Through
Another's Eyes
by Freya-Kendra
Rating: PG
Summary: Blair discovers that sometimes it's easier to examine your own life
when you're looking at someone else's.
Through Another's Eyes Posted: January, 2005
*Sometimes we can't truly see ourselves until the mirror
wears another's eyes.
"I envy you, Blair
Sandburg."
Blair was not sure he heard his
friend right. He gave the woman a sad smile as he repeatedly stabbed his straw
into the ice in his soft-drink glass. "Yeah," he answered cynically.
"You envy a rookie-cop and has-been academic who can't even afford to live
on his own while most of his peers are raising kids and paying off
mortgages."
His friend, a thirty-something
brunette with penetrating green eyes, laughed softly. "I envy a man who
has never been and never will be afraid to forge new ground, explore new territory."
"Blair," she leaned into
the table, both hands gripping the iced-tea glass before her as though she was
afraid to let it go. Her eyes danced awkwardly from meeting his gaze to
studying the tabletop and back again. "You always knew what you wanted to
do with your life. I used to envy you for that. And now...."
With a quick shake of her head, she
let go of the glass and settled back into her chair. "I never knew what I
wanted to do," she added before Blair had a chance to argue. "I went
to college for no reason other than the fact that a scholarship miraculously
fell into my lap. Even then, I didn't have a clue what I should declare as a
major. I settled on Fine Arts. I never felt passionate about it. And then I
fell into a career that had absolutely nothing to do with my degree only
because I happened to answer the right ad at the right time. But you...."
Her smile returning, she finally
gave Blair her full attention. "Your passion precedes you wherever you go,
whatever you do. You focus it into anything that falls in your path. Even now,
after you've lost that -- that slice of academia you
had focused your entire life toward obtaining, I can still see that passion in
your eyes. You are alive, Blair Sandburg, as I have always only dreamed of
being."
"Are you kidding me?" He
replied in earnest. "Look at you. You're living the American dream. You've
reached the ranks of upper management in corporate America--"
"Middle management,
Blair," she corrected. "I'm just there in the middle." She
sliced one hand horizontally through the air to emphasize her point.
"Sure. Maybe that's what your
title says. But when the CEO knows you on a first name basis and personally
requested your latest transfer--"
"He didn't request it, Blair.
He acknowledged it. There's a difference."
"The point is,
I don't think they see you as middle at all. You, Sandra Dawson, are well on
your way to becoming an executive--"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not even sure I
want that. I was perfectly content with what I was doing."
"Content? Or bored?"
Her expression turned curious, but
she gave him no answer.
"Besides that," Blair
continued, "you're already living in the kind of house most people will
only see in magazines. You've ridden the tides of fate with a passion of your
own, whether you can see that or not. You can't tell me you've accomplished all
the things you have without passion."
"Maybe." She shrugged. "Maybe there was some passion. But only
because I have an irritating, maybe even slightly masochistic tendency to put
everything I have into whatever I'm doing - at least until I get bored."
She raised her glass in a mock toast and took a sip of her tea.
As they let a moment pass in
silence, Blair watched her poke at her salad and remembered why they'd been
friends so long ago, and why they could still pick up where they left off all
these years later. They were very different people from night and day
backgrounds, but they shared a common spirit, that sense of passion, the drive
to ignite themselves into hyper-mode until they burned themselves out. Blair
knew then it wasn't boredom his friend had fallen into. It was burn-out. Was
that what it had been for him as well? Had he burned out on academia?
"I sometimes wish I hadn't been
so dead-set on anthropology," he said, breaking the prolonged silence.
"I don't know. Like maybe I should have taken a little ride of my own. Gone where the fates decided to take me,
instead of the other way around."
Surprisingly, Sandra laughed.
"Your mother did that, Blair. No one ever does what their parents
did."
"Oh,
no. What my mother did was...."
Suddenly realizing she was right, Blair chuckled too. "Well, okay. I'll
give you that one. That is what my mother did - and still does, by the way. But
you did too, really. Your fates just haven't been as psychedelic as hers."
"Uh-uh. Not me. My ride has
only been a little bit about the fates. The rest was doing what was expected of
me. Get a job. Make a living. Get married--"
Blair could tell she stopped herself
just short of adding raise a family, as he watched her gaze drop sullenly
toward her plate.
"I'm sorry, Sand," he
offered, reaching his hand across the table toward hers. "I know how much
you wanted kids."
She smiled sheepishly and shrugged,
clearly trying to mask her hurt. "It's those fates I keep riding. They have
their plans, and I have mine, but never the twain shall meet."
"That might not necessarily be
a bad thing. My plans and the fates seemed to be in perfect synch right up
until..." Blair shook his head and shrugged.
"Right up until the fates
pulled you in the direction you needed to go." Her gaze connected sharply
with his then. "Blair, you admitted yourself you were delaying your
thesis. Why? Because you knew you'd found a different path than the one you'd
always counted on. You knew it was pulling you in, but you fought it. You
fought it because it was different. Because it diverged from the one you
thought you were supposed to follow. You--"
She broke off, her eyes going wide.
"Oh, wow. Blair, I'm sorry. That was me. My path always diverged, and I
always fought it. I was supposed to be Mary Homemaker, for god's sake. I wasn't
supposed to have a career. I was supposed to raise kids and bake pies and join
the PTA. But," she shook her head. "You know what? I would never have
been happy doing all of that. You know the kind of things I've done, because I
didn't follow that path? You know the places I've seen, the friends I've made, people I never even would have met? This was just the way it
was always supposed to be. I should have stopped fighting it a long time
ago."
He smiled, feeling it right down to
his bones. "Yeah," he said tenderly. "You should have. And so
should I."
She looked at him, puzzled.
"You were talking about me,
too," he answered her unspoken question. "I should have known. I
shouldn't have fought it. The fates took me to Jim. And then they took me to a
crossroads. I should never have questioned it. Only one path would have kept me
at his side. The other...," he shrugged. "God knows where it would
have taken either one of us."
Sandra smiled back at him.
"See, Blair? This is what I miss! We were always able to help each other
find these fabulous revelations."
Amazed, Blair reached across the
table to take her hand in his once more. "We were, weren't we? So why did
you ever have to move all the way to the other side of the world?"
"The
country, not the world. And I did
it because that's where the fates took me. We know better than to question them
now, right?"
"Yeah. Right. But ... just don't wait so
long between visits anymore, okay?"
* * *
Three hours later, right about the
time when Sandra Dawson should be boarding her flight back to New York, Blair
returned to the loft with a reignited sense of purpose, and a renewed sense of
hope.
~ end~