Silence and Tears

Sentinel Fanfiction
Title:	Silence and Tears
Author(s):	Charlotte Frost
Date(s):	12/04/04
Length:	45k 23pgs
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	The Sentinel
External Links:	online here online at AO3
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Silence and Tears is a Sentinel story by Charlotte Frost.

Author's summary: "Gratuitous hurt/comfort."

Author's Comments

In spring of 2004, I was reading a whole bunch of gruesome hurt-Blair stories, where I found the related angst and comfort to be somewhat unsatisfying. It made me long for a more “simple” h/c story, where hospitals and doctors don’t interfere, where there isn’t months or years of recovery, where the hurt one isn’t unconscious or doped on drugs a good part of the time, and where the guys aren’t separated for a long time. So, I wrote this story as a more basic, raw h/c, with the accent on the comfort.

I was concerned that there was too much exposition about injury locations and small movements and such (things I call “stage directions”); plus, by the time the guys were safely home, I wanted the story to be “bigger”. So, it sat for a time while I fiddled around with an angsty morning after that could lead into a much larger plot. Nothing seemed to be working, and I wanted this to be part of the final group of stories I was posting at the end of 2004. So, feeling a sense of failure, I let it end when the guys came home, and I described it as “gratuitous h/c” because that’s what it was. Over time, I’ve gotten past my disappointment, and I tend to read this myself when I’m in the mood for raw h/c. In fact, I often wish I could “do that again” – yet, without repeating myself.

(You know how scientists say that petting an animal lowers the blood pressure of human beings? I feel the comfort in h/c stories has the same effect.)

There’s a line in this story where Blair tells Jim, “I just wanted somebody to hold me.” I stole that from an actual news interview with a tough, burley mountain climber, who was telling about his ordeal, portrayed in the then-just-released movie “Touching the Void”. (An outstanding documentary/movie, by the way, of the fight for survival, and all the more compelling because the actual mountain climbers are the ones narrating, so you know their words are true.) As soon as I heard that mountain climber say that’s what he was thinking when he realized the rope had been cut and he had little hope of surviving, I was eager to use it in a story. I think those words give pause in the face of self-proclaimed characterization buffs who insist that our tough characters would “never say/do that”, while experiencing a life-or-death situation.