Whether 'tis Nobler...
A Shakespearean Tragedy

by Freya-Kendra


Melissa Cleary gently pushed aside a strand of Blair's wayward hair. 

"To be, or not to be," she said softly, her sharp blue eyes gazing longingly into his.  "That really is the question, isn't it?  Yours is a noble soul, Blair Sandburg.  So tell me: is it nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them?  Hmm?"

He gazed back at her in shock and confusion.  He wanted to reply, to at least ask her what she had done to him, but his tongue was useless.  The only sound he could make was a muted grunt.

Seeming oblivious to his plight, she rose, closing her eyes and sniffing the air in a deep inhalation. Blair could almost believe she was relishing the scent of dead fish. 

"Just think about that for a minute," she continued, her attention finally focused away from him. 

Still, it was no use.  Whatever she had dosed him with, it left him unable to move.  His arms were leaden weights. 

"To die," she added distantly, "to sleep -- to end the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.  It really is a consummation devoutly to be wished, is it not?"  She hugged her arms around herself and spun back to face him, a wide smile reminding Blair of her former self, a woman he had once thought he might be starting to love. 

"Oh, yes!"  She shouted in exuberance.  "To sleep."  She laughed, even as her gaze grew sad and dark.  "Perchance to dream."

In an instant she was kneeling beside him again.  She eased herself downward, placing her elbows on the ground and propping her chin in her hands.  With her face mere inches from his, Blair noticed that her warm breath was still scented with cabernet.

"What do you think, Blair?  In that sleep of death, what dreams may come, hmm?" 

Giggling, she changed positions until she was lying on her side next to him.  She pressed her hand inside his shirt and ran her fingers along his shoulder. His nerves were too numb to take notice. 

"Once we have shuffled off this mortal coil," she whispered, her eyes softening as though with desire.  "When the flesh no longer matters, what dreams may come, my love?  What dreams may come?"  

She kissed him, and Blair felt himself slipping.  Although he realized he might soon know the answer to her question, he was just too tired to care.

* * *

"Romeo?"

Blair shivered from a damp chill that seemed to have seeped right into his bones.  A cold, wet breeze stirred his hair and brushed his cheek.  Somewhere through the fog of his thoughts, a seagull cried.

"Romeo?"  Melissa's hushed voice broke through.  "Wherefore art thou?"  She sobbed.

Fear forced Blair's eyes open.  Barely giving himself a chance to reconnect with his dank surroundings, he came awake in an instant.  Scrambling to rise -- belatedly aware that he could -- he steadied himself against the rotted wood of the old shack's sodden wall. 

Melissa sat against the wall opposite him, her hands wrapped around her bare knees.  Blair saw that she had stripped down to her bra and panties.  Her jeans lay on the wet floor before her.  Her shirt and jacket were bundled together in the corner.  Oddly, she did not appear to be aware of the cold.  In fact, she did not appear to be aware of much of anything at all.  Still, she was aware of him.  Her eyes locked onto his.

"Deny thy father and refuse thy name," she begged him.  "Or be but sworn my love and I'll no longer be a Capulet." 

"Me ... Melissa," Blair called out hoarsely.  He cleared his throat and slowly approached her.  Still weak, his legs felt rubbery.  He stumbled more than walked across the sand encrusted floor, and then landed on his knees just an arm's length away from her.  "Melissa?"

The look she gave him was confused.

"I'll get help," he offered.  He reached out to touch her, but hesitated.  Instead, he turned his attention to the bundle in the corner and grabbed her jacket, revealing the empty wine bottle that had been buried beneath it.  Blair shook his head.  Whatever had happened, whatever she had done to him, it was all over now.  There was nothing she could do in this state.

"You must be freezing," he said as he wrapped the jacket around her shoulders.

She smiled sadly at him.  "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" She said.  "Thou art more lovely, and more temperate.  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May; and summer's lease hath all too short a date."

Blair laughed nervously.  "That ... that's--"

"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines," she continued, "and often is his gold complexion dimmed."

"Okay," Blair tried to interrupt.  "I'm just going to step outside; try to find some help."

Her gaze remained on him, yet she did not seem to hear him.  "Every fair from fair sometime declines, through chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed."

