Edit 7/1/2012 – Thanks to an anonymous review, I have edited the summary to let readers know that, yes, this is a slash between Jim and Blair – thanks, whoever you are! I hadn't originally intended this to even have a romance connotation, which is why I forgot to specify that when I uploaded this… But, yeah, just so new readers are clear – This is a slash, male/male, shonen-ai, homosexual relationship, whatever-you-want-to-call-it, between Jim and Blair. If you don't like that kind of thing, the Backspace button on your keyboard is completely free to utilize, so, please, no flames just in comment of the pairing of the story. Thanks!

A/N – Don't really know where I was going with this, other than the fact that I wanted to explore the possibility that Blair really did do some fighting for his country. I know nothing about Desert Storm – that was just the name that the show gave us, and I wanted something dramatic – this was not what I wanted, but this is what came out. It veered from that and into some relationship development, which was unintentional and awkward, but there you have it. Ignore the muse at your own risk, after all. Please let me know what you think.

Disclaimer - I don't own The Sentinel, I merely use it to play in; my fanfiction is not used for monetary gain of any sort, either, so please don't sue.

It's a Different Combat Zone

If I die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home. The rallying cry of soldiers the world over.

When I first signed up for the Air force, it just didn't register that I was headed in a direction like that – that is, putting myself in a position where I might die. The rallying cry fell through my mind like water through a sieve, and I was still hearing it like a civilian, not like the soldier I'd just become. I'd learn what it meant soon enough.

If I don't make it out of this shit-hole alive, at least make sure my body decays in a place of comfort.

Well, see, that only works if you know a place of comfort. If you've come from someplace you call home. If there's a permanent place in this world where a you-shaped hole was left when you were shipped off to war in the first place. And even before I shipped off, there's never been a place like that for me.

I was born in '69 to one of the original flower-children. My mother raised me on those ideals: growing me on the free love her friends were content to give; the men and women that she met whom she could convince to give us a place to stay in exchange for a fling; leaving right when the first scents of commitment began to permeate the air; literally traveling the world, seeking peace and balanced karma and unblocked chakras.

By the time I was thirteen, I'd lived in five different communes, two nudist colonies, three separate temples, two trailer parks, four reservations, dozens of 'relatives' homes across the world, and occasionally, our car. I'd lived on the plains of Africa, in the desert of the Middle East, in the Himalayan Mountains, on the banks of the Amazon, in the Russian Tundra, in the Australian Outback, and in various states in the US. I'd lived among Native American tribes deeply secluded from society, poor Chinese villages, back country Italian villas, booming Japanese towns, sleepy Buddhist temples, a lone cabin deep in the wild Irish hills, busy American towns, and close-knit Hispanic communities. I'd lived hosted by my mother's free love (and dirt-poor) friends in something like a shack, by the rich millionaire in a literal mansion who decided he didn't mind that his current week's pick-up had a kid, and anywhere and everywhere in between.

At sixteen, I took hold of the reins of my own life. My mother had been dragging me hither and yon since the day of my birth, exposing me to a rainbow of people, places, religions, and experiences, and I wanted to know – just once in my life – what 'stability' was like. We were in the States at the time, and I took a placement test that told me I could get into college now and have no problems academically, an honest-to-God wunderkind. So I convinced my flighty, wanderlust-struck mother to leave me at college, let me get a degree, pull my own weight, find my own karmic destiny, yadda, yadda, yadda.

She relented. It's not like her to stay in one place for more than a few months – sometimes she'd go somewhere without me, leaving me in the capable hands of some friend or other – but she could see how much I wanted this. And she loves me, she really does; so she let me go.

The stability was frightening… and wonderful! After literally having never known anything else other than constant travel in my life, to wake up to the same dorm room after three months was unnerving. And the fact that I was three years younger than all of my other peers didn't do so much to my social life, either. But I soaked up the available knowledge like a sponge – the library became my sanctuary. The books taught me all I needed to know (and living with my free-loving mother, the secrets of flirting, dating, and sex were already mine), and I began to relish in my new-found life. I was a wiz-kid, resident brain, young and cute, and available for the flings that my teenage libido demanded.

By the time I was eighteen, I had snapped up my Bachelor's in Anthropology, and my independence from my mother was a heady thing indeed. The intervening years only served to fuel the rebellious fire in my gut.

