Chameleon Chapter 14
Title: Chameleon
Pairing: Sherlock/John, iffily platonic Harry/John, Sebastian Moran/John
Rating: R
Genre: Crossover with the Sentinel, AU, Plotfic.
Warnings: Forced Bonding, Non-con, coercion, imprisonment, incesty vibes, mild violence.
Summary: Written for This Prompt: In a world filled with Sentinels with heightened senses, strength and endurance, and Guides, with seductive empathy, who knew that seeming "ordinary" could be John's greatest strength.
Word count: 6300 words
Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter13
Chapter 14
Sherlock woke to find himself curled up in a dimly lit powder-blue painted room. The floor was tough-but-yielding, the air smelled precisely of nothing, the only sounds were those his own body made. Cool down cell, his mind supplied. He knew they existed, but it was the first time he’d ever been put in one. While they might be nirvana to a panicking Sentinel with no control left over his senses, Sherlock was not psychotic and he was already bored stiff.
In fact, he was rather the opposite of psychotic. He felt the presence of the new bond within him like a solid foundation for his senses. His dials had never been so easy to manipulate. Incredible. He hadn’t been sure that John had bonded with him - it seemed rather unlikely given the circumstances - but there it was, filling him with its warmth, making him feel complete in a way he’d never felt before. And rather uncomfortably pulling on him. He felt a jolt of urgency that went straight to his gut. Until John Watson was safe in his protection, he was in danger.
Sherlock stood up, legs a bit wobbly from the anaesthesia and his stomach more than a bit sensitive to any lurching movement, and patted himself down. There were bruises and tender areas, but he didn’t feel anything broken. His clothes were disheveled but otherwise intact. His mobile was still in his pocket, as was his wallet. His utility knife was gone from his belt, which just went to show that he had been searched but not robbed. All in all an improvement over the other times he’d been rendered unconscious.
Next he assessed the room. He tried pressing on the door, but it was obviously latched shut and there was no handle on the inside. Nor was there any intercom or any other way of contacting the outside world. Lord help the poor soul who was stuck in here and forgotten.
He looked up and spotted the camera in the corner and waved at it. It did nothing, of course. It occurred to Sherlock that, even if he hadn’t been forgotten, the clerk tasked with the job of monitoring the rooms was probably no more entertained by the situation than he was. It could be minutes before he or she bothered to check to see he was awake.
Sherlock huffed out an impatient sigh. He pulled his phone from his pocket, thanked his parents for gifting him with an eidetic memory and he dialled an unfamiliar number.
“Hello,” he said to whoever it was manning the desk outside the desk outside his cell. “I’m awake and I’d like to be released.”
“What?” asked the clerk, stupidly. Sherlock heard papers being moved, the combination of a thump and clink of a plastic clipboard hitting a ceramic mug, and the soft thunk of a paperback novel falling off the desk and hitting the cement floor. “Is this - wait - how’d you get this number?“
Sherlock waved up at the camera again, knowing this time he’d be seen. “Listen. I realise you have a very busy schedule of novel reading and internet surfing, but if you could bear to take a minute or two perform your job, I’d be appreciative. I’ve a very new Guide waiting to be rescued and I fear if I leave him alone much longer, he might get the wrong idea.”
“What?” repeated the clerk, dully.
Sherlock huffed with exasperation. “What. What. Yes, I know that intelligence might actually be a drawback to your job, but do try to use what few brain cells you have left. Here I’ll spell it out: Stand up. Walk over to my cell. Use whatever key is required to open said cell. And Let. Me. Out!”
“Now, Sentinel Holmes - I can’t.”
“- Oh for heaven’s sake why not!”
“I’ve got orders.”
“Orders? Whose orders?”
“From the other Sentinel Holmes, sir.” The clerk sounded a bit put out. “I’m to hold you and Sentinel Watson until he comes to retrieve you.”
Sherlock frowned. “Under whose authority - oh, bugger. Never mind. I’ll call the arse myself.” Sherlock ended the call by jamming his finger into the end button.
The next call required no feats of memory. The phone rang twice and then Sherlock blurted, “Let me out,” before Mycroft had the time to answer.
“Sherlock, I can’t,” Mycroft groaned. In the background, Sherlock heard the quick clack of fingers against a keyboard. Anthea - Mycroft wasn’t that fast a typist. That put Mycroft up in his office where he very much could do just about anything he wanted.
“Oh please don’t try to pull that ‘I’m just a Guide Finder’ act with me. You don’t even need to stir your lazy bones away from your desk. Give my jailer a call and I’ll take of everything else myself.”
“I think you overestimate my influence and underestimate the amount of damage your actions have done. Though I suppose I should congratulate you on your recent bonding.”
Sherlock smiled.
“Temporary as it appears to be,” Mycroft went on.
Sherlock’s face fell. “Temporary?”
“You know, you could have asked for my help instead of stealing my identity and sabotaging the ventilation. Though zip-line was a interesting move. I will have to talk to the Alpha about security -“
“I don’t give a crap about the Tower’s security, what is happening with John? Is he safe? Why temporary?”
“John is completely safe and will remain so. Believe me, no one has any interest in hurting him. You, on the other hand, are in a much stickier position. You’ve messed with a bonding that people with a great deal more power than me have taken an interest in. I know you loathe office politics, but you’ve really managed to put your foot squarely into it this time. I honestly can’t fathom why you did so. It seems so out of character for you.”
“Don’t pretend you have any insight into my character,” snarled Sherlock, pacing the small area. He hated how his feet sank into the ground. The walls appeared to be closing in on him. “Let me out. I’ll answer to any higher powers for my actions. I’ll tell them that you had no part in my actions. But I need to be with John. Now.”
He did. He could feel the connection to John tugging at his soul, telling him that the bonding wasn’t complete. John had done his part and brought them empathically in sync. (How? Sherlock wondered. He’d never heard of a Guide being able to bond long distance.) Sherlock needed to do his. He hadn’t imprinted on John yet. He hadn’t memorised his smell or taste. Hadn’t learned his touch, his movements. He barely knew the sound of his voice. There was an unbearable gap in his knowledge that needed to be filled with his Guide.
Sherlock was so filled with awareness of his need that he almost missed Mycroft’s reply. “I’ll be down in an hour. Until then you can think about your actions a bit. Consider it punishment for using my fingerprint.”
