Fic: Observations on Sentinels & Guides in Victorian London - Part Twelve (B) (PG-15)
Title: Observations in Sentinels & Guides in Victorian London
Author: Ryuuza Kochou
Pairing/Characters: Holmes/Watson
Rating: PG-15
Word Count: 3990
Spoilers: None; complete AU
Summary: A Victorian era AU where Sentinels and Guides are members of everyday society. Starring Sentinel! Holmes and Guide! Watson.
Part Twelve B: Side B, because livejournal so damn funny about too-long posts
Notes/Warnings: Adult themes, a lot of violence, light gore, man-kissing and light bad language. General badass behaviour.
Disclaimer: All owned by the estate of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and associated folk. Written for fun and not for profit
Part One:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/684238.html
Part Two:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/698815.html
Part Three:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/699151.html
Part Four:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/728249.html
Part Five:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/728426.html
Part Six:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/738373.html
Part Seven:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/752970.html
Part Eight:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/767937.html
Part Nine:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/798168.html
Part Ten:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/839282.html
Part Eleven:
http://holmeswatson09.livejournal.com/851707.html
Part Twelve A:
http://holmeswatson09.livejournal.com/859319.html
Part Twelve B:
Find a way. Find a way! Move! But Watson’s grey world had faded to black and when he tried to open his eyes again all he could see was the desert.
Sand whipped around in blinding storm, but the world itself was silent. The sun was blotted out; a faded, dim light somewhere above, but there was other light - oh, so much light. The fireflies flocked around them.
Strangerson was there too. He stood, blank faced and still in the storm, facing Watson. There was a hole where his heart should be.
No, Watson realized, not a hole. As he stepped closer. It was a mirror; small and round like his own shaving mirror. It was embedded there.
How can he speak to God, when nothing can enter his heart? Watson wondered. Who does he talk to? What gives him answers?
Watson was dimly aware he was dying. As he stepped closer, the sun dimmed further, and further.
The mirror really was quite disturbing. It reflected nothing. Every so often a firefly would bump against it, but no light would appear in that dark mirror. Nothing went in. Nothing came out. No wonder he had no signature that could be felt. He gave nothing to the world.
Above him, the sun was dimming rapidly. A desert night was falling, frigid and lonely.
Suddenly, there was sound; a crashing thunder of falling water, falling off one of the high cliffs that spearing the sky here. So much water, so much in this arid place. The sandstorm cleared enough for Watson to see the water was falling into a deep, dark sinkhole in the desert floor, surrounded by jagged rocks, and...yes, there, just faintly, the mist being thrown off the roaring falls filled up five rough clay cups. Watson shuddered, feeling sick at the memory of his torture.
He turned back to the blank faced Strangerson, and knew what he had to do. But he was repelled by the thought, disgusted. Become like that awful, evil Guide, who had slipped inside his undefended mind and forced such terrible, painful things on him? No. He listened to the souls around him because he had no choice, but he never, ever interfered with them, he never forced them. He couldn’t do that to another.
“Then you must be prepared to watch him fall,” said the voice of the old woman behind him. He could not see her even when he turned, but he knew she was there.
He looked to the cliffs where the torrents rushed and raged from, and saw the figure there, outlined in lights of the fireflies and the dying sun, standing on the edge, waters parting around him.
No. Even at the cost of everything. Never.
Watson reached deep as the last of the sun’s rays began to recede, placed his hand on Strangerson’s cold chest.
And turned the mirror around, so that it faced inward.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Lestrade had finally managed to reach the stern deck, listing off what he’d found so far. Dead Captain, check. Dead or subdued soldiers, check. Guides pouring up from below and being rapidly loaded onto boats of every nationality (and good grief, what an international tangle that would turn into), check.
There, in the shadow of the stern deck, one dead Sentinel clad in white, check. Lestrade grimaced as he looked at the man. His hands had been bent unnaturally and the famed Talons, still attached to his fingers had all been thrust through his own chest. He was laid out, an unfunny parody of a knights crypt with his hands folded over his chest, his own weapon turned on him.
One bloody, white clad Guide who was sobbing breathlessly over the body, hands cupping the battered face, check. Lestrade thought it best to just leave him be. Some levels of grief couldn’t be touched with a fathom measure. Besides, by the smell of that blood mixed with stomach acid, the Guide was not long for this world. If that had been his Sentinel, then it was kinder to let him go. Even the Catholics didn’t consider that suicide.
