A wind rattled the window pane of the loft, and Blair felt like he had Sentinel hearing as the sound echoed against the bare walls, bare because Blair had already packed up his tribal masks and woven rugs. He'd labeled those with the address of the anthropology department at Rainer since he didn't feel like he could hold on to that part of him that had been an anthropologist up to that day when he'd renounced his life's work.

Nope, it was time to detach with love. Blair glanced up at the loft at the thought of the word, but Jim remained silent as he had since opening the door and standing frozen like a statue in his own doorway reviewing the disaster in his living room. Blair had sorted his belongings into piles that lazily sprawled around the room.

When Blair looked up with his heart beating wildly, he admitted to himself that he had wanted Jim to scream or curse and slam him into the wall and demand answers. He knew how to handle that. He wanted to shock Jim into that. Instead Jim walked over to the fridge, grabbed a beer and disappeared upstairs. Blair stood with a t-shirt still half folded and dangling from his hand, and his last hope had died.

After finishing with the packing and the labeling, Blair sat down and waited for the movers. He knew the guys from the station would help, but he hadn't even told them he was quitting. The look of resigned acceptance in Simon's face had precluded the idea of trying to face the others. Nope, he would just disappear from their lives the same way he'd shown up: no explanation and no excuses.

Less than an hour later, Blair watched as the movers carried out the last box. The books would be stored, the clothes were shoved in the back of his Cavalier, the keys…. Blair looked down at the keys in his hand. They weren't his anymore. Blair slowly pulled the key ring apart.

Jim's loft key dropped into the basket. Jim's extra truck key. The spare key for Jim's locker at work. The key to the basement storage room. The key to Jim's desk down at the precinct. As each key fell, it made a small clinking noise as it hit the others. He had no idea when he'd started carrying so many pieces of Jim's life, but Jim wouldn't share the one key Blair needed, and it wasn't healthy for either of them to keep lying their way through life. Blair took one last anguished look up at the bedroom, but the silence remained like this huge wall refusing him entrance into the inner sanctum of Jimdom.

Right. The end. It'd been a good run, but it was time for him to move on.

Blair turned the lock on the knob of the door and closed it. As he walked out to the street, Blair realized two things. First, his soul would never really recover from the Jim-sized injury that had left him in bleeding shreds. Second, Naomi was right, every end was a beginning. Now he just had to find some place where he could begin again.

Middle, halfway, equidistant. Blair rolled those words around in his head except that they implied that he was not only leaving something but also going to something. You couldn't have a halfway without two ends. While his heart ached at what he was leaving behind, Blair still had no idea where he was going to. Naomi would be proud; he had detached. Blair's mind played with the words as the road and rocked him into numbness.

Middle, heart, midriff. The center of Blair's pain, and never before had he understood the phrase heartbreak, but he sure did now because, man, his body ached from trying to contain his brittle agony and anger and fear and loss.

Middle class, middle ground, middle of the road. Blair had always walked the edges, but he would have given up the nipple ring and the hair and the attitude if he could have recovered the relationship he once had with Jim. Instead he got to keep the nipple ring and hair and attitude and walk away before they destroyed each other, and god he hated being the responsible one who took action before they ended up in some emotional disaster from which neither could recover.

Middle finger, which he would love to show Jim right now. Smack dab in the middle again, and Blair figured that his emotions were in such turmoil that saying applied fairly well, too.

The middle of nowhere. Oh, the sign had been terribly wrong. He wasn't in the middle of nowhere—he was in the middle of everything. He just didn't know how he was supposed to navigate without Jim. In the absence of Jim's strength and stability, Blair didn't try to navigate, he just let the road lead him south, away from the source of both his dreams and his grief.

Blair listened to the radio complain about the unseasonable heat in May, and Blair was grateful to know that 107 wasn't normal for May, not that it made him any cooler right now. Dripping sweat, the mechanic stood and upended a gallon jug of water before disappearing back under the hood of a minivan. Blair looked around for some place where he could cheaply sit in air-conditioning. The Denny's on the corner won his business by advertising their 2.99 meals.

The cold air hit Blair like the blast from an open freezer, and he shivered for a second before slipping into the dim interior which smelled of burnt grease and stale smoke. Even though a sign asked that he wait to be seated, Blair slipped past the hostess' podium and found a quiet booth in the back. Really he just wanted the cold air, so if he could go unnoticed, he was just as happy to save the money.

Blair slumped in the booth, his feet finding the seat on the far side and his head leaning against the warm glass of the tinted window. He was just so fucking tired. Tired of running, tired of pretending he wasn't dying inside, tired of wondering what Jim was doing. Just because he was doing the right thing didn't mean it didn't still hurt.

Blair had reached the land of half doze when an angry voice woke him up with a shouted demand for the cash. Blair had slithered to the floor under the table before his conscious mind could even catch up. Of course that same instinctive part of him also grabbed for his cell phone to call Jim. He got all the way to the four and the one before he angrily jabbed at the 'end' button and dialed again using 911.