“An hour? No, Mycroft. Don’t be cruel. It’s horrible in here! It’s nothing to all my senses. Are you trying to torture me?”
“Maybe you’ll think twice about running into situations without proper back up,” Mycroft cheerily. “Now, I really am quite busy. Ta-ta.”
The bastard hung up. Sherlock stared at his phone with fury. For half a moment he considered throwing it at a wall, but then he put it back in his pocket. Mycroft was right, he was deep in Tower territory here. He needed back up. But who? Bugger if he’d sit back and play Mycroft’s mind-games. He was half tempted to call on Hope, but considering the Guide was the one who shot him, not a good idea. Who else would have any kind of vested interest in his case?
Wait. Watson was stuck in here, too. Didn’t she have a girlfriend?
Mycroft set the phone down and leaned over Anthea’s shoulder to see the screen. “Sorry about that. Where were we?” Anthea empathically pointed at the screen and together they went through the next in a seemingly endless queue of emails. They read more out curiosity than practical need at this point. They’d had enough evidence to politically disembowel Hope fifty emails ago. Now, they were deep into the sheer sorry desperation of the situation.
God help him, Mycroft was actually starting to feel sorry for Hope.
“This is bad,” said Anthea as she scanned through a particularly long email.
“This is very bad,” Mycroft agreed. “This changes everything.”
Lucien Hope was dying. Not in the slow incremental way he’d been for the last twenty years, with his various infections and bouts of illness, but in the urgent way of stage four bone cancer. Chrodosarcoma. It had been discovered two weeks ago in Lu’s numb side, a mass below the knee that apparently hadn’t bothered the Sentinel. Scans had shown that it had metastasised with a vengeance to pepper his lungs with dozens tumours. He was too sick to tolerate chemo. His life was now measured in weeks, a month or two on the outside.
And when he died, Jeff Hope would become an unbonded Guide again. He was probably up there pacing the floor of the interview room, worrying about the time when the heavy door to the suite would no longer open to his thumbprint.
“What will happen to him?” Anthea asked. “When Lu is gone.”
“He’ll bond again, of course.” Even at Hope’s age, bonding wasn’t an option. There were too many unbonded Sentinels desperate enough to take whatever they could get. With Hope’s abilities and relative vigour, he’d still be a desirable catch.
“Will he remain the Matchmaker, though?” asked Anthea, getting straight to crux of the matter. “What would be his Sentinel’s job? In most Towers the Matchmaker and the Guide Finder are paired, but you already have me.”
For a second, Mycroft had a vision of himself bonded to Hope. Horrifying. Clearly Hope had thought so as well. Mycroft remembered the fervour in which Hope had arranged his match to Anthea some five years before. Though he didn’t regret it a moment, Mycroft couldn’t help but wonder if Hope deliberately chose for him someone he knew couldn’t take his job. Anthea had many, many talents but recognising compatibilities in others was not one of them.
Of course, Hope wouldn’t want to bond with me, thought Mycroft. I’m far too ambitious for him. I’d never take a back seat to his agenda the way Lu has. Lu, Mycroft realised, had been perfect: never questioning, never interfering, never called away to duty. Mycroft didn’t doubt that Hope still loved his fallen Sentinel, but he had fully enjoyed the independence his bondmate’s injuries had given him. Losing that would be tough indeed.
Mycroft’s earlier revenge fantasy seemed a lot less novel an idea. Being demoted to some place like Thatcham with a dull Sentinel for a minder wouldn’t seem to Hope like punishment so much as an inevitable consequence of simply being a Guide. Hope must have contemplated something similar happening for decades.
“Hope will never give up his job without a fight,” Mycroft mused aloud. “He’s far too comfortable and entrenched in his arrangements. Losing all this power - these connections, starting over as a mere helper to a Sentinel…” He sucked in a breath. “That’s what this is all about Anthea.” Mycroft waved at the screen. “Hope’s been preparing for Lu’s death. He’s been buying influence with Home Office through Wilkes, scratching their backs in the hope that when the time comes they will scratch his.”
“I don’t blame him,” said Anthea. “I shudder to think of what might happen if I were to lose you.”
Mycroft smelled distress in the sudden sweat on her brow. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “You don’t need to be,” he murmured. “I’m not one to take risks I don’t have to. You will be spoon feeding me when I’m toothless and ancient -- and won’t that be a fitting punishment for all your years of devotion.”
She half rose from the chair to give him a quick kiss. “I look forward to it. If you aren’t spooning mush into my mouth instead, that is.”
She settled back down and cued up the next email. They were nearly caught up to the present, but the flurry of activity on the account in the last two weeks meant that they still had quite a few left to go. Mycroft watched the cypher program move up through the percentages to a complete translation. Then the garbled letters and numbers on the page blinked into a new arrangement.
This message was in response to something Wilkes had emailed. Hopes response was sudden and dramatic.
Are you fucking kidding me? No, I’m not okay with this. After all I’ve done for them, they screw me over this way? I’ll shoot myself in the head first. Don’t put on that helpless act with me and pretend you aren’t involved. I don’t care if it’s above your pay grade, you owe me. Do your magic or so help me I will visit you in person and you’ll see just how motivated I am to fix this.
“Find what Wilkes told him,” said Mycroft urgently.
“Running it.” Anthea’s fingers flew from mouse to keyboard. They had largely been ignoring Wilkes half of the correspondence up until now, more concerned with finding the extent of Hope’s meddling. Anthea had quite a bit of scrolling to find the right message. Anthea clicked on it and they both waited impatiently for the decrypting program to do its thing.
And there it was. Anthea gasped. Mycroft pressed his lips together. “The next one,” he said tightly. “Show me what Wilkes said next.” Anthea was already on it. They scanned through the next couple of Wilkes emails, then leaned back as one as the situation resolved.
“Oh,” said Anthea.
Mycroft clicked his tongue. “Oh, Sherlock. What have you gotten yourself into?”
John yanked on his cuffs. They tightened around his wrists, but didn’t yield, nor was there any slippage. He couldn’t hope to wriggle out of them. They were clearly designed to hold a person, not to punish and they did their job too well.
“I think you’ve made your point,” he said to Hope who was standing in the corner rubbing his lips with his index finger, deep in thought. “I’d like to be let out now.” Maybe this time it would work.
Hope seemed to come to the present. “Not a chance. Not until you are bonded.”