Okay, I know: Rebellious?

But the very action of rebellion is the act of reacting contrary to that which you know. By anyone's definition, my life was a rebellion against standard society – I won't dispute that. But 'normal' society, again by definition, would then be my form of rebellion. And so it was.

The thing with normal rebellion is that it goes against the grain while society just goes on around the rebellious, either eventually pulling them back into a 'sane' lifestyle, or handing them a 'go to jail' card. So rebellion in societal terms is something everyone goes through – a testing the boundaries thing – and eventually snaps back from. But my rebellion was within society itself, so no one was there to pull me back into the normal orbit, bring me back to myself and my own safe zone. And I had gotten a taste of the dangerous adrenaline of going against my grain.

So, I had my Bachelor's at eighteen. And I was burning to fight my own past, my own normal. I swallowed education whole and then some – I had my Master's by twenty. And all the while, the fire was eating at me from the inside out. Even as I Mastered Anthropology, I was watching the world around me, engaging in the human activities – partying, learning, getting a job – but most importantly, staying away from the protests and vigils of my youth.

But even this wasn't enough. There was a living that was the very furthest from my free-love home life that I could get, one that would infuriate my mother because it would go against everything she stood for. I would willingly become a soldier.

God. I was an idiot. I became a freaking soldier!

Because of my degree, I started off in a higher rank than your average foot-soldier, not that it did any good. I knew less than those poor saps under my wing, and here I was, supposed to be leading them! And you can't learn by trial and error when war is bursting at your doorstep. It gets people killed, and at least I was in possession of enough common sense to know this before I had to learn it the hard way.

My own superiors could see that I would be a loss of resources if I was left where I had been placed, and for that I was grateful – the first thing you learn in the soldier zone is you speak when you are spoken to, and not at any other time, and you do what you are told, no more and no less. Thankfully, the government establishment I had indentured myself to was not the Army or the Navy, but the Air force. I was assigned to learn helicopter combat flight-patterns, and from there, to go on some as-of-yet undisclosed operation.

So, on passes three of the quickest, most rigorous weeks of my military career, and suddenly I am a licensed helicopter pilot. I am exactly what they need: A loner, a squad-leader level man with no squad to lead; I am a higher-ranked official, who, for all intents and purposes, is only a grunt, so they can tell me where and how to jump without being worried I'll think on my own; and I am a pilot who, apparently, has more skill with flight then they had been hoping for.

I was on my way to what would become the infamous Operation Desert Storm.

Flying in enemy airspace is not something I can describe – the way the adrenaline rushes through your veins, the way that when you finally land on friendly ground it takes five minutes to get out of the cockpit because you're so tense with remembered fear of discovery, the way that every bullet from a spotted enemy could be your last and you know you'd never survive an ejection from the helicopter anyway… For two weeks, that was my life. For two weeks, I misled, dodged, took on, escaped from, scouted out, and drew enemies as I was ordered. For two weeks, the Hell that life had become at least made sense.

Then I was shot down. I survived the crash because I wasn't all that high off the ground anyway. I got away with a broken leg, a minor concussion, and bruised ribs. That was before the enemy picked me up.

I didn't know anything – I was no Intelligence officer – but my job had been to distract the enemy, and that meant looking like I was trying to fly like I was hiding something of importance. I'd always been good at hiding the truth, and I'd discovered I was an ace at flying… Oh, I'd done my job, all right. When the enemy found me, it was at gun point, and it was with shouting in the native tongue, demanding what I knew, what I was carrying, who I reported to in the American dogs, anything. A true IO would pretend they knew nothing, and die defending that falsehood; the problem with that was that an innocent man would do that, too, only it wouldn't be a falsehood, and they would be destined to die simply because they had nothing to give up. And I looked like an IO, even when I was innocent.

I've always looked younger than my age; my first girlfriend told me it was because of my open expression and big eyes. They assumed, the enemy did, that I would be easy to break – that they'd get "the information" out of me quickly, because I was obviously green. But they weren't in this part of the business of war to get things quickly; no, these men were here because they knew how to cause pain, liked seeing others in pain, and knew what to do to prolong consciousness and pain. I came to the stomach-churning reality that I was to be tortured.

