Leave It
| Sentinel Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Leave It |
| Author(s): | Rachel Martin |
| Date(s): | 2000 |
| Length: | |
| Genre: | pre-slash Jim, Blair, and OFC (female soldier) |
| Fandom: | The Sentinel |
| External Links: | Leave It |
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Leave It is a Sentinel story by Rachel Martin.
Reactions and Reviews
This is an Alternative Universe story in which Jim and Blair meet in South America just before Jim goes to Peru. I'm not quite sure of what to say about this one. It is not warm and fuzzy. It is gritty, a little sordid, definitely rated AO. It is also well-written, enthralling, absorbing. Undoubtedly different. This is Army-Jim here, man with no home but the army, military crew-cut regulation and all. And Blair is showing his mother's influence... they dislike each other on sight. And yet... something is drawing them together. The Sentinel is already out of the box...This is more about Jim than about Blair; told from his point of view, and the story has already been rolling a while when Blair comes on the scene. It also seems much more realistic in regard to Army life; this stuff is serious (and sordid). Take heed of the rating.
Unfortunately, we seem to be left up in the air; it ended too soon. Or at least, ended too soon if one was interested in what happened to Jim and Blair, instead of just Jim. I'm left wondering if we're just expected to assume that things happened the same way as in canon, that Jim went off to Peru and got shot down... missed it by that much. I don't know.
Read it if you want something different.[1]
The time line for the series has always driven me crazy. At the beginning of the series, Jim has been a cop for five years. In those five years, he recovers from his 18 months in Peru, has R&R in Bali and meets Lila, goes to the Academy, spends the requisite time as a uniformed police officer, makes detective, meets, marries, and divorces Carolyn, works in both Vice and Major Crimes, establishes himself enough to work alone and call his own shots, and becomes Simon's trusted friend. All in five years. The mind boggles.But even more boggling is that while he must have spent at least 10 years as a soldier, we hear so very little about this time in his life. Certainly he doesn't tell the kind of stories from his time as a soldier as he does about his earlier years as a cop, such as the story he tells Drennan about seeing his partner get shot or about Quinn killing Brody.
Jim as a soldier, in extreme conditions, covert ops, etc., just fascinates me. I love Soldier!Jim stories. This story, "Leave It", is one of the best of this genre. Jim is competent, conflicted, disillusioned, and pretty sure he is going insane because he is seeing and hearing things that he really shouldn't be able to see or hear.
Blair shows up and stumbles into a very bad situation and the chemistry between them is there, but offset with Jim being focused on everything else but this annoying American hippie kid who Jim has to get safely out of the jungle.
This story is intense, realistic, gritty, sad, and one hell of a ride.[2]