The Case of the Reluctant Guide Chapter 1 There's Always Something

[rairakku1234]

Summary: Sentinel Sherlock Holmes has been searching for his Guide for 18 years, and now he is going to find him in a situation even he could never even imagined.

Disclaimers: I certainly do not own Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s amazing creation of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Hamish Watson. I also do not own Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC’s adaptations of those works. In addition, I do not own The Sentinel created by Danny Bilson and PetFly Productions

Spoiler Warnings: Series 1 Episode 1 of Sherlock


Ratings: M Warning Pre-Slash/Slash, Descriptions of war time violence.

Beta: Ivory Winter, the grammar goddess, All mistakes are mine.

Chapter 1 There’s Always Something

Sherlock strode into St. Bart’s with his usual goal of charming the ever expectant Miss Molly Hooper into allowing him to run his experiment on one of their newly received bodies. Although Molly was usually quite easy to convince, Sherlock had made sure to stack the deck in his favor. Superficial appearances meant little to Sherlock. He had never comprehended people’s obsession and attraction to others’ physical exterior. But he had long ago learned how to turn his looks, which he had been told many times were striking, to his advantage when he needed to. His dark hair was artfully disheveled, the collar of his Belfast coat was turned up to accentuate his cheekbones and neck, and finally he had chosen his outfit to emphasize his height. The poor deluded pathologist was certain that she could make him fall in love with her, and Sherlock saw no reason not to turn this to his advantage. Sherlock was amazed that such an obviously intelligent and highly educated woman could convince herself of such a mistaken belief. In Sherlock’s opinion no Sentinel worthy of their enhanced senses would waste time with someone who was not their Guide. Of course, Sherlock had never felt that much of the human race showed any level of common sense, much less intelligent behavioral patterns.

Sherlock kept his sense of smell dialed way down while he moved through the building. The combination of infection, fear, blood, and medical disinfectant had always been irritating to him, particularly in the last year or so as his control had started to degrade. Once he arrived in the morgue, Sherlock gradually increased his sense of smell, as the other odors were muted by the perfume of formaldehyde and embalming fluid. Although unpleasant, they were useful in covering more offensive odors and easier to screen out, permitting him to focus on the more important scents he might need to examine during The Work, especially now.

In the last six months Sherlock had resorted to using Sentinel friendly scents and air fresheners to cover the day-to-day aromas of the city even in his own flat. He had attempted to use cigarettes for a while because they covered smell and taste, but it was impossible to support a smoking habit in London. He was now obliged to wear the itchy, irritating nicotine patches since his body and mind had become accustomed to the drug coursing through his veins and assisting his focus on the cases.

Sherlock supposed he wasn’t surprised that his control was deteriorating but he found it maddening that his own transport was no longer the fine-tuned instrument it had once been. Now at 29, Sherlock was the oldest unbonded Sentinel in Britain, and he had long since come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t going to find his Guide. That one unique individual whose empathic abilities allowed them to form a permanent connection to their Sentinel and provide an anchor for that Sentinel in a world filled with enough stimuli to drown even someone of Sherlock’s brilliance. He had adjusted to this truth at 16 and had worked hard to fine tune all five of his genetically enhanced senses: sight sound, smell, touch, and taste until they were the ultimate tool of his exceptional mind. Sherlock was confident that he had succeeded in his attempt, creating his own profession and path in life as the world’s only consulting detective, a deductive genius.

Sherlock found himself constantly irritated by the now predictable reactions of people to his deductions. Young Sentinel and Guide pairs and those few normal people Sherlock interacted with on a routine basis tended to look at him with fear and loathing, Donovan’s freak label being one of the kindest things said about him. They whispered that he was damaged, that he was incapable of emotion and that’s why he couldn’t bond, that his intelligence and control without the need of a Guide was because he was psychopath. Other’s speculated in subdued voices laced with shocked titillation, that Sherlock didn’t want a Guide, that he was such a broken and twisted Sentinel that he choose to be alone and had rejected his true Guide. Sherlock merely found their whispers to be trite and mind-numbingly boring. Although occasionally it was interesting to turn the rumors to his advantage and use them to scare the weak-minded into answering his questions. A fitting punishment to use their own stupidity and small mindedness against them.