“I am bonded.”
“Not to the right person.”
“What does it matter who I’m bonded to?” asked John. “Why are you taking this so personally? What does my bonding have to do with you?”
“What does it have to do… It has everything to do with me,” Hope snapped. “The military needs a powerful guide to help protect their front line Sentinels. They are going to get one. You practically volunteered. We know that you were asking about joining the military three months ago. So sit tight and get with the program.”
John felt his gut tighten. He had asked about the military, but he hadn’t realised the Tower had known it was him. It’d been a stupid idea. At the time he’d have done anything to get away from Bart's, away from Britain and its laws. The noose was tightening and he’d thought perhaps he’d earn enough respect on the field of war to be able to negotiate his freedom off of it. Now, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t have mattered. The Tower would still have come after him and he’d have been stuck in one of these interview rooms regardless.
The military needs a powerful guide… they are going to get one.
Oh shit. “Why are they threatening to send you to the front?” John asked, finally getting it. “Don’t they need you as Matchmaker?”
“The military’s run by mutes. Matchmaking is not their priority.” Bitterness poured off of him not just in his words but like a dark cloud off his mind, poisoning the room.
“What about your Sentinel? Surely they aren’t sending a crippled Sentinel into a war zone!” Hope’s surge of despair infected John with terror. “Your Sentinel! What’s happened to him?”
“Does it matter?” Hope bit out, his eyes bright. “He’s sixty-one. He’s weak. He’s… he can’t speak up when things aren’t right. Life is fucking unfair, John, that’s what happened to Lu.” Hope shook his head. “Life is unfair. The sooner you understand that the better. It doesn’t matter how much you work or how good you are, all people see is what they expect. And they expect you and me to be Guides.”
“I’m sorry,” said John.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it. It’s you or me, John, so it’s damn well going to be you,” said Hope. He had on a thousand yard stare that worried John. “You are young. Strong. Skilled and sneaky. You’d thrive out there on the battlefield. I’m almost fifty. I’m too old to go traipsing about through the countryside geared up until my back breaks and my knees give out. Too old to watch my Sentinel get shot in the head again. I’ve served my time, John. The Troubles. The streets. I’ve earned my rest.” He paused. “And I’m damn good at my job here. Don’t think that you can do the things I do. It’s more than just empathy, you know. It’s anticipating what people need. I’m the best there is at this.”
“I have no wish to take away your job.”
“Then why are you doing it?” snarled Hope. “Why couldn’t you have just bonded with the right person?”
Hope looked over into the other room, where Seb was sleeping off the zone on the floor. John could only see the Sentinel’s feet jutting out through the doorway. As sympathetic as John was, the bond he had felt right. It felt meant to be. Even now he felt it as a band of warmth and strength deep inside of him, more precious than anything he’d ever owned before. There was no way he’d break it, certainly not just for the convenience of people who didn’t give a damn about him. If the military were that keen to send him into battle, they were just going to have to deal with Sherlock as his Sentinel.
But John could tell that wasn’t going to go over with Hope. “Isn’t there any way you can just tell the military that you aren’t war material?” he asked.
“Do you think I haven’t tried?” Hope asked. “They don’t care. We are all just weapons. Sentinels. Guides. The mutes don’t give two shits about any of us. We scare them, John. Disgust them. We’re walking perversions, that’s what they think. Lascivious, insane, mind raping, privacy invading cavemen, driven by instinct and hormones. But we are useful. Oh yes. That’s the reason they don’t line us up and shoot us. Ha. Wait, they already tried. Damn bastard mutes.”
“I’ve had many normal friends,” argued John. “None of them felt that way.”
“Yes, well they thought you were normal, too, didn’t they. Go out there wearing your uniform patch and see how they react.” It was the voice of experience.
“I never asked to be a Guide,” said John, bitterly.
“And you think I did?” Hope sighed. “Doesn’t matter.” He walked over and put a hand on John’s knee. John felt his cloying influence attempt to smother his mind, but fended it off. “Redeem yourself. Help me break your bond and it will be much easier on you.”
John shoved back hard with his mind. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, but Hope pulled his hand away as if burned. “Or,” the old Guide went on. “You can resist and have it hurt like a son-of-bitch. Your choice. Either way, by tomorrow you’ll be bonded to that walking wall of meat,” he pointed his thumb out the door at Moran’s feet, “And I’ll be on the hunt through the retirement homes for my next Sentinel.” He rubbed his face. “I really don’t have time for any of this.”
John heard a sharp buzz and saw Hope jump. He pulled his mobile from his pocket and glanced at it. John could practically see the rage boiling off of him at what he’d read. Someone else was giving him a hard time. Good. It seemed to John that the more Hope was frustrated, the weaker his empathy. Eventually John would be able to find a chink in his armour and take him down.
Hope was aware that John was analysing his defences. For a second he grew even darker with rage, but then he seemed to thrust the feeling away. The false oily coat covered over his emotions again. The armour settled into place and once more he was the epitome of a genial Guide.
“Now, I’m going to wake up Seb. You place nice with him while I get rid of Sherlock and your sister and anyone else you might do your long distance bonding with. When that’s done you and I and Seb are going to go for a little ride out into the country to my lovely divorce estate. Keep up this winning attitude of yours and I’ll reward you with a very special treat.” The word “treat” sounded distinctly like a threat.
“I’m not going to keep silent about this,” warned John. “You break my bond against my will, I will tell everyone. No one will trust you again.”
Hope just laughed. “You just don’t get it. No one cares. Not even me.” Hope kicked the door shut.
Harry felt like fucking death warmed over. This was worse than going fifteen rounds at the Scotsman after going five rounds with a meth-head. Her senses were all over the place. She was pretty sure she was deaf, while her sense of smell seemed to be off the chart. Either that or she really did stink like the locker room at the gym. And oh yeah, there went the breakfast she hadn’t had a chance to eat.
When the gagging and retching backed off and she’d gotten her breath again, she dragged her bones off the floor. Dizziness nearly toppled her again, so she planted her head against the padded wall until she got her bearing. Even with her senses fucked to hell and back, this place seemed familiar. She’d been here before a couple of times. Cool down room. They’d let her sit in here and stew for a while until she proved that she was calm enough to let a Guide touch her and reset her dials back to neutral. Then they’d give her the lecture about taking her meds, doing her exercises, and scheduling time with the tired old bonded Guides. All those wonderfully humiliating hoops that bonded Sentinels never had to go through.
