shattered, there was the light."

There was his Guide.

Pretty karmic, all in all, I guess.

Then Alex burned up -- she had gone into the water and never come back -- she had wanted to stay in the blue jungle, but maybe she had stayed too long, and I think the light she had found for herself... maybe its heat had been too much for her to bear alone.

The light that had taken me and Jim back, took Alex away forever.

And the Sentinel was alone again.

With one Guide alone.

The Guide who's now staring at the fountain outside Hargrove Hall, remembering everything, feeling everything once again, all those weird things in the jungle vision, and the black jaguar running and the wolf turning and the light...

And finally I see.

Water... Death. Birth. Rebirth. Now. Eternity.

I look up, up beyond the fountain, and the truck is there, on the pathway, blue and white and real, and Jim's standing just there before it...

And he's looking at me. Watching me.

I think -- Jim is right. Nobody's ever really going to be ready for that trip.

So, fuck all this. It's been a really, really shitty week, you know?

Jim's right over there, right beyond the fountain and the water. Watching me.

I'm watching him.

We got back to Cascade yesterday. As soon as we got out of the terminal he wanted me to go to the hospital. I'd feel better knowing I really was all right, he said; but, I knew it wasn't just me who needed to know -- I'd seen how scared he was, he actually never let go of my arm during all the flight, while Simon and Megan slept in the row of seats behind ours. We had fallen asleep too, eventually; and when I woke, his hand had slid down to rest on mine. I don't think he even noticed it.

But after the doctor said there was no real need for me to stay at the hospital overnight, I looked at Jim, and when he looked at me, I took his hand and guided him back to the truck. He took me home.

Straight upstairs, into his bed.

And then he proceeded to bathe me with his tongue. Completely. Thoroughly. Head to toe, front and center and everywhere else -- yeah.

Like a big -- black -- jungle cat.

Sniffing me. Touching... pawing me. Sensing me all along while he went at it. Making sure I was really there.

Making damn sure I was going to stay there, I might add.

By the time he was done -- when his tongue had covered every single inch of my body in saliva -- he'd come twice on his nice, formerly neat pale blue sheets.

And then I proceeded to completely, and thoroughly -- hard and fast and good, for all I was worth -- fuck him into the next... oh.

Oh, yeah.

Into the next life.

One Sentinel. One Guide.

One guilt.

Screwed up or not, we're as ready as we'll ever be. And -- we just can't do it alone.

So, fuck the cleansing. Fuck the fountain and the water.

Fuck Death.

I step around it -- as simple as that -- step beyond it... Going over to him.

He came to me.

While I walk, in the sunny, noisy middle of Rainier campus, I hear it -- loud and clear -- like an echo, as I go to Jim.

Mine; his.

Like one heartbeat.

We just won't do it alone.

He keeps looking at me --

and I'm with him, my arms going around his waist, his coming up around my shoulders. 'Cause finally, finally we've met in the middle and this is it.

Our one life.

It's so warm here, you know?

He shifts ever so slightly to brush his lips across my temple, letting me feel his smile. I hold him a little tighter, and close my eyes.

And god... would you look at the light?

The End