Sherlock found it more difficult to ignore the looks older Sentinel and Guides, like Lestrade, whose eyes held poorly hidden pity. They knew what the younger ones didn’t, what had become forgotten because it had happened so rarely in the last fifty years. Prior to World War I and II, everyone knew that Sentinel and Guides’ traits tended to occur in some families more than others, but it was almost impossible to predict which person would develop what gift. Then in the early fifties, governments, desperate to build the clans back up from their extreme losses during World War II, made the discovery that many, although not all, Sentinels and Guides had a couple of very specific protein markers. The markers were not an entirely perfect test but could be used to identify the majority of Sentinels and Guides before they became active.

Free voluntary testing rapidly became wide spread with support of most of the clans in first world countries. Then in the late sixties clans began sponsoring free Sentinel and Guide training weekends for those identified as potentials. The hope was that training prior to becoming active would help prevent some of the more common catastrophes that happened to newly active Sentinels and Guides who didn’t know how to handle what was happening to them - Sentinels run down in the street because they became focused on some sound, sight, or scent, Guides driven crazy by the emotions of others, unable to shield themselves from the world.

Sherlock had read extensively on those initial training programs, when he had desperately looked for additional information on managing his own wayward senses. Although he found the programs despairingly simplistic, for the average Sentinel the result had been beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. More than just giving emerging Sentinels and Guides better control over their developing gifts, it was discovered that when a destined Sentinel Guide pair met and recognized each other at a younger age, they would come online together slowly instead of all in a rush when a random crisis activated them, each partner better able to control their gifts because of the other’s support. This discovery spawned the first of what were now monthly Sentinel and Guide mixers, events so boringly mundane Sherlock had refused to attend once he came of age due to fear he would have to gouge his eyes out to prevent insanity.

Within ten years of the discovery of protein marker testing, the deaths of unbonded Sentinels with out of control senses had dropped by more than 60 percent. Simultaneously the damage to, and health concerns for, out of control Sentinels (both bonded and unbonded) had dropped equally. For most, the basic training prior to coming online gave them better control and the ability to recognize warning signs of severe allergies and zone outs. Later DNA identification of Sentinels and Guides had further increased the ability to identify the potentials and the death rate of unbonded Sentinels who died from out of control senses all but disappeared as various governments began offering free voluntary testing to everyone once they reached the age of twelve, three years younger than it was believed any Sentinel or Guide pair would routinely come online, giving time for plenty of training.

Numerous political activists originally protested the government testing, in Sherlock’s view, rightly claiming that it was an impingement of basic human rights, providing the government with private information that would be very easy to abuse. The concerns had died out when multiple clans stood up to the governments, vocally, publically, and in one frighteningly violent instance in the States, bloodily, when politicians or the military attempted to force someone with the gene to join a clan, attend training weekends, or mixers for the unbonded. The protective instincts of both Sentinels and Guides simply did not allow for them to permit abuse of potential members. Although a few religious or civil rights groups occasionally protested the testing, most had come to terms with the idea once the clans took it over to prevent government interference with the innocent.

All of this meant that the idea of dying from lack of a Guide naively didn’t occur to the young because they had never seen an unbonded Sentinel past the age of 24, the oldest age by which the majority of Sentinel Guide pairs had met. Some Sentinels and Guides still died before finding their partners, but it was now so rare to the point of being almost unimaginable. And young Sentinels and Guides, like all young people each felt they were invincible and that such a thing to never happen to them. In fact, it was practically unheard of for an active Sentinel to go more than two or three years before they meet their Guide at a clan sponsored event. What’s more, for unbonded Sentinels (and Guides) such as Sherlock, the clan would happily pay to send them wherever they felt they might be drawn to meet their partner. The only other Sentinel who Sherlock had heard of who had gone for more than four years unbonded had been a Japanese women. Her clan had paid to send her to the States, and once there she had been helped by every clan she approached to be introduced to the unbonded Guides, until after another year of searching she had found her Guide, in a young man in college in the deep south who hadn’t even come online until a few days before they met.