Man, she wished she were here for getting pissed again. At least after a blind drunk, she didn’t have to deal with the technicolor memories of all the things she’d done under the influence. She’d made a whopping fool of herself, start to finish. Clara probably thought she was a violent lunatic. Hope was likely laughing his saggy arse off. God only knew what the Alpha would say. Self-disgust made her gorge rise again.
Oh, god, she felt so raw. Make this go away! She thought that aching for some vague fantasy Guide was bad. Smelling John in full bonding heat - hearing him call out for help - wanting him so badly she would have been all over him if they’d given her even a tiny chance, fuck his gender, fuck the fact that he was her brother. She’d have fucked him. What would mum and dad have said about that? Harry groaned.
It was probably just as well they’d beaten her to the floor and tranqed her down. She had a shit-ton of issues.
She didn’t hear the door open, but she sure smelled it. The mute’s breath was like a vat of baingan bharta mixed with peppermint. Blech. She could feel the pressure of his voice against her skin, but whatever he was saying was lost on her.
“Can’t hear you,” she said, trying not to yell. The mute’s hearing wasn’t the problem. She felt her voice-box vibrate and the force of the air leaving her mouth, but from her ears, nothing. Forget trying to find the dial, it was jammed in mental amber. Fuck it. She’d rather just lean here against the wall and die of shame than deal with him anyway.
Then she sniffed the air as Guide-scent grew from a distant but omnipresent background smell to something bright and rich and in her face. She opened her eyes, laying her hot cheek against the cool matting, and saw an angel.
Maybe God did love her after all, because this was, hands down the most beautiful, sexy Guide in whole the Tower - fuck in any Tower. And she was the one to Guide Harry back to earth. Harry’d never been this close to her before. Brown hair like a shampoo commercial, delicate features, lips so soft. Sublime curves. Too bad she was bonded to the biggest arse (both literally and figuratively) in the whole place.
Hey there, sweetheart, what do you say we kill your Sentinel and run off together. Make sweet, sweet street patrolling together. And ho, God, I better not have said that aloud!
Thankfully it didn’t seem that she had, because instead of running to her Sentinel for safety, the angel put her cool hands against Harry’s face, stroking her temples, as if trying to rub out a headache. Smell receded, sound returned. The world fell into miserable place.
“You back with us?” she asked, her voice was light and pretty with only the tiniest bit of condescending humour.
“Fine,” said Harry pulling herself away. Her dignity might be tattered, but it still existed and she didn’t like it rubbed in her face what she’d never have. “Don’t step in my sick,” she said as an afterthought when the Guide backed toward the centre of the room. Several fat green drops of bile were about a foot to the right of the Guide’s shoe.
“I’m Anthea Holmes, by the way,” said the Guide, still beaming out that slightly patronising grin. “My Sentinel is Mycroft -“
“Yeah, I know him.” Like Harry could possibly forget the bloke who never, ever invited her on a hunt. Mycroft was even more at fault for her current condition than Hope. Bastard was the one who’d chased and terrorised her brother, finally brought him in to be given away to someone Harry didn’t know and definitely didn’t approve of. “So, are you just going to lecture me about my mental hygiene? Or are you going to ask how long I’ve known my brother was a rogue Guide.”
“Oh, you couldn’t have known about your brother,” said Anthea, looking surprised that Harry suggested it.
“Why not?”
“Because you’d be bonded to him if you had,” she replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “That was the intent of the frontal assault, wasn’t it?”
“Didn’t work,” said Harry. “I suppose you think I was being stupid.”
Anthea tilted her head, signalling that the thought had crossed her mind. “I think you were in shock and you were genuinely worried about your brother.”
Harry frowned. “Why are you being nice to me?” Why are you here at all? The job of dealing with the unbonded belonged to a trio of geriatric Guides whose Sentinels were too old to go in the field. Don’t you have better things to do?
“I’m here to help you.”
That hardly stopped any of the other Guides who’d talked her down from giving her the lecture. And for a lot less. Shit, she’d run like a lunatic through town wearing nothing but her nightie. That had to violate at least a dozen of the Tower’s conduct codes. And then storming the bonding suites, assaulting the Sentinel during his bonding, yeah. Harry was screwed.
But from the smell, Anthea was being earnest. She did seem to want to help. Odder yet, she didn’t seem the least put out by Harry’s behaviour - why?
“It would have been platonic,” Harry said, thinking again of what she’d done. “Me and John.”
“I’m sure it would have been,” Anthea agreed, “But it’s moot now. He’s bonded.”
“I figured.” Harry sighed. She remembered the lumbering ox of a man who’d slammed her to the floor. Poor John. That was so not his type. Maybe if he were lucky the Sentinel would be as heterosexual as Harry was gay and he’d let John go back to dating nurses and flirting with women out of his league. It’s what Harry would have done. “Well, that’s just awesome for them.”
“Are you working with Hope?” asked Anthea, as though it weren’t a complete non sequitor.
“What?” asked Harry, pulling her mind back from a brief, sweet, but hopeless fantasy of John, Sarah, Clara and herself sharing a lovely end of terrace in East Finchley. The idea of working with Hope was so repellent she nearly gagged again.
“Didn’t think so,” said Anthea, nodding as if she’d ticked off a box.
“Then why’d you ask?” Harry replied.
“Why do you hate Hope?” asked Anthea. Again, it sounded like a rehearsed question, but for the life of her Harry couldn’t figure out why anyone would ask it.
“Because he’s a fucking wanker, ’s why.” Harry let her anger and frustration roll over her. “Everyone toadies up to that little … toad. I haven’t the foggiest why. He’s a condescending, homophobic, misogynistic prick.”
Anthea’s brows knit so briefly that Harry would have missed it if she hadn’t been staring at her. “What makes you think that?”
“Have you seen the way he treats me? God, the contempt. He called my orientation an ‘affectation’. He did so!” Harry said at Anthea’s surprise. “He asked if I didn’t feel special enough being a female Sentinel, that I have to lay on other affectations to make things harder on him. He so deserved to be punched. It’s ironic, too, considering he was pretty into the gay fucking up to the point his Sentinel became a vegetable.”
Anthea winced.