I would later be told that I was only a 'guest' in that dank cellar for a week. Tell that to my ten broken fingers, three pulled nails, crushed right foot, floating broken ribs, shattered femurs, crushed left hand, bruised from literally head to foot, back sliced open by whipping, severely concussed, internally bleeding body. I'd had it easy, and that was after it took three months of hospitalization and rehabilitation to get back in shape.

I was a foot solider, for all my educated rank denied it – anyone and everyone would tell you I was expendable. And I was, I won't deny it. Sacrificing me in order to get done what they needed to get done would have been perfectly reasonable on the part of my military. To this day, I owe my life and my rescue to my friend, Major Reynolds. I would do anything for him, and he for me; so he risked his life to save mine. I can't imagine where I'd be without him. I was honorably discharged at 22, diagnosed with PTSD, paranoia, severe nightmares, and a variety of nervous tics, and sent home with the promise that I'd served my country fairly and would not be called back against my will.

For a year, it was all I could do to live on my own in a tiny apartment day-to-day, seeing a licensed psychiatrist five out of seven days a week – working, especially around other people? Hell no!

But my life on the road, surrounded – oftentimes by veritable strangers – came to my rescue in this hour of need for me. Within a year, my need to socialize had helped me to conquer the vast majority of my paranoia and PTSD. My love of learning, of being entranced by something new, of following a project set forth by an instructor helped to get me slowly back into the world of education, starting as a teacher's assistant – without any degree-seeking of my own, which was unusual for the position – helped me to tone down the last of my paranoia and my nervous tics. Being around students, and that air of accomplishment and knowledge, was a soothing balm to my war-shatter psyche.

By 24, thanks to the excellent job of the doctors who treated me on my original arrival as well as subsequent visits to keep things healing as they should, there was no physical evidence of my time of capture in Desert Storm. By 24, I was no longer just toying with the idea of returning to school myself – I was already half-way through with my PhD; of course, to keep myself occupied, it was over the most obscure thing I could find. A myth about humans, and specifically, super-sensing humans known as Sentinels. By 24, I was even more of a social butterfly then I'd been before my time in the service – my therapist coined it as a "replacement habit" for all of my former destructive habits, a reverse-habit, if you will, since one cannot remove a habit, merely replace it. It made for great parties, at least.

At 25, I met the man I'd never honestly hoped to meet – the missing link in my busy-work thesis, an honest-to-God modern-day Sentinel. I was quick to convince him that he needed me, my compulsive desire for companionship leaping at the chance, as it always did, for knowing a new person.

I had been partially kidding about his needing me; I'd never thought about the complications of super-senses on an active cop in a busy town. But it turned out he did, badly enough to score me a place by his side during his job. He was a gruff kind of guy, just as quick to pull himself away from other people as I was to throw myself at them, but… well, we took to one another. I seemed to be that one key he needed to open up some, and he the key I needed to remember that human contact was to be had in moderation. From day one – and he would take three years to admit that much – we connected in a way that was rare.

He was even quicker – though, to hear him say it, he denied it until there was just no other options left – to take me in when my home blew up. Moving in with him was as natural as breathing air. And on the inside, behind closed doors, who we were really came out. The real me, the friendly one who still kept people at a distance, because in a world of strangers, you never know who you can really trust, came out. The real Jim, the one begging to wear his heart on his sleeve, to let people know every facet of his mind – the one who'd not been conditioned by his father, or hurt in any relationship gone sour – came out. And so, I learned his life story, and he learned… my surface. Behind closed doors we were to each other as the other was to everyone else.

And yet, as the years went by, I found myself confiding in Jim. I would tell him stories I'd never even told my mother. Jim had me by the mind, as captivated as I was by his abilities – so devoted to him was I that I trashed my thesis without telling him. I couldn't endanger him by publishing something like that, but telling him would negate any public reason I had for sticking around! Jim had me by the future, as my act of scraping my thesis and picking up a new one (Thin Blue Line ring a bell, anyone?) left my future with him open and relationship-based, without the false attachments in the name of science. His future and mine were intertwined, and I would do everything I could to hang on to him – he'd become my whole world without my realizing it. He had me by my heart. No one can be as devoted to him as I've become and not fall for him; I would go to the ends of the Earth, I would die, for James Ellison. He even had me by my past – it felt like everything I'd ever done, everyone I'd ever met, was simply leading up to Jim. I was ready-made to figure out how to help him deal, and he – though he didn't know it – was the same for me. The only thing left was letting him in completely, revealing the last secret: That I really had been a part of Desert Storm, and what's more, that I was a bone-a-fide survivor of torture. But I couldn't. I was too scared it would scare him away.