"Yeah," Blair said to himself as he rose and made his way to the door.

"But thy eternal summer shall not fade," Melissa called after him, her voice rising and her words coming more quickly, more desperately.  "Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest." 

Unnerved, Blair pressed the door open.

"Nor shall death wanderst in thy shade," Melissa shouted. 

She began crying.  It was a hopeless sound that stopped Blair cold.

"Blair?"  She called out to him.  "I'm so sorry, Blair."

Turning back toward her, he saw that she had begun rocking back and forth. 

"I couldn't do it," she sobbed.  "I wanted to, but I couldn't do it.  I just wanted you to be with me forever.  But you -- you don't want me.  I just wanted you to love me.  But ...  You don't.  You don't love me, do you Blair?"

Torn by guilt and compassion, Blair stood frozen in the doorway.  He opened his mouth to speak, but could not find appropriate words.  "I'll get help," he said after a moment.

"No," she cried.  "It's too late.  Too ... too late."

At first Blair thought she was hiccupping.  But as her jerking movements grew more pronounced, he realized she was going into convulsions.

"Oh god."  He rushed over to her.  "Melissa?"  Uncertain how to help, he eased her to the wet ground and then noticed the empty bottle of pills she had tucked behind her.  "Oh god," he said again.  Instinct told him to induce vomiting; but how?  He didn't exactly have a spare bottle of ipecac lying around, and if he stuck his fingers in her mouth now -- if he could even manage to pry her teeth apart -- she was liable to bite them off.

"Oh god," he repeated softly before screaming, "help!  Somebody help me!"

He rushed to the door.  "Help!  Somebody call 911!" 

Bolting through, he slammed into a solid wall.

"Chief?"  A familiar voice responded as the wall enfolded him in a welcome, secure embrace.  "It's me Chief."

"Jim?  Oh god.  Thank god."  But Blair's relief was short-lived.  "She OD'd Jim.  I think she's dying."

* * *

"And the rest is silence," Blair said softly as he watched them wrap Melissa's lifeless body in plastic.

"You sure you're okay, Sandburg?" Jim asked for the thousandth time.

"I'm fine," Blair yet again repeated.  Clutching tightly to the blanket an EMT had given him, he could not take his eyes off of Melissa's cold shroud.

"You had us pretty worried there.  From what we were able to piece together, she had some wild, romantic notion about--"

"Yeah, Jim," Blair cut him off.  "I know."

"When we found her boat banged up on the rocks ...."  Jim seemed unable to finish his statement. 

Blair decided to bail him out.  "She said the steering wheel locked up on her.  I guess that was just a ruse."

"I'd say so."

"We actually laughed about it afterwards.  Even tried to have a little picnic on the beach, since we figured we'd be stuck until daylight.  When it started raining, we went into that old shack.  She pulled out a bottle of cabernet, and ...."  Now it was Blair's turn to let the rest go unsaid.

"And?"  Jim's look was insistent -- and concerned.

"And, I don't know.  She spiked it somehow.  I thought ...."  He took a deep breath.  "I started to pass out, and I ... I honestly didn't know if I was going to wake up."

"She drugged you?"  Jim prodded, his body noticeably tensing as he fell into full protector mode.

Blair shrugged. 

"Then you damn well better get yourself checked out."

"It wore off, Jim.  I'm fine.  She ... she said she couldn't go through with it."

**'I wanted to, but I couldn't do it,'**  Blair remembered her telling him.  **'I just wanted you to be with me forever.  But you -- you don't want me.  I just wanted you to love me.  But ...  You don't.  You don't love me, do you Blair?'**

"Thank god for small favors," Jim said softly.  A moment later the sentinel wrapped an arm around Blair's shoulders and began to pull the younger man toward an EMT.

"I said I'm fine, Jim."

"Yeah, you did.  You also said Melissa Cleary was at the top of her class.  I'm guessing she never told you she flunked out of that performing arts school back east."

"You're not serious."

"Dead serious."  Jim paused for a moment, and then added, "You know Chief, you have a pretty lousy record with women.  What do you say you let me do a background check next time *before* you actually start dating someone?"

"What?  No way."