The clans didn’t talk about what happened anymore if one didn’t meet their partner. But the older Sentinels and Guides knew, having either seen it themselves or having been told the horrifying stories by other family and friends: Sentinels who were eventually unable to keep control of their senses and would either be killed in an accident, or get caught in an unbreakable zone-out when they accidentally focused too hard on one specific sense. Guides almost had it worse; the empathic abilities that allowed them to bond also left vulnerable to the chaotic emotions of others. Without the bond they had to work daily to build protective barriers, and eventually the thin mental walls they could erect to keep the world’s emotions at bay would fail. Many of them had committed suicide at that point, unable to survive the onslaught of emotion. Sherlock knew he was rapidly moving closer and closer to the point when he would either be caught in one of his more frequently occurring zone-outs or killed when he failed to balance his senses and notice something obvious, like a double decker bus.

Sherlock found it amusing that although he heard many whispered rumors, neither the young nor the old ever asked Sherlock why he thought he hadn’t found his Guide, or in fact why he had never felt compelled to look outside Britain. It wasn’t like the Holmes, a long established Sentinel-Guide Family of the upper class, lacked the funds to send Sherlock on a search. Sherlock could tell that most people simply thought he was oddity, a mentally and emotionally damaged Sentinel that didn’t have a partner.

Sherlock had another deduction. He believed that his partner was dead, lost to him. Sherlock had come fully online, all five senses enhanced beyond normal, in one nightmarishly out of control night when he was eleven years old, six years before most Sentinels and Guides ever became active. Although he had known he was a Sentinel for three years prior to that, having tested his own DNA, excited and wanting to live up to his big brother’s example. (How foolish he had been at the age of eight). It was almost unheard of for Sentinels to come online like that anymore unless the Sentinel was caught in a crisis - some kind of direct threat to himself or others, or if he was with his Guide and the Guide was threatened.

Sherlock felt that the latter had occurred. His Guide had been threatened and had probably not survived. Sentinel and Guide pairs tended to have comparable strengths in gifts, and Sherlock was among the strongest Sentinels in Britain, so it stood to reason that his Guide had a similarly strong gift. Sherlock had deduced that his Guide must have had something particularly dreadful occur to him, and Sherlock was positive it was a male - a belief he hadn’t even told Mycroft because it was based on an ephemeral feeling and not Sherlock’s beloved logic. Sherlock deemed it likely that whatever catastrophic event had caused his Guide’s emotion to trigger him without them having met should have triggered his Guide as well. A suddenly on-line Guide with abilities to match Sherlock’s should have been easily identifiable. Assuming he had survived the event.

Nonetheless, despite exhaustive, if hidden, research in his late teens, Sherlock had never been able to find a tragic event to fit the criteria. No known Guides dying in shocking accidents, or being placed in a coma, or coming online and then not bonding. No previously unidentified Guides, a rarity in the modern era, suddenly appearing after some tragic disaster. And although they had not discussed it, he knew Mycroft had found nothing either; it was a simple deduction, one Mycroft was sure to have made and researched. It was clear to Sherlock that his partner had come online and then been killed, no one ever having known they were a Guide. Sherlock had failed to protect his Guide before he had ever met him.

Sherlock wasn’t sure if he should consider himself lucky that he had come online and had fully developed gifts or cursed that he was forever partnerless. Most Sentinels and Guides who were genetically identified but never came online were presumed to have dead partners, a kind of inbuilt genetic safety feature, which left them caught forever in limbo. The Guides might be slightly more empathetic than the average person, nothing dangerous, just enough to push them to serve their community, often in nurturing roles, as teachers, doctors, etc. Sentinels might not develop any enhanced senses, or just one or two, but their protective instincts would still be intact, pushing them towards careers in the military, law enforcement, and medicine.

Although Sherlock had considered following his unknown Guide into death, like a true Sentinel, particularly when his pain and his exhaustion at constantly fighting his senses had pushed him to losing himself in drugs, two things had kept him from doing so. The first had been an emotion that he would never admit to or show the world; hope. The hope that he had been wrong and that he had once again missed something. The second reason Sherlock found irritating - he discovered himself determined to ensure that he was worthy of this unknown person, dead or alive. Sherlock often found it humorous that he, the man who abhorred sentiment, modified his behavior, however slightly, for someone he had never met and was probably long dead.