So even after Alex came, even after she killed me in the fountain, after Jim resuscitated me, after we traveled to South America after her together, me tagging along even though I was still recovering because Jim might need me – even after all that, Jim still didn't know about Desert Storm or my torture. He'd heard my nightmares – hello, Sentinel, and I sleep in the room directly beneath him? – but since I don't speak in my sleep, he just thought that I was a nightmare-sleeper. You know? There are people who've never had a dream in their life, then there are people who can control what they dream? Why couldn't there be constant nightmares? That was my excuse, anyway. Jim accepted it, and even got used to it... At least, as far as I know, he did. He doesn't come to wake me up anymore, anyway. And because of the reconstructive work I got done on me in the hospital, combined with the fact that I'm super-careful about what clothing I take off when Jim's around, he's never even seen the scars that normal human eyes would miss.

When he stuck with me even through his anger at me, though… I'd been keeping notes for personal reference on him, so I could be better equipped to help him deal with Sentinel issues like any loyal Guide. Mom had mistaken it for my thesis, and sent it out to be published, thinking she was helping me out. Jim was the last to realize (once he'd gotten his anger under control) that I was telling the truth when I said my notes had never been meant for publishing. But once he got there, he was a fixture at my side, immovable and irreplaceable. His stalwart presence helped me to calm enough to build the necessary plan that would keep his abilities a secret, in fact.

The plan was that it was all an elaborate ruse to distract from the Sunrise Patriot's. It failed, but only because we'd misjudged the elaborate militia, Captain Banks would tell the media. And thanks to my obsessive-compulsive attitude towards Jim's paperwork, there would be absolutely nothing in any of his reports that IA could use to incriminate him towards actually having the "amazing Sentinel abilities". The bullpen knew the truth, of course – they're detectives, after all – but they all kept quiet. There's something to say for a cop's sense of loyalty and family.

And I knew, if Jim would stick with me through that fiasco – where staying by my side was only making it more likely that he would be discovered, considering who I was in the academic world… Jim would even stick with me through knowing just how messed up my past had been.

And last night, I got a letter – asking if I could attend the funeral of Major Jacob Reynolds. I have to go, and I can't bear to go alone. So that means taking Jim, because he's the only person I trust to see me through an emotional moment like this one, the only person who knows my heart and soul, if not my whole past.

I showed Jim the letter at dinner, without offering any explanation as to why such a high-quality letter about such a high-up military person would be coming for me. He read it through, no doubt chalking it up to the various odd acquaintances I've made through life with my mother, and nodded concisely before picking up his fork, and asking me how my day went. He would go and support me, without question or comment. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my Blessed Protector?

A shiver raced up my spine as Jim's gaze raked over me two nights later, seeing me for the first time in my uniform. Knowing him as I do, I can see the questions burning behind his eyes – questions about this, about me – that he doesn't voice. And he won't, not right now, not when I'm hurting, even if it's for the loss of a man he's never heard hide nor hair of. Still, his lingering gaze is what captures and holds my attention the most: This is not the first indication he's made that he sees me as his, nor the first with such heat in it. But it is the first time he seems actively aware of it, and that makes it something to note.

But it's not the time for that; right now, we have a funeral we have to attend. I made sure Jim was the one driving (not that he doesn't most of the time anyway, but with my current emotional state, it's better to be safe than sorry), and for the rest of the afternoon felt like the world was made of Jell-o and fog. In fact, the only reason I was even marginally okay was because I knew Jim was there – would always be there – and he'd never let me fall. He was, is, will-be my Blessed Protector.

I didn't remember coming back to the Loft, and I didn't remember taking a shower, but one minute I'm in the row of pews at the funeral, and the next I'm stepping out of a steaming shower. Greif does funny things to people. I decided against getting dressed, instead just throwing a pair of sweats on; Jim would want answers, and the best way to do that would just be to show him.

"Jim?" I murmured, confident he would hear me, wherever he was in the building, "Can you meet me in the living room? There's something I need to show you."