“It’s not just me,” said Harry, seeing her skepticism. “He talks to everyone like that. Like you are all idiots. And everyone just nods their head at him like he’s being the sweetest thing there is. He insults everyone to their faces as well as behind their backs. When I tell people that, they look at me like I’m the rude one.” Harry snorted. “Am I working with him? Hell no. I avoid him as much as I can.”
Anthea’s eyes widened and then she nodded. “I can’t offer you John, but Mycroft and I do have a proposal for you. If you help, we will do everything in our power to see that this incident … disappears. We can even see that you get fast tracked to finding a Guide.”
“Oh?” asked Harry, doubtfully. This seemed far too good to be true. She’d always pegged Mycroft as being just as bad as Hope. But obviously they wanted something from her. And it certainly couldn’t hurt to get on the Guide Finder’s good side. She just wished she knew what it was she’d done that had impressed Anthea of her competence. She had a damn hard time thinking of anything herself.
“How would you like to help remove Hope from his position as Matchmaker.” Anthea’s smile positively glowed. Angel indeed.
Harry felt her heart lighten. She grinned. “Are you serious? Where do I fucking sign?”
Mycroft checked one last thing and then logged out of his computer. When he turned around Jeff Hope was standing, pale as a wraith, in the doorway to his office. He jumped back, horrified. How had the Guide bypassed his senses and infiltrated so deeply into Mycroft’s territory without tipping him off? Perhaps he’d learned the ability from the Phantom.
Mycroft was helpless to hold back the surge of fear and defensive fury. Every instinct in his body identified Hope as being a preeminent threat. He could not, as a Sentinel, ignore it, even though it poked holes in his cover.
“What is it?” he snapped, hoping he could pass himself off as simply being in a foul, antisocial mood.
Hope just stared at him for a long couple of seconds, searching, analysing. Then without warning, Mycroft’s anger and fear receded to nothing and instead he a surge of friendship and intense camaraderie. The feelings were so at odds with Mycroft’s sense of logic and order that it felt as if he’d turned empathic and were reading someone else.
“I’m sorry for yelling,” he said, more or less honestly. “What can I help you with, Hope?”
“I’ve got the security clerk bugging me about a young woman at the front desk. She’s making a scene over Harry Watson. Now I’d like to tell her that Harry is on a plane back to Aberdeen at this moment, but it seems that she’s still down in lock up. I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only person in this goddamn Tower that takes his job seriously.”
“Of course, they are in the cool downs. They’ve only just woken up. Don’t be impatient, we’ll have them out before the day is over.”
“I need them out now,” said Hope. “Right now. We can’t afford this, Mycroft. Home office is breathing down my neck. They want this divorce finished and their Sentinel bonded ASAP.”
Mycroft knew that Home Office hadn’t said any such thing. He had alerts on both Hope’s email and phone and nothing had come from Home Office or Wilkes since yesterday afternoon.
“I think the stress of Lu’s illness on your bond might be affecting your sense of judgement,” Mycroft responded calmly. “I’ll deal with Home Office. I’ll deal with Harry’s girlfriend. The normals can see to John’s needs. Go spend some time with Lu and tomorrow, bright and early, you can start on the divorce.”
“Don’t condescend to me, Mycroft,” snapped Hope. “Everything’s not fine. The longer that bond sits, the better chance those two have of firming it up, the harder it will be to divorce them without causing damage. I’ll deal with John. I’ll deal with Home Office. You just do the thing I asked you for: get those two Sentinels out of here. I checked, they’ve been awake for more than an hour. There is no reason they aren’t at least on their way to Heathrow right now.”
Mycroft opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped as the oddest mismatched set of thoughts and emotions raced through him. Part of him agreed with Hope entirely. The last thing he wanted was Sherlock to be hurt and the longer he was allowed to think of John as his, the more devastating it would be when John was rebonded to someone else. Losing one’s Guide was one of the most dangerous events in a Sentinel’s life. The statistics for Sentinels who committed suicide in the wake of losing their Guide were grim. He simply couldn’t risk Sherlock that way. Breaking his bond quickly would be easier than dragging the process out.
But even better would be to protect Sherlock’s bond from breaking at all. Which is what Mycroft intended to.
“Very well. I have already started the arrangements. I’ll send a few mutes to the armoury to weapon up, and then gather Harry and Sherlock from cool down. They’ll be out of the Tower in ten minutes.”
“Mutes?” said Hope. “Why not Sentinels. There are several from Sebastian’s group just sitting around on their thumbs with nothing to do. They can play escort service.”
Mycroft resisted a powerful desire to agree. “I expect them to be called back any minute, now that they aren’t needed. And besides, Mutes are better. An unbonded Sentinel might be disturbed by the idea of breaking a bond. Sherlock is a genius at manipulation and Watson has never liked either of us much. The two of them could set off a chain of damage. Better to keep it in house. Six well muscled mutes would provide loyalty without over-sympathising and they are all capable of sedating a Sentinel if the need arrises.”
Hope nodded. “That would be bad. I… I think you are right, my bond with Lu is effecting me a bit. As soon as this divorce is done, I’ll go see him.”
“I do hope Lu feels better soon,” said Mycroft.
Hope gave him a look that screamed paranoia, but then then shook his head. “You are a good man, I’m glad you are on my side.”
The irony of the statement almost made Mycroft laugh. Thankfully he had very good self control. He used his mobile to order the mutes around, then texted Anthea a head’s up. Hasty and half formed as it was - it was time to set this plan in motion. If all went as Mycroft predicted - if John stayed strong, and if Harry and Sherlock actually worked together instead of killing each other, if Mycroft and Althea could work the phones in peace for a few hours without Hope’s awareness or interference, if Home Office listened to reason instead of heeding inertia - then Hope should be largely defanged by before nightfall.
Hope smiled and said, “Thanks.” He retreated out the door, looking oddly fragile and alone.
Pairing: Sherlock/John, iffily platonic Harry/John, Sebastian Moran/John
Rating: R
Genre: Crossover with the Sentinel, AU, Plotfic.
Warnings: Forced Bonding, Non-con, coercion, imprisonment, incesty vibes, mild violence.
Summary: Written for This Prompt: In a world filled with Sentinels with heightened senses, strength and endurance, and Guides, with seductive empathy, who knew that seeming "ordinary" could be John's greatest strength.
