Someone spent a little too much time watching Brimstoneand trying to make sense of Sentinel Too...
"Without love, you and I would both be out of a job."
--The Devil, Brimstone
"He doesn't love you, you know. I don't know why you bothered coming back..."
"Shut up."
"I could change that, you know. If you wanted me to. I'd throw it in... a freebie!"
"You know I don't want that," he mutters to the television.
"I don't get you, Sandburg." Lucifer stands up, walks around the couch, sits down just a little too close.
"I mean, most people who offer up their souls? They want money, power, sex... but you? You're willing to spend an eternity in hellfire just for a lifetime of cheap meals, police work and verbal abuse."
He leans back. "That's why I let you, you know. I don't make many deals... and the others are so petty. But you? You wanted to stay for him. Now granted, you've got to have a massive ego to believe you're that important to him, but still... I'm afraid I just don't understand it."
"You don't have to." He gives up and turns the TV off, turns to Lucifer. "Look, what do you want?"
"Nothing, really, just checking in," he says, with that false, honeyed casualness he has. "Seeing how you were..."
"Well, you've checked. You've seen," he snaps, gesturing at himself, the apartment. "Shouldn't you be going now?"
"I just hate to see you so unhappy, Mr. Sandburg. I mean, generally, people make deals with me because they want to be happier. If you keep being miserable like this, it could very well ruin my reputation."
"I could really give--"
"Now, now, Mr. Sandburg. Surely you don't want to lose your temper, when all I'm doing is looking out for your happiness. I mean, really, if there's anything-- and I mean anything-- I can do..."
"You can stay the hell away from me!" Sandburg jumps off the couch, hands flailing, eyes flashing. "Don't you have enough already? You've got my ass for the rest of eternity after this-- isn't that enough? Can't you just leave me alone for the rest of my pathetic life?"
"Life?" Lucifer asks, his voice suddenly sharp. "Life?"
"Life, death, whatever this is-- why can't you leave me to it?"
"Honestly? Because... you intrigue me, Blair Sandburg." Lucifer walks over to the couch, stretches over it, catlike. "I mean, what kind of mental disorder encourages someone to come back from the dead-- giving up his mortal soul in the process, I might add-- for a place in the world where he's not wanted?"
"Me," Blair styas, throwing up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Me, okay?"
"You really love him that much." Lucifer's voice is thoughtful, calculating.
"So what if I do?"
"And you really think you're the only one who can keep him safe."
"Well, I haven't exactly seen a lot of people lining up, you know?"
"Why should they, Mr. Sandburg, when most of them don't even know that Sentinels exist?"
Blair folds his arms against his chest, doing his best to ignore the Devil's rising voice.
"Do you know what would have happened, Mr. Sandburg, if you had rightfully died that day?" Lucifer is on his feet in a moment, pacing around Blair with feral, predatory grace. "James Ellison would have married again; a woman willing, wanting to be his Guide, a pretty blonde, in her thirties. They would have had two children-- Anna and Jacob, I'm sure you'll be flattered to know-- and lived quite a happy life until Jim died quietly in his sleep at the ripe old age of fifty-six."
Blair bites his lower lip. "And now, he still dies at fifty-six?
"Indeed he does."
Blair's voice is thin and bitter. "Only no wife, no kids. Nothing. Just a hairbrained anthropologist who followed him around for well over a decade and happened to die on the very same day."
"Exactly. You're catching on... naturally, your diaries and anything else appropriate will be purged of any mention of our little... arrangement. I was thinking about going with that pseudo-romantic drivel Ellison has in his head about your animal spirits saving one another, but if you've got a better suggestion..."
"I suggest," Blair says coldly, "that you leave me to my miserable existence, all right?"
"All right, Mr. Sandburg, I'll take my leave of you... but do remember my offer. And do give my regards to Detective Ellison, won't you?"
"Fuck off," Blair growls, but something--
Someone shaking him--
"Chief?"
"Jim?"
"Chief, are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah," Blair shakes him off. "I'm okay... must've fallen asleep in front of the TV... just a nightmare..."
"You sure you're okay?" Jim asks, and Blair becomes aware of Jim's hands, brushed off from his forearms but now resting on his shoulders, solid, real, alive. "Your heart's pounding..."
"Yeah," Blair says, sucking in breath-- he was breathing, could breathe, needed to breathe... "... it was one hell of a nightmare."
"I could hear you upstairs," and now Jim's pushing the hair back from his face. "Sounded pretty bad... that's why I came down..."
"Thanks..." He reaches out, lets his hand rest on Jim's arm. "I... I think I ought to get to bed."
"You need a hand?"
"I'm okay."
"You sure?"
"Yeah," he says, getting up uneasily. "I'm sure."
But he lets Jim help him into bed, get the light.
"Thanks," he says, as he lets himself drift back into sleep, but Jim's already back in the living room.
"Huh," he almost thinks he hears Jim say. "That's funny... almost smells like sulphur..."
As you know, The Sentinel is the property of Pet Fly Productions, and Brimstone belongs to Warner Brothers. It's all done for love and I'm not making any money, blah, blah... Watch both shows on SciFi. It'll be good for ya.