Once he climbed up out of the addictions, he put himself to work, patching the missing part of his soul with The Work. He solved the supposedly unsolvable for the dunderheads at the Yard, deriving enjoyment from demonstrating to them just how deficient they were along the way, although he reasoned that in a roundabout way he should be happy the normals and the Sentinels who worked for the yard used their senses and brains for the bare minimum of deduction, otherwise he would be terminally bored. In between cases, he fought with the boredom, finding his mind sought constant stimulation and his senses sought an anchor that wasn’t there. He tried to drive the need away with the violin, with puzzles, with experiments and until recently deliberately losing himself in his senses, although always being careful to set himself up with a way out of the zone-outs. He had become quite ingenious at manufacturing Heath Robinson type contraptions and timers to bring him out of the zone.

Sherlock shook off his introspective mood when he heard the click of Molly’s heels from the corridor, turning to greet the average heighted mousey haired woman when she entered. “Ahhh, Molly. Excellent timing. I require approximately 10 mls of blood from four recently deceased patients preserved in EDTA tubes. The gentleman in drawer 2, the elderly lady in 4, and from the two young men in 6 and 7 who smell of gunpowder and adrenaline will provide adequate samples.”

“What?” the pathologist asked, clearly confused by his sudden request, and Sherlock smothered a sigh. Why couldn’t she just do as he asked? The woman always gave him what he wanted anyway. Sherlock was marshaling his arguments, when she continued. “Ummm… I suppose you can have them from the first two, Mr. Pomerance and Mrs. Gustafson, but the other two men haven’t been fully identified, they appear to be part of drug deal gone bad. I can’t take samples from them for research, it might affect…”

Sherlock cut off her words with, “Nonsense, 10 mls of blood from either won’t affect the autopsy or any of the toxicology results.”

“Yes… ummm… Yes, I know but ahhhhh… I..,” She stuttered out in reply, forcing Sherlock to go to great pains not to roll his eyes,

Sherlock waved a hand dismissively, suppressing a smirk, thrilled that once again his manipulations had gotten him what he wanted, in fact in this case he got twice as much as he required. “If you insist on believing the Yarders and the Crown Prosecutors ridiculous rules of evidence I suppose samples from the first two only is adequate, for now. I’ll need the rest of the samples by the end of the week. A cold case’s resolution depends on the results.”

Molly relaxed marginally at Sherlock’s words, who forced himself to once again to wait until she turned her back to draw his samples before smirking, removing it when she came back with his labeled tubes. “Excellent, I’ll be in your lab for several hours if you’re able to obtain the rest of the samples.”

“No, wait, Sherlock, Dr. Stamford is in there with a several Sentinel-Guide medicine specialists, and some RAMC representatives going over some difficult case. Sherlock!!!” He ignored her shout from behind him while he moved back into the corridor and headed upstairs. What did he care if some idiots who consider themselves specialists were also using the lab? All he needed was the centrifuge and the microscope. He could certainly move the people out of his way if necessary, even Sentinels seldom stayed in his space after a few pointed observations.

Sherlock’s steps faltered very slightly upon arriving on the floor containing Molly’s lab, hearing significantly more people than he had expected. He frowned, listening, counting nine heartbeats. The voices he was hearing were tense, and angry.

“No, no, no,” the angriest of the males called, “absolutely not, the man is already in a severe empathetic coma, look at how he reacted to the bonded Sentinel doctors that we brought in to meet him. If you start bringing in random unbonded Sentinels looking for his mate you could drive him so far under that we can never get him out. Not to mention what he might do to those Sentinels. You have all seen the reports.”

“I realize that,” a female voice rebutted, “but honestly what are our options? He isn’t responding to any our attempts to reach him empathically and it’s been three weeks. He isn’t going to come out on his own. How much longer can his body handle the adrenaline spikes he keeps producing before it starts shutting down?”