Word count: 6300 words
Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter13
Chapter 14
Sherlock woke to find himself curled up in a dimly lit powder-blue painted room. The floor was tough-but-yielding, the air smelled precisely of nothing, the only sounds were those his own body made. Cool down cell, his mind supplied. He knew they existed, but it was the first time he’d ever been put in one. While they might be nirvana to a panicking Sentinel with no control left over his senses, Sherlock was not psychotic and he was already bored stiff.
In fact, he was rather the opposite of psychotic. He felt the presence of the new bond within him like a solid foundation for his senses. His dials had never been so easy to manipulate. Incredible. He hadn’t been sure that John had bonded with him - it seemed rather unlikely given the circumstances - but there it was, filling him with its warmth, making him feel complete in a way he’d never felt before. And rather uncomfortably pulling on him. He felt a jolt of urgency that went straight to his gut. Until John Watson was safe in his protection, he was in danger.
Sherlock stood up, legs a bit wobbly from the anaesthesia and his stomach more than a bit sensitive to any lurching movement, and patted himself down. There were bruises and tender areas, but he didn’t feel anything broken. His clothes were disheveled but otherwise intact. His mobile was still in his pocket, as was his wallet. His utility knife was gone from his belt, which just went to show that he had been searched but not robbed. All in all an improvement over the other times he’d been rendered unconscious.
Next he assessed the room. He tried pressing on the door, but it was obviously latched shut and there was no handle on the inside. Nor was there any intercom or any other way of contacting the outside world. Lord help the poor soul who was stuck in here and forgotten.
He looked up and spotted the camera in the corner and waved at it. It did nothing, of course. It occurred to Sherlock that, even if he hadn’t been forgotten, the clerk tasked with the job of monitoring the rooms was probably no more entertained by the situation than he was. It could be minutes before he or she bothered to check to see he was awake.
Sherlock huffed out an impatient sigh. He pulled his phone from his pocket, thanked his parents for gifting him with an eidetic memory and he dialled an unfamiliar number.
“Hello,” he said to whoever it was manning the desk outside the desk outside his cell. “I’m awake and I’d like to be released.”
“What?” asked the clerk, stupidly. Sherlock heard papers being moved, the combination of a thump and clink of a plastic clipboard hitting a ceramic mug, and the soft thunk of a paperback novel falling off the desk and hitting the cement floor. “Is this - wait - how’d you get this number?“
Sherlock waved up at the camera again, knowing this time he’d be seen. “Listen. I realise you have a very busy schedule of novel reading and internet surfing, but if you could bear to take a minute or two perform your job, I’d be appreciative. I’ve a very new Guide waiting to be rescued and I fear if I leave him alone much longer, he might get the wrong idea.”
“What?” repeated the clerk, dully.
Sherlock huffed with exasperation. “What. What. Yes, I know that intelligence might actually be a drawback to your job, but do try to use what few brain cells you have left. Here I’ll spell it out: Stand up. Walk over to my cell. Use whatever key is required to open said cell. And Let. Me. Out!”
“Now, Sentinel Holmes - I can’t.”
“- Oh for heaven’s sake why not!”
“I’ve got orders.”
“Orders? Whose orders?”
“From the other Sentinel Holmes, sir.” The clerk sounded a bit put out. “I’m to hold you and Sentinel Watson until he comes to retrieve you.”
Sherlock frowned. “Under whose authority - oh, bugger. Never mind. I’ll call the arse myself.” Sherlock ended the call by jamming his finger into the end button.
The next call required no feats of memory. The phone rang twice and then Sherlock blurted, “Let me out,” before Mycroft had the time to answer.
“Sherlock, I can’t,” Mycroft groaned. In the background, Sherlock heard the quick clack of fingers against a keyboard. Anthea - Mycroft wasn’t that fast a typist. That put Mycroft up in his office where he very much could do just about anything he wanted.
“Oh please don’t try to pull that ‘I’m just a Guide Finder’ act with me. You don’t even need to stir your lazy bones away from your desk. Give my jailer a call and I’ll take of everything else myself.”
“I think you overestimate my influence and underestimate the amount of damage your actions have done. Though I suppose I should congratulate you on your recent bonding.”
Sherlock smiled.
“Temporary as it appears to be,” Mycroft went on.
Sherlock’s face fell. “Temporary?”
“You know, you could have asked for my help instead of stealing my identity and sabotaging the ventilation. Though zip-line was a interesting move. I will have to talk to the Alpha about security -“
“I don’t give a crap about the Tower’s security, what is happening with John? Is he safe? Why temporary?”
“John is completely safe and will remain so. Believe me, no one has any interest in hurting him. You, on the other hand, are in a much stickier position. You’ve messed with a bonding that people with a great deal more power than me have taken an interest in. I know you loathe office politics, but you’ve really managed to put your foot squarely into it this time. I honestly can’t fathom why you did so. It seems so out of character for you.”
“Don’t pretend you have any insight into my character,” snarled Sherlock, pacing the small area. He hated how his feet sank into the ground. The walls appeared to be closing in on him. “Let me out. I’ll answer to any higher powers for my actions. I’ll tell them that you had no part in my actions. But I need to be with John. Now.”
He did. He could feel the connection to John tugging at his soul, telling him that the bonding wasn’t complete. John had done his part and brought them empathically in sync. (How? Sherlock wondered. He’d never heard of a Guide being able to bond long distance.) Sherlock needed to do his. He hadn’t imprinted on John yet. He hadn’t memorised his smell or taste. Hadn’t learned his touch, his movements. He barely knew the sound of his voice. There was an unbearable gap in his knowledge that needed to be filled with his Guide.
Sherlock was so filled with awareness of his need that he almost missed Mycroft’s reply. “I’ll be down in an hour. Until then you can think about your actions a bit. Consider it punishment for using my fingerprint.”
“An hour? No, Mycroft. Don’t be cruel. It’s horrible in here! It’s nothing to all my senses. Are you trying to torture me?”
“Maybe you’ll think twice about running into situations without proper back up,” Mycroft cheerily. “Now, I really am quite busy. Ta-ta.”
The bastard hung up. Sherlock stared at his phone with fury. For half a moment he considered throwing it at a wall, but then he put it back in his pocket. Mycroft was right, he was deep in Tower territory here. He needed back up. But who? Bugger if he’d sit back and play Mycroft’s mind-games. He was half tempted to call on Hope, but considering the Guide was the one who shot him, not a good idea. Who else would have any kind of vested interest in his case?