I was sure I made a sorry sight, wet, long hair knotted about my shoulders, still a bit damp myself from the shower, lost expression. When Jim turned around – he'd just been in the kitchen – he opened his mouth, probably to ask if I was okay. Only a worried, "Cheif?..." made it out before he trailed off, and I watched his eyes widen in shock, then narrow in concentration. He stepped forward until we were close enough to touch, and raised his hand as though to do just that, before going still and cautious.

"It's alright, Jim. You can touch; they don't hurt." I grabbed his hand and pressed it to my chest in invitation. I couldn't remember the path of my old wounds, but his fingers could apparently find them, because the next thing I knew, his feather-light touch was tracing apparently random lines on my skin. We stood like that for ten minutes, as he painstakingly walked around me, touching every scar he could see or feel., going so far as to kneel and roll up my pant-legs, too. At last he spoke, and his voice crackled with emotion.

"Who…? What? Why, Blair?" he gasped.

"Well, big guy, this is the last of my secrets; once you know this, you know everything there is to know about me." I sighed, sitting down on the couch. "It all started back in '85, when I convinced Naomi to let me go to college…"

Over the course of my story, somehow or another, I wound up with my head on Jim's shoulder, and his arms wrapped protectively around me, as though to protect me from the demons' of my past. Reliving my torture was… unpleasant, to say the least, but with Jim there, I felt like I could do anything. It took long into the night – and considering we had been granted grieving leave from work, because I needed it and where one of us went, so too did the other follow, it wasn't that big a deal – and by the end of it, I had cried more than I thought possible.

"… and when I met you, the PhD for Sentinels was busy work. I'd simply found the most obscure thing I could research, so that it could occupy my time, keep me from dwelling on my past – finding you wasn't even like finding that needle in a haystack, because I wasn't looking. It was more like stepping on an old arrowhead on an innocent stroll down the riverbank. You kept me going, man; you still do. And now you know practically everything there is to know about me."

I shifted, pulling out of his grip, and looked him in the eye for the first time since I began reciting my life-story, nervous as all get-out, "Are… are you mad at me? For – for keeping this from you?"

"Blair!" he yelped, and I couldn't help the flinch that his volume, in conjunction with my stirred up memories, caused. Instantly, his hand was cupping my face, soothing and gentle, "No, no, Blair. Shh, Chief. It's alright, I'm not gonna hurt you. It's okay – I could never hate you for this. No, shh, it's okay."

I think I'm the only person he could ever show this side to. I know, at any rate, that I want to be.

When Jim leans forward and rests his forehead against mine, all of his movements slow and calm, I can't help myself – I need to know this one last thing. If Jim can offer me the comfort that drowning myself in distracting women couldn't, when he already offers me the ultimate of what I need in all other aspects of our current relationship. I lean forward the rest of the way and kiss him.

It's a bit awkward, when our noses get in the way, but we manage a slow, chaste brushing of lips. It's only after we've parted that I realize Jim had actively participated. I look up and see his vivid blue eyes pinning me down with surprise, affection, and adoration.

That's the last straw – tonight I've gone to the funeral of the man who saved my life, revealed my darkest secret to the only man I'd trust to do so, and found out that he might have the same kind of feelings for me as I have for him. I can feel the tears spilling down my cheeks again, as I let loose a watery laugh and bury my face in Jim's chest. Even without hearing his voice, I can feel the renewed concern and slight fear in the way that he gingerly wraps his arms around me. The stress is taking its toll, and I'm falling asleep where I sit, but I have just enough energy for one more thing.

"Hey, man – I'm overwhelmed. Think you could wait until morning to tell me just when you realized you had feelings for me? And maybe you could add an explanation for when you – Mister Stoic – decided it'd be okay to actually act on them given the chance? This isn't over, but I'm… I'm tired, Jim. I'm done tonight. I'm so damn tired! Please don't leave!"

I'm babbling even as I'm sinking. Good job, Sandburg, nice way to start the first relationship that means something to you since you were 16 years old! But as I lose my last grip on consciousness, I can almost swear I hear a rumbling answer deep in the chest pressed to my ear, "Sleep, Chief. I won't let you go now that I have you. We'll talk whenever you're ready."

My Blessed Protector.