One bunch of white clad, shocked and pallid Guides huddled wordlessly on the deck, check. A thoroughly soiled but alive Sentinel Hope watched over them solemnly while their colleague grieved.
“Sentinel,” Lestrade muttered quietly to the foreign Sentinel and waited until Hope nodded to him. “Take them to the boats. We’ll...deal with everything back in port. Where’s Holmes?”
“Went after his Guide,” Hope whispered as he herded the white clad group past. The Sentinel did not look well. He was grey faced and his heart was as erratic as ever.
Lestrade felt a curl of unease. “He’s on the Farsight. Isn’t he?”
Hope shrugged. “Not judging by the way Holmes dove under the bow deck.”
“Damn!”
------------------------------------------------------------
Sound came back. Colour came back and was glaring, even in the bland timbers of a ship. Watson gasped and gasped and gasped sweet air, his throat making it like swallowing knives, but he sucked it in dizzily all the same. It took a minute before he could form a coherent thought and another before he found the strength to sit up.
Strangerson had scrabbled backwards across the floor and was now propped up against a crate. His face was dead white even in the poor light of the lanterns, and his mouth was moving silently while sweat poured down his face.
And he felt, oh yes - agony, pain and remorse maybe, but he definitely had a signature now. He turned white, wide eyes on Watson and gave a pleading whimper.
“Every...” Watson rasped, his throat on fire. “Every nudge of conscience you silenced. Every pang of compassion you ignored. Every cruelty and indignity and evil you told yourself was the voice of God. Did you think they were gone when you ceased to feel them? Did you think you were talking to God when you looked down into that deep well inside you, listening to your own voice echo back up?” Watson was snarling now, because some of the things he had seen and felt were...abominations. “There’s no God in there, Mister Strangerson. There never was. All there was, was you. Everything you are. Everything you’re not.”
Watson got his feet under him and, clawing at one bale, rose almost exclusively on the power of one leg. His bad knee was currently a furnace of exquisite agony. He doubted he could even hobble far.
Pained, animal noises were clawing up from Strangerson’s throat, turning to moans and cries, tears falling down his face. “Please...please....kill me.”
“I don’t owe you anything. Certainly not a kindness.” Watson muttered, turning with difficulty. God. He was so very, very tired.
There was a metallic scraping behind him, followed by a wild, animal cry. Watson turned just in time meet Strangerson’s charge and grasped the weapon he held in a feeble attempt to defend himself from the thrust.
But Strangerson had thrust handle first. Watson’s own sword was now in his hand, pointing toward a spreading patch of red under Strangersons arm, where he had thrown himself. The tear soaked smile on the man’s thin face was beautific as he crumpled over the sword. Watson, horrified, shoved him aside as he felt the man die.
Selfish bastard, Watson thought.
Clunk.
Watson looked down. Something small, silver and black had dropped from Strangerson’s hand as his body fell. It bounced along the wooden floor, glinting different colours as it began to roll.
Was that, Watson thought in disbelief, Queen Elizabeth’s Sentinel ring? He’d heard it described, of course. Silver sky-metal band within, obsidian without, ringed with gems of the five cardinal colours of the senses.
It began to roll into the gloom of the hold and Watson gamely followed it, hobbling and hopping with his bad leg, bracing himself against crates and boxes.
The ring executed an impossible seeming curve into another aisle while Watson cursed his way out of immediate lantern light. At least it was heading for a wall.
Using the point of his sword, Watson was able to stop it going further, but was forced to drop his sword as he bent to collect it. He levered off the metal off his sword point, and forced himself to rise up again, breathing hard.
The ring nearly shot out of his hand. In fact, it almost did, but as his hand shot to follow it...
Clink.
The ring had stuck fast to another ring. Which was held in another hand. Which now held Watson’s hand in his own, the two rings between their palms.
Watson looked up into the face of his Sentinel.
----------------------------------------------------------
It hurt. Everything, down to bone, blood and soul hurt. No one in the world should be capable of feeling such enormous pain. There was so much of it that it couldn’t really be comprehended. Like trying to comprehend a drop of water while you floated in an ocean.