In the lowest voice he thought the operator could hear, Blair gave the location, described the man, guessed at the two different types of gun the suspect might be using since Blair didn't feel like standing up to get a better look at the weapon. He provided the numbers of hostages, including himself. He described the hostages since he didn't have their names as he waited for the police to arrive. Unfortunately, the suspect started for the door before Blair heard any sirens.

Crawling below the level of the windows, Blair scrambled to a glowing emergency exit sign hanging over a glass door. Watching as the suspect ran down the side of the building, Blair timed his move.

As the suspect came close, Blair slammed the door open. The restaurant alarm system went off with a shrill blast, and the suspect went down with a bloody nose and a lot of swearing. Blair dived for the gun with a curse of his own. Oh yeah, he thought to himself as he leveled the weapon at the would-be thief.

The officers at the scene had cuffed Blair since he was the one holding the gun when they showed up, but they cuffed the scruffy dude with the blood dripping down from his nose too, so that was okay. Blair looked at the reflective surface of the window and realized that he looked a lot like scruffy guy minus the nosebleed. His face was dark with stubble, his hair slightly shiny with grease, and his clothing rumpled and somewhat smelly.

"So, you called in the 911?" a detective asked. Blair leaned back against the white car and watched as the mechanic left his little Cavalier with its hood up in order to lean against the building and watch the show. And it really was quite a show. In Cascade you had to blow up a building to get this many cops in one place.

"Yeah, man. Not really much else I could do at that point."

"But you took it into your hands to attack the suspect with a door," the detective sounded aggravated and Blair shifted his shoulders to try and reduce the strain from the handcuffs.

"Any port in a storm," he offered with a shrug. "Took on an armed bank robbery suspect with a handful of baseballs once." Blair remembered that night at the loft. Jim had gone ballistic in his Jim-way which included a lecture given in dark tones barely louder than a whisper and a jaw muscle that that twitched madly. Of course by that Friday Jim had gotten past the fear and had slapped him on the back while telling the story to the guys who had come over for poker. Blair had seen admiration in Jim's eyes, acceptance even. This time he wouldn't get the lecture or the slap on the back.

"You an officer?" the man asked.

"Was," Blair admitted. "Worked Major Crimes up in Cascade." Blair could see the doubt rise in the tall man's eyes.

"Oh man, don't even look at me like that. The hair and the earrings meant I could go places other cops couldn't even get in the door. I have a minor in psychology and a Master's degree in anthropology, so cut the snap judgment crap," Blair snarled. He'd been doing more of that lately than he used to.

"You always have this much attitude?" the tall man asked as he crossed his arms over his chest. Blair felt his anger slide away leaving him just tired, tired and lost.

"Not usually. I used to be the good cop half of the partnership," Blair said quietly. Used to be… that still hurt.

"Why'd you leave Cascade?" The detective's voice made Blair really pay attention for the first time. These were not the questions he had expected.

"I didn't like the cold," Blair answered guardedly.

"No other reason? Nothing on your record?"

"Oh man. No no, no. You are *not* putting this down as some overzealous ex-cop going postal. Man, I had the cleanest record in the department, well aside from a small illegal wire tap," Blair added the last part as an afterthought since he didn't know whether his transgressions as an observer had found their way into his official file. Then again, any investigation of his background would reveal something far more damning than a wiretap.

"You looking for work?" the man asked after staring for so long that Blair was starting to get paranoid.

"You always handcuff people before making an offer?" Blair shot back. He didn't want to deal with this right now. He was still processing the end of everything, he wasn't ready for a beginning.

"After I lost three officers to IA, I may have to handcuff people to get them to listen. We're not the most popular department right now." As the man spoke, he used a hand on Blair's arm to turn him so that Blair leaned stomach first into the car as the officer removed the cuffs. "I'm Captain Roth, by the way."

Blair turned back around rubbing his wrist lightly before returning the offered handshake. The man's dark eyes squinted in the bright sun and his blond hair had more grey than blond, which matched the deep wrinkles that outlined his eyes. The hand that gripped Blair's own was calloused, and the man wore his shirtsleeves pushed up to show dark sunspots on his forearms. Blair searched the man for some sign that this was some cosmic joke and he just wasn't getting the punchline.

"Blair Sandburg," he finally offered. "I worked with Captain Banks up in Cascade. Call around before you make the offer. I'll be in town a few days." Blair glanced around and then amended his own statement. "Oh man, if that mechanic doesn't start working, I may be in town several days," Blair nodded across the sea of flashing lights to where the mechanic still leaned against the white brick building as he watched the action.

"I need you to come down to the station to sign a statement and fill out some paperwork so we can contact you," Roth said with guarded expression of his own.

"Yeah, man, I know the drill," Blair muttered as he opened the car door and got into the front seat where Roth had gestured. As Blair watched his own car disappear in the review mirror, he wondered whether this was a beginning or whether a quick background check would lead to one more end. Blair leaned his head against the warm glass as he decided that he was just too tired to care any more.