Wait. Watson was stuck in here, too. Didn’t she have a girlfriend?
Mycroft set the phone down and leaned over Anthea’s shoulder to see the screen. “Sorry about that. Where were we?” Anthea empathically pointed at the screen and together they went through the next in a seemingly endless queue of emails. They read more out curiosity than practical need at this point. They’d had enough evidence to politically disembowel Hope fifty emails ago. Now, they were deep into the sheer sorry desperation of the situation.
God help him, Mycroft was actually starting to feel sorry for Hope.
“This is bad,” said Anthea as she scanned through a particularly long email.
“This is very bad,” Mycroft agreed. “This changes everything.”
Lucien Hope was dying. Not in the slow incremental way he’d been for the last twenty years, with his various infections and bouts of illness, but in the urgent way of stage four bone cancer. Chrodosarcoma. It had been discovered two weeks ago in Lu’s numb side, a mass below the knee that apparently hadn’t bothered the Sentinel. Scans had shown that it had metastasised with a vengeance to pepper his lungs with dozens tumours. He was too sick to tolerate chemo. His life was now measured in weeks, a month or two on the outside.
And when he died, Jeff Hope would become an unbonded Guide again. He was probably up there pacing the floor of the interview room, worrying about the time when the heavy door to the suite would no longer open to his thumbprint.
“What will happen to him?” Anthea asked. “When Lu is gone.”
“He’ll bond again, of course.” Even at Hope’s age, bonding wasn’t an option. There were too many unbonded Sentinels desperate enough to take whatever they could get. With Hope’s abilities and relative vigour, he’d still be a desirable catch.
“Will he remain the Matchmaker, though?” asked Anthea, getting straight to crux of the matter. “What would be his Sentinel’s job? In most Towers the Matchmaker and the Guide Finder are paired, but you already have me.”
For a second, Mycroft had a vision of himself bonded to Hope. Horrifying. Clearly Hope had thought so as well. Mycroft remembered the fervour in which Hope had arranged his match to Anthea some five years before. Though he didn’t regret it a moment, Mycroft couldn’t help but wonder if Hope deliberately chose for him someone he knew couldn’t take his job. Anthea had many, many talents but recognising compatibilities in others was not one of them.
Of course, Hope wouldn’t want to bond with me, thought Mycroft. I’m far too ambitious for him. I’d never take a back seat to his agenda the way Lu has. Lu, Mycroft realised, had been perfect: never questioning, never interfering, never called away to duty. Mycroft didn’t doubt that Hope still loved his fallen Sentinel, but he had fully enjoyed the independence his bondmate’s injuries had given him. Losing that would be tough indeed.
Mycroft’s earlier revenge fantasy seemed a lot less novel an idea. Being demoted to some place like Thatcham with a dull Sentinel for a minder wouldn’t seem to Hope like punishment so much as an inevitable consequence of simply being a Guide. Hope must have contemplated something similar happening for decades.
“Hope will never give up his job without a fight,” Mycroft mused aloud. “He’s far too comfortable and entrenched in his arrangements. Losing all this power - these connections, starting over as a mere helper to a Sentinel…” He sucked in a breath. “That’s what this is all about Anthea.” Mycroft waved at the screen. “Hope’s been preparing for Lu’s death. He’s been buying influence with Home Office through Wilkes, scratching their backs in the hope that when the time comes they will scratch his.”
“I don’t blame him,” said Anthea. “I shudder to think of what might happen if I were to lose you.”
Mycroft smelled distress in the sudden sweat on her brow. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “You don’t need to be,” he murmured. “I’m not one to take risks I don’t have to. You will be spoon feeding me when I’m toothless and ancient -- and won’t that be a fitting punishment for all your years of devotion.”
She half rose from the chair to give him a quick kiss. “I look forward to it. If you aren’t spooning mush into my mouth instead, that is.”
She settled back down and cued up the next email. They were nearly caught up to the present, but the flurry of activity on the account in the last two weeks meant that they still had quite a few left to go. Mycroft watched the cypher program move up through the percentages to a complete translation. Then the garbled letters and numbers on the page blinked into a new arrangement.
This message was in response to something Wilkes had emailed. Hopes response was sudden and dramatic.
Are you fucking kidding me? No, I’m not okay with this. After all I’ve done for them, they screw me over this way? I’ll shoot myself in the head first. Don’t put on that helpless act with me and pretend you aren’t involved. I don’t care if it’s above your pay grade, you owe me. Do your magic or so help me I will visit you in person and you’ll see just how motivated I am to fix this.
“Find what Wilkes told him,” said Mycroft urgently.
“Running it.” Anthea’s fingers flew from mouse to keyboard. They had largely been ignoring Wilkes half of the correspondence up until now, more concerned with finding the extent of Hope’s meddling. Anthea had quite a bit of scrolling to find the right message. Anthea clicked on it and they both waited impatiently for the decrypting program to do its thing.
And there it was. Anthea gasped. Mycroft pressed his lips together. “The next one,” he said tightly. “Show me what Wilkes said next.” Anthea was already on it. They scanned through the next couple of Wilkes emails, then leaned back as one as the situation resolved.
“Oh,” said Anthea.
Mycroft clicked his tongue. “Oh, Sherlock. What have you gotten yourself into?”
John yanked on his cuffs. They tightened around his wrists, but didn’t yield, nor was there any slippage. He couldn’t hope to wriggle out of them. They were clearly designed to hold a person, not to punish and they did their job too well.
“I think you’ve made your point,” he said to Hope who was standing in the corner rubbing his lips with his index finger, deep in thought. “I’d like to be let out now.” Maybe this time it would work.
Hope seemed to come to the present. “Not a chance. Not until you are bonded.”
“I am bonded.”
“Not to the right person.”
“What does it matter who I’m bonded to?” asked John. “Why are you taking this so personally? What does my bonding have to do with you?”
“What does it have to do… It has everything to do with me,” Hope snapped. “The military needs a powerful guide to help protect their front line Sentinels. They are going to get one. You practically volunteered. We know that you were asking about joining the military three months ago. So sit tight and get with the program.”