"It would save us all a lot of trouble, not to mention the tax dollars required for these rescues you put us through.  We'd never have to worry again about kidnapping, murder-suicide, or anything else your dates want to cook up for you."

"Come on.  You can't fault me for a mistake or two." 

A moment later, Blair stopped walking.  It took all of his strength to hold his ground against Jim's forceful nudging. 

"Melissa wasn't a bad person, Jim," he said once he had his partner's full attention.  "Messed up, yes. Confused, absolutely.  But she wasn't a bad person.  She wouldn't have hurt me."

"She intended to, Blair."

"Maybe, but she didn't.  When it came down to it, she couldn't."

"She crashed that boat -- could have killed you both right then and there."

Blair thought about that for a long while, and then shook his head.  "I don't think so, Jim.  I think she was in control the whole time.  I think she knew exactly what she was doing, at least until...."  He shrugged, suddenly feeling exhausted.

"If you say so, Chief."

"Don't Jim."

"What?"

"Don't patronize me," Blair shot back angrily.  "Melissa's dead.  She's dead, Jim.  I should have been able to stop her.  I should have known--"  Too tired to fight it, Blair let his eyes fill with tears.

"How could you?" Jim interrupted.  "You couldn't, Blair.  Short of getting right inside her head, there was no way you could have known what was going on in there.  I know you, Blair.  You like to see the best in people, and I think that's great.  But you're not naive, either.  You might ignore faults, but you don't overlook them.  You accept them.  If anyone could have seen that she was unstable, you could have."  Jim paused, letting his tension ease.  "You know," he added casually then, "she must have been a damn good actress after all."

Jim squeezed Blair's shoulder.  Whether it was in compassion or admiration, Blair felt comforted by that small action.  The resulting wave of relief buckled his knees, but his sentinel would not let him fall.  Minutes later, he was en route to the hospital.  He didn't even bother to argue.

* * *

Several weeks passed before Blair started to let go of his own guilt. Jim was right -- had been right since the beginning. Melissa took her own life. Blair could not accept responsibility for something so far beyond his control. She had shown him only one face, one which reflected confidence and passion. How could he have known it had been a mask all along, and her real face was kept hidden away in the dark reaches of her soul?

**'She must have been a damn good actress after all,'** Jim had said.

**Yeah,** Blair realized finally. Melissa must have been acting from the moment Blair had met her at that off-campus hang-out, a small jazz club frequented by performing arts students. She had introduced herself as a recent graduate who was looking to start life fresh on another coast.

How long had it been before she began to believe that starting a new life meant literally bringing this one to an end? Had she come to Cascade to die -- or was it meeting Blair that had prompted her suicide plans?

**'Don't go there, Sandburg,'** Jim had insisted -- passionately and angrily -- when Blair had shared these thoughts. **'You cannot take responsibility for anyone else's actions. Her decision was her own. It was not about you -- it never was. It was about her, and no one else. In fact, meeting you might just have prevented her from acting sooner.'**

**'Thanks, Jim,'** Blair said yet again in the recesses of his mind. Somehow Cascade's great sentinel had sensed exactly what it was Blair had needed to hear. Maybe, just maybe, Blair had actually helped to prolong Melissa's life rather than trigger her thoughts of death.

"You sure you don't want me to go with you?" Jim asked now as he stopped the truck and shifted into park.

Blair smiled. "I'm sure." Then, taking a deep breath, he stepped out.

It took only a few minutes to find Melissa's grave. Blair's gaze was quickly drawn by the photo of her that graced her headstone. She was smiling, the mask she had shown him fully in place, and Blair could not help but smile back. Nor could he help but wonder whether the face she had tried to show him had been her real one after all -- or at least one she had wanted desperately to make real.

"So long as men can breathe and eyes can see," he found himself reciting, "so long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

He placed a single, red rose on the ground.

"Sweet dreams," he said as he gently touched his hand to the stone.

And then he turned away, confident that he could face whatever slings and arrows outrageous fortune plotted to send his way. After all, he had faced more than his share already in his work with Jim and the Cascade PD, yet it felt pretty damn good to know he had helped to get bad guys off the streets. In fact, you might even call it noble.

<end>