“Enough,” Sherlock heard Mike Stamford say, his voice calm but carrying. “Enough. We clearly don’t have enough information to make a valid medical decision right now and he’s not unstable at the moment so we don’t need to risk the damage we might cause by parading a host of random Sentinels through the man’s sick room. We’ll meet again tomorrow. Does this room work for everyone? Remember, no discussing this case on the Sentinel-Guide Ward. I don’t want any of the unbonded Sentinels aware of the problem until we have a solution. Rash actions from an overprotective Sentinel could destroy what little chance we have.”

Sherlock heard muttered agreement and a mass exodus toward the door as he swept himself in to a shadowed corner of the hallway, observing the people who left. His eyebrow rose slightly at the group who had just met. Molly had not been exaggerating; every Sentinel-Guide specialist at St. Bart’s, and two from Edinburgh exited the room. Sherlock had met all of them at one point or another after he came online for evaluation and help in their so-called training methods for his senses. The case might actually show some potential for mild interest if it brought so many specialist to one location.

Sherlock was still considering if he should meander up to the Sentinel-Guide Ward to satisfy his curiosity or just assume that it was actually something dull and simple if actually looked at from a logical point of view when he entered the lab. He was instantly irritated again at his wayward gifts; Mike was still in the room and Sherlock hadn’t noticed prior to entering. He nodded but didn’t speak to the slightly portly balding doctor with the wire rimmed glasses standing at the far end of the lab. Sherlock had known the man for several years. Mike had first crossed his path when Sherlock approached him about his research into Sentinel-Guide medicine and later consulting with him for his work for the Yard. The man appeared unassuming and spoke slowly, but behind that façade was a mind that, while highly unobservant during everyday life, known to leave mobiles and patient records in random places while he wandered around the hospital, was unmatched in his specialty and considered the world’s leading expert in cutting edge Sentinel-Guide medicine.

“Oh, Sherlock, hello,” Stamford muttered absently, a hand scrubbing across his face, exhaustion clear in every line. “Was there something I can help you with?”

“Merely conducting some minor investigations.”

“You know, Sherlock, if you’re not careful someday someone who cares is going to catch you using our equipment and demand to know who gave you permission,” Mike quipped, sitting down heavily on a lab bench. “Why did you never go into medicine, Sherlock? I would’ve thought someone with your insatiable thirst for questions would have enjoyed the endless mysteries in the daily rigors of medicine.”

“Mike, have you had a stroke? Even a blind and deaf man could see that not only am I wholly unsuited to deal with the ignorant public on a daily basis, the thought of handling the mundane horrors of colds and flus would quickly find me committing mass murder.”

Mike laughed. “Yeah, I suppose so. But some days I wish I had your brilliance available to help with the cases that seem undiagnosisable, much less untreatable.”

Sherlock didn’t reply, just looking quizzically at the man. Clearly the case he had overheard them discussing had some sort of personal aspect for Mike. The doctor stood slowly and started to move down the lab towards the door while Sherlock began placing his tubes in the centrifuge. Mike had just passed him when a fragrance met Sherlock’s nostrils. Sherlock froze, his mind stuttering to a halt at the addictive nature of it, and then it raced into high gear and his hand shot out, grabbing Mike’s upper arm, halting his progress. Sherlock yanked the man closer, inhaling deeply the faint bouquet that lingered around him. It wasn’t cologne or Mike. “Tell me everywhere you have been and every person you have had contact with in the last two hours.”

“Huh?” Mike replied, and then suddenly stood straighter and stared intently at him. “Sherlock, what are you sensing? What did you notice?” Mike demanded, enunciating every word slowly and clearly when Sherlock didn’t immediately respond.

“Nothing,” Sherlock backpedaled, suddenly nervous at this new side of Mike, “it was just a new fragrance I hadn’t cataloged before. I wanted to track it down so I could record it in more detail.”

An unexpected smile broke across Mike’s face. “Come with me, Sherlock. I think I can take you right to it.”

Mike didn’t wait for him to answer, quickly turning and leading the way out of the door, clearly expecting Sherlock to follow him, something he found himself doing without a lot of thought. Some insignificant part of him wasn’t surprised to discover that they took the stairs up to the top floor where the Sentinel-Guide Isolation Ward was located, the soft murmur of numerous white noise machines behind every soundproofed wall dulling his hearing.