The last shreds of Gabriel’s conscious mind contemplated this dimly while his body moved mechanically into the holds of the ship. He ignored the last stragglers traitors escaping onto the deck and the safety of the ships enemies around. He was floating - there was no more fear here, no more anger, just pain, pain, pain, too big to be really understood.
Gabriel knew how to stop the pain.
He had to join his Sentinel.
His Sentinel.
How odd. Wet trails were still cascading down his cheeks. Gabriel dimly wondered why.
He staggered into one very specific hold.
How beautiful his Sentinel had looked. How princely, even in death; noble and strong. He deserved a finest burial, to be entombed in an immortal grave, like the kings of old.
Dripping red, Gabriel raised his lantern over the lines of barrels. The rifle racks were elsewhere, but these were stored nearer to the surface, where the wet couldn’t get to them.
This stuff was useless when it was wet. His Lord had taught him that.
--------------------------------------------------------
Watson was pushed up against one wooden wall, but he scarcely knew it. His Sentinel was pressed up against him, arms around him like they were built to be there, his grip fierce and his breath warm on Watson neck.
“Oh God,” Watson breathed. “Oh God.” Watson’s mind was just gone, he couldn’t form a thought to save himself, not with his Sentinel wrapped around him like this, nuzzling his neck, hand sliding gently over minor injuries, pressing over the slice Strangerson had left him with.
Watson heard a pained whimper, and was surprised to find that it came from him. But his hand had found the sticky wounds crisscrossing his Sentinel’s body, and they were agonising to see. “You’re hurt!” he accused. Bandages, Watson though, feeling a stirring of panic. Silk in light of his skin, of course, and antiseptic because be damned if after all this he lost this magnificent Sentinel to an infection.
The Sentinel hushed him, the breath of his blowing past his ear. “Shhh. No speaking. You have no idea how very close to the edge I am, Guide. Very, very close. No speaking,” he hissed fiercely as Watson opened his mouth. “Please, please, do not speak. I can scarcely stand the smell of you and the sound of your heart beat and the sight of your eyes as it is. I am not bonding with you on this godforsaken wreck in the middle of an ocean while the entire world listens in.”
The voice was like torture - sweet, ruthless torture. Adrenaline had quenched the heat temporarily but now Watson burned, he felt the flames of it eating his defences away, leaving him exposed and naked. And he didn’t care. He couldn’t stand it, though, not being able to do anything about it. Not being able to wrap himself in the presence of the one now so tantalisingly close. His hands clenched in the material of the Sentinel’s chest.
“I know,” the Sentinel whispered, carding a hand through Watson’s hair. “I know. I’m sorry. I know.” He pressed his forehead against Watson’s.
They stayed like that, breathing together for what felt like forever. The Sentinel then levered the rings still pressed into their clutched hands apart, and with some ceremony slid the Guide ring onto Watson’s middle finger, bringing the hand up to he could press dry lips against the gold and red band.
Watson, mesmerized, fumbled the other ring into his hand with shaking fingers, and managed to just slip it over the knuckle of his Sentinel’s smallest finger.
“Good grief but that woman had little fingers,” the Sentinel muttered as the ring slid into place.
That did it; the tension drained out of Watson like water in a sieve and he collapsed into a fit of hysterical laughter. His Sentinel was laughing with him as he guided the Guide down onto the floor, achingly gentle with his wounded leg. Watson was able to press a kiss to the brilliant, bejewelled band, though, followed up with a sweet kiss to the underside of the Sentinels wrist.
Still fighting small giggles Watson was smiling at the Sentinel reluctantly withdrew his hand. The laughter sobered as the Sentinel drew the very points of his fingertips feather light over the planes of Watson’s face, like a man seeing for the first time. Watson reached up to grip his hands with his own.
They shared a moment of perfect, knowing silence.
“Stay here. Someone will come.” He cupped Watson’s face with his hands and added fiercely. “I will come for you in London.”
“I know,” Watson whispered.
The Sentinel sheathed Watson’s sword and left him with the cane before vanishing with speed.
Watson looked at his hands. They were shaking.
------------------------------------------------------
The fire lit, Gabriel dragged his body back up to the deck where his Lord lay. It was still night time. Maybe that’s why it was so cold.