Mike moved purposely down the ward towards the last room on the end, Sherlock mechanically following along, unwilling to admit to himself why he felt compelled to shadow Mike to the source of that addictive aroma. Mike opened the soundproofed door and ushered Sherlock inside. The sight, smell, and sounds in the room almost drove the Sentinel to his knees. The room held nothing extraordinary, nothing unexpected, and yet the most surprising thing Sherlock had ever observed.

It was a standard Sentinel-Guide ward room, one hospital bed, queen sized to allow for Sentinel and Guide to share if necessary, a standard vitals monitor, oxygen delivery systems, multiple IV stands and pumps, a urine catheter system, white noise generator, HEPA filtration system, a couch, and table and chairs. A man of slightly less than average height lay on the oversized bed. That he was a solider was readily apparent from his haircut and the tan lines visible on his wrists and neck. This deduction was immediately confirmed by Sherlock’s peripheral vision, which noted a uniform in the open closet. The insignias on it showed that not only was the unconscious man a captain, he was a military surgeon. The healing wound on his shoulder was an instant affront to Sherlock, making a substantial part of him want to rip those who had caused it apart with his bare hands, while the rest of him struggled to fight the impulse to wrap himself around this stranger and whisper words of comfort to him. An action that not only had Sherlock never done or considered doing, it was one he didn’t even understand the benefit of or motivation for, much less know how correctly accomplish.

Sherlock staggered to the chair at the bedside, just managing to hold himself in check, barely hearing Mike chuckling happily behind him. Sherlock’s mind reeled. This unresponsive man who looked like he had been to hell and back was his Guide. His Guide. This man with light brown hair that was beginning to grey, despite the fact that he did not appear to be much older than thirty-five, certainly not forty, was his Guide. This man who appeared to have been injured in the service of Queen and Country was his Guide. His Partner. The person he had thought had died eighteen years ago.

“Sherlock, are you okay?” Mike asked softly, bringing Sherlock out of his shock. He was glad that the man had enough sense not to touch him at this moment. Sherlock wasn’t sure he had enough command of his transport, much less his mind, to stop himself from lashing out at being touched by anyone other than his Guide at this moment.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

“Afghanistan. He was visiting a school for female children giving immunizations to girls under eight and their mothers and brothers. He and his squad were ambushed when Taliban insurgents threw Molotov cocktails into the building. They managed to fight their way outside, away from the fire but were pinned down with the surviving children and their mothers behind several vehicles,” Mike informed him, understanding the unvoiced question Sherlock was asking. “His squad says he was attempting to bandage one of the injured children when he was shot. The bullet went through his body armor, through his shoulder, and out his front plate and into the child below him.”

Sherlock’s body flinched even though he knew it was coming. He could see the wound with his eyes. This was why he hated sentiment, it messed with his mind, his actions. He forced himself to stay seated as Mike continued. “Even injured he kept trying to save the child, but it was too late; the leg wound he had been bandaging wouldn’t have been fatal, but the bullet that went through him hit the girl in the chest, probably killing her almost instantly.

“After that no one is entirely sure what happened. My best information is conjecture on the part of the Sentinel-Guide pair that was coming with another squad of soldiers to rescue them. They were almost at the scene when the gunfire stopped, it just ended, and the Guide swears she felt something, some empathetic spike - what it was she isn’t entirely sure. When they arrived, the insurgents were all dead, most not from bullet wounds. Most of them appeared to have fallen over dead where they stood. The military pathologist is listing heart failure of unknown cause but none of the seven insurgents show any sign of underlying organ abnormalities. Plus seven heart attacks in a firefight. What are the odds of that?”

“Astronomical,” Sherlock answered the rhetorical question, some part of him irritated that his mind wasn’t focused enough to compute the actual number.

Mike chuckled darkly. “Yeah. Anyway, when the Sentinel and Guide pair arrived he was unresponsive and although the Guide knew instantly that he was active, they assumed he was unconscious from his injuries. No one figured it out until later when he didn’t wake after surgery, and they began putting the pieces together.”