“My Lord,” Gabriel whispered, red drops dripping from his mouth. He brushed them off the Sentinels comely visage. “My Lord, I will be there soon. They will all be there soon. And you shall rule the heavens, just as you should.”
He lay, his head on his Lord’s shoulder, feeling peaceful and happy now it was all done.
------------------------------------------------------
Watson was dimly aware of someone, not his Sentinel, shaking him.
“Watson? Guide?” Lestrade’s worried face coalesced in front of him. “Whoever gave you those bruises had better bloody well be dead.” He added in a growl.
“He is,” Watson whispered. “We need to get off the ship.”
“I said that to you earlier!” Lestrade replied, exasperated. “Why does no one listen to me? Come on, we’d best be off.”
The short Sentinel was nevertheless as strong as an ox. He lifted Watson like he weighed a pound and half carried, half supported him out of the hold, bore him up stairs and out into the night. The deck was cluttered and chaotic, sailors kneeling or crouched on the deck while other sailors of a dozen nations watched over them. Bosun’s chairs, gang planks and rope ladders were being used to get Guides over the rails and onto ships and boats tethered to them at all sides. Voices and orders criss-crossed overhead.
Watson staggered and stumbled so badly that Lestrade simply heaved him onto his back and carried him towards the bow rail. The heat coming off Watson seeping through his clothing was worrying.
At the rail, Drewitt waiting patiently. He gently relieved Lestrade of his burden, and was able to clamber one-handed down the rope. Lestrade waved to the Bradstreets as they ferried the last of the stolen Guides onto a waiting ship. “Is that the last of them?” he said in his normal voice.
Lady Bradstreet nodded from across the deck. “No more heart beats below. Just on deck.”
“Get on that ship then, and make sure no one gets spirited to France,” Lestrade ordered softly.
Lady Bradstreet gave him an amused salute.
Well, that seemed to be it. The impromptu international council had agreed that the frigate would stay here under guard until America could be contacted. The Guides would be taken to London, simply because it was closest.
So why did he feel so damn twitchy? His eyes instinctively sought Holmes, from where he stood on the deck.
Holmes, blissfully content as he strode back to the stern, had one last think to take care of. You did keep promises to Queens, after all.
He stopped near the body of his foe. The Guide he had eviscerated was there, lying with him, head on his shoulder. The Guide watched indifferently as Holmes removed the Talons from the dead man’s stiffening fingers, and then from his chest. The only reaction this seemed to provoke was the Guide reaching up to re-interlock the Prophets fingers over the bloody mess of his chest.
Holmes secreted the Talons away before surveying the Guide. The Sentinel in him found the sight of a dying Guide deeply upsetting, but Holmes knew he could not offer any comfort the Guide would accept. Dull though those dying eyes were, the spark of hatred lit them still.
“I am sorry for you,” Holmes said sincerely, standing to leave.
“I am not sorry for you,” the Guide Gabriel rasped wetly. “For he will enact his revenge when we are under his rule in Heaven, and cast you into the fiery Pit. You and that chattel.”
Holmes eyes narrowed, and then darted to the Guide’s red stained hands. There, under the glut, was a telltale blackness under the nails.
“Lestrade! Everyone off the ship! Now!” He waved a furious arm, hustling the sailors towards the rails. “Gunpowder fire!”
He saw the Inspector’s eyes widen. There was a mass rush to escape. Holmes made sure Lestrade had gone over the rail and the sailors, enemy or not, jumping for whatever safety there was to be had.
Holmes breathed in, and could smell the acrid smoke.
-----------------------------------------------------
Lestrade hit the deck of the Farsight yelling “Move, move, move!”
He scarcely needed to have bothered. Drewitt had heard and he and his Guide and anyone they could grab to help were stoking or piling coal or hacking at the tether. The ship moved with agonizing slowness at first but picked up speed as they went. Other ships were turning or steaming frantically, trying to avoid one another even in their rush to escape.
Watson, now half insensible with his head in Lady Lestrade’s lap rasped. “What is it?”
Lady Lestrade smoothed a hand over his forehead. “Hush. Nothing anything can be done about.” She glanced at her husband, and one look told him how bad a way Watson was in.
The frigate was receding into the night as the ship lights all around bloomed away from it.
Just in time, too. The ship billowed apart in a hellish orange and yellow halo of fire. The noise rang in ears, Sentinel or not, and they ducked as shrapnel and debris scythed overhead.
Lady Lestrade was white as she watched the horror unfold. She sent a terrified, questioning glance at her husband, but Watson’s hand gripped her own momentarily.
“It’s alright,” he whispered to her. “He survived.”
--------------------------------------------------------
For the life on him, Watson could not remember the journey back to London. He had a hazy memory, perhaps, of the false dawn peeking at the horizon of the window of the ornate carriage that sped him to London at lightning speeds after they had reached the shore. It wasn’t until much later he learned that Mycroft Holmes had been in the carriage with him, though Watson could never recall it. The Lestrades had been there too, and Lady Lestrade was a treasure among Guides. Her shield had locked around his mind like a bank vault, keeping his raw, exposed empathic soul from being torn to pieces. It didn’t falter for a second. Watson knew there were others around her, lending their support. Pendley, crooning sea songs in his ear. A silent, solid presence beside Lady Lestrade, brushing soothing things across the raw edges of the shield. Wilikins, Watson learned later. Others, once they reached London. So many; so many merely brushing against his soul, gently holding him up, adding their support. The Guides of London.
His first conscious thought was blinking awake in a dim, cavernous room, where he was sitting in a chair wrapped in soft wool, facing a warm fire. A click of knitting needles reminded him of the presence he had been dimly aware of for some time.
Mrs Hudson looked up from her work. “Doctor Watson?” she asked, very gently. “It’s alright, sir. You’re right here, in his rooms. I shouldn’t think he’ll be too long now.” The last was delivered with a kind of wry certainty.
Watson smiled faintly at her. “Thank you,” he rasped.
She disappeared from view, reappearing with a steaming cup. “Tea and honey, for your poor throat.” She didn’t seem at all inconvenienced by Watson’s shaking, exhausted hands, and helped him drink with a simple competence that quite removed embarrassment. Watson was grateful for the soothing warmth sliding down his raw throat.
Mrs Hudson cocked her head, then smiled gently at him. “I’ll be going now. But if you need anything, anything at all, just whisper,” she tapped an ear. “I’ll hear it.”
Watson nodded faintly, and she departed silently. Then, taking a deep breath, Watson levered himself out of the warm woollen cocoon and the chair. He needed to see where his Sentinel lived.
It was...nothing like he could have imagined. The neat, dust free necessities of the Sentinel home collided with what was clearly a brilliant and eclectic mind. Beakers and test tubes lined one table, files and newspapers took up space on one wall. There was a stack of mail pinned like a butterfly to the mantelpiece with a jack knife. It was interesting and unique, just like his Sentinel.
Hobbling over to the chemical table, Watson simply surveyed it. His delirium had reached a plateau, and he coasted along it in a sort of daze, enjoying just the simple act of observation of this place where his Sentinel lived, reflecting his personality like a suit of clothes.
It was like a trick picture. One moment, he was surveying his Sentinels rooms, tracking the shape of his personality though all the items he collected and kept, and the next his Sentinel was standing there on the tiger skin rug, slightly sooty, as if the room had somehow conjured him.
But the rest of it ceased to be important because Watson’s back was suddenly against a wall, his hips pressed to sit upon the table and his legs and armed tight around his Sentinel as their mouths met, nothing like he expected and everything they could have asked for.
An eternity of heat and air later and the sweetness of the Sentinels mouth travelled to his ear, lapping wetly down his neck, teeth scraping deliciously at the collar. After one electric, sucking kiss there, the Sentinel drew back. “You fascinate me.”
Watson fisted his hands into the Sentinels hair as the fire burned. “You make me feel safe.” He dragged the Sentinel’s head toward his mouth again.
Afterward, the Sentinel looked him in the eye, and Watson didn’t get lost in there. He found his way home. “Sherlock Holmes. A pleasure to meet you.”
Watson smiled at him, never anywhere but exactly where he wanted to be. “John Watson. At your service.”
The Sent- Sherlock smiled at him, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His eyes turned to dark pools, he opened Watson shirt enough to gain full access to his neck, and with one last heated kiss on his Guide’s mouth, kissed his way down to the shoulder juncture and bit down hard.
Thought vanished, and only feeling remained.
And over London, the sun rose.
---------------------------------------------------------------
End Part Twelve B