Sherlock couldn’t bring himself to respond for several heartbeats, and then his voice broke from him harshly summarizing, “This Guide, who as far as anyone can tell is completely untrained and until three weeks ago inactive, managed to use an empathic knife to kill not one but seven insurgents while he was losing enough blood that he came within a hair’s breath of dying.” Sherlock shuddered at his own words, and couldn’t hold back anymore, reaching out to stroke the backs of his fingers over the stubble on the man’s face. “He is who you were talking about in the lab with the other specialists. He’s in an empathic coma and you don’t know why he remains so. And you are unable to determine how to bring him out of it.”

“No, we don’t, but things are looking up.”

Sherlock growled, part of that conversation replaying in his head. “You were going to introduce my Guide to strange Sentinels.”

“No, Sherlock, I wasn’t, and since you apparently heard that conversation you know that. And I want to point out that I didn’t know he was your Guide.”

Sherlock ground his teeth, forcing himself to rein in his emotions, and not pound the man who had led him to his Guide into the ground. Mike had not actually done anything wrong and Sherlock needed to think, to gather information about his Guide. “Why were you concerned about the Sentinels you were considering bringing in?”

“There wasn’t any problem when he was hospitalized in the field, but when he was moved to St. Bart’s and a Sentinel Doctor touched him, the reaction, well, the reaction was dramatic. He appeared to have a seizure and the Sentinel Doctor collapsed. It took his Guide three hours to pull him out of it. He knocked out a fully trained Sentinel with his mind while unaware and gravely injured.”

“You believe he thinks that he is still in Afghanistan in whatever portion of his mind he is trapped in, and perceives any contact by Sentinels as a threat,” Sherlock murmured, hand shifting from his Guide’s face to stroke from the elbow to the wrist, memorizing every tiny and minute variation under his fingertips. “Why would a Guide, even an untrained one, feel threatened by a Sentinel? Even normal people know that Sentinels are genetically programed to protect Guides.”

“Well, apparently every unknown Sentinel except you,” Mike observed, indicating Sherlock’s hand that had wrapped unconsciously around his Guide’s wrist, counting the pulse under his finger, tuning his hearing into his Guide’s heartbeat. Sherlock relaxed when he determined that the two were synchronized, that both the pulse and heart rate were steady and strong. “And we haven’t a clue why he would find Sentinels threatening. Our consensus was that it was dangerous to bring in any more Guides in to try and lead him out. Every contact with one only seems to push him farther into his mind, plus in order to try and contact him they had to lower their shields, leaving them completely exposed if he strikes out.”

“And how do you know him?” Sherlock asked, curious about the personal connection that Mike’s behavior earlier had implied.

“We went to medical school together here ages ago.”

Neither of them said anything for several moments, Sherlock just drinking in the sight, sound, scent, and feel of this man that he believed he would never meet. Finally Mike turned to leave, mentioning that he would be back in a half hour to reexamine his patient and discuss treatment plans with Sherlock.

“Mike?” Sherlock called, “what’s his name?”

Mike grinned, large and bright. “Watson, Dr. John Hamish Watson.”

xxxxXXXXxxxx

FanFiction Writer Notes: To any readers who might not recognize the reference to a Heath Robinson device. Heath Robinson was an illustrator who became famous for his whimsical drawing inventions that achieved absurdly simple results from about the time of the First World War. In the United States an illustrator named Rube Goldberg was famous for similar style drawings around the same time period. Both men spewed numerous games, popular references and even contests to make inventions like the ones they had drawn in their respective cultures. In the United State’s - High School Physics classes commonly have project to build such machines, and Rube Goldberg is honored every year with a National Contest for Collage students. Each year a new task is assigned and students across the nation design machines with a minimum of 20 steps to complete the task. For more information check out rubemachine dot o r g. Additionally if any of my British Readers would know of any similar competitions in Britain that might still exist I would love to learn about them.

So here it is, my new Sherlock story. I would love to hear what my readers think. Interesting, boring? Do you have grammar or spelling corrections? And as always I want to warn my readers that I am a painfully slow writer, but I have absolutely no intention of abandoning any of my stories even if it takes me awhile to update. I want to know how they turn out too.

Thanks,

Rairakku