John felt his gut tighten. He had asked about the military, but he hadn’t realised the Tower had known it was him. It’d been a stupid idea. At the time he’d have done anything to get away from Bart's, away from Britain and its laws. The noose was tightening and he’d thought perhaps he’d earn enough respect on the field of war to be able to negotiate his freedom off of it. Now, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t have mattered. The Tower would still have come after him and he’d have been stuck in one of these interview rooms regardless.
The military needs a powerful guide… they are going to get one.
Oh shit. “Why are they threatening to send you to the front?” John asked, finally getting it. “Don’t they need you as Matchmaker?”
“The military’s run by mutes. Matchmaking is not their priority.” Bitterness poured off of him not just in his words but like a dark cloud off his mind, poisoning the room.
“What about your Sentinel? Surely they aren’t sending a crippled Sentinel into a war zone!” Hope’s surge of despair infected John with terror. “Your Sentinel! What’s happened to him?”
“Does it matter?” Hope bit out, his eyes bright. “He’s sixty-one. He’s weak. He’s… he can’t speak up when things aren’t right. Life is fucking unfair, John, that’s what happened to Lu.” Hope shook his head. “Life is unfair. The sooner you understand that the better. It doesn’t matter how much you work or how good you are, all people see is what they expect. And they expect you and me to be Guides.”
“I’m sorry,” said John.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it. It’s you or me, John, so it’s damn well going to be you,” said Hope. He had on a thousand yard stare that worried John. “You are young. Strong. Skilled and sneaky. You’d thrive out there on the battlefield. I’m almost fifty. I’m too old to go traipsing about through the countryside geared up until my back breaks and my knees give out. Too old to watch my Sentinel get shot in the head again. I’ve served my time, John. The Troubles. The streets. I’ve earned my rest.” He paused. “And I’m damn good at my job here. Don’t think that you can do the things I do. It’s more than just empathy, you know. It’s anticipating what people need. I’m the best there is at this.”
“I have no wish to take away your job.”
“Then why are you doing it?” snarled Hope. “Why couldn’t you have just bonded with the right person?”
Hope looked over into the other room, where Seb was sleeping off the zone on the floor. John could only see the Sentinel’s feet jutting out through the doorway. As sympathetic as John was, the bond he had felt right. It felt meant to be. Even now he felt it as a band of warmth and strength deep inside of him, more precious than anything he’d ever owned before. There was no way he’d break it, certainly not just for the convenience of people who didn’t give a damn about him. If the military were that keen to send him into battle, they were just going to have to deal with Sherlock as his Sentinel.
But John could tell that wasn’t going to go over with Hope. “Isn’t there any way you can just tell the military that you aren’t war material?” he asked.
“Do you think I haven’t tried?” Hope asked. “They don’t care. We are all just weapons. Sentinels. Guides. The mutes don’t give two shits about any of us. We scare them, John. Disgust them. We’re walking perversions, that’s what they think. Lascivious, insane, mind raping, privacy invading cavemen, driven by instinct and hormones. But we are useful. Oh yes. That’s the reason they don’t line us up and shoot us. Ha. Wait, they already tried. Damn bastard mutes.”
“I’ve had many normal friends,” argued John. “None of them felt that way.”
“Yes, well they thought you were normal, too, didn’t they. Go out there wearing your uniform patch and see how they react.” It was the voice of experience.
“I never asked to be a Guide,” said John, bitterly.
“And you think I did?” Hope sighed. “Doesn’t matter.” He walked over and put a hand on John’s knee. John felt his cloying influence attempt to smother his mind, but fended it off. “Redeem yourself. Help me break your bond and it will be much easier on you.”
John shoved back hard with his mind. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing, but Hope pulled his hand away as if burned. “Or,” the old Guide went on. “You can resist and have it hurt like a son-of-bitch. Your choice. Either way, by tomorrow you’ll be bonded to that walking wall of meat,” he pointed his thumb out the door at Moran’s feet, “And I’ll be on the hunt through the retirement homes for my next Sentinel.” He rubbed his face. “I really don’t have time for any of this.”
John heard a sharp buzz and saw Hope jump. He pulled his mobile from his pocket and glanced at it. John could practically see the rage boiling off of him at what he’d read. Someone else was giving him a hard time. Good. It seemed to John that the more Hope was frustrated, the weaker his empathy. Eventually John would be able to find a chink in his armour and take him down.
Hope was aware that John was analysing his defences. For a second he grew even darker with rage, but then he seemed to thrust the feeling away. The false oily coat covered over his emotions again. The armour settled into place and once more he was the epitome of a genial Guide.
“Now, I’m going to wake up Seb. You place nice with him while I get rid of Sherlock and your sister and anyone else you might do your long distance bonding with. When that’s done you and I and Seb are going to go for a little ride out into the country to my lovely divorce estate. Keep up this winning attitude of yours and I’ll reward you with a very special treat.” The word “treat” sounded distinctly like a threat.
“I’m not going to keep silent about this,” warned John. “You break my bond against my will, I will tell everyone. No one will trust you again.”
Hope just laughed. “You just don’t get it. No one cares. Not even me.” Hope kicked the door shut.
Harry felt like fucking death warmed over. This was worse than going fifteen rounds at the Scotsman after going five rounds with a meth-head. Her senses were all over the place. She was pretty sure she was deaf, while her sense of smell seemed to be off the chart. Either that or she really did stink like the locker room at the gym. And oh yeah, there went the breakfast she hadn’t had a chance to eat.
When the gagging and retching backed off and she’d gotten her breath again, she dragged her bones off the floor. Dizziness nearly toppled her again, so she planted her head against the padded wall until she got her bearing. Even with her senses fucked to hell and back, this place seemed familiar. She’d been here before a couple of times. Cool down room. They’d let her sit in here and stew for a while until she proved that she was calm enough to let a Guide touch her and reset her dials back to neutral. Then they’d give her the lecture about taking her meds, doing her exercises, and scheduling time with the tired old bonded Guides. All those wonderfully humiliating hoops that bonded Sentinels never had to go through.
Man, she wished she were here for getting pissed again. At least after a blind drunk, she didn’t have to deal with the technicolor memories of all the things she’d done under the influence. She’d made a whopping fool of herself, start to finish. Clara probably thought she was a violent lunatic. Hope was likely laughing his saggy arse off. God only knew what the Alpha would say. Self-disgust made her gorge rise again.
Oh, god, she felt so raw. Make this go away! She thought that aching for some vague fantasy Guide was bad. Smelling John in full bonding heat - hearing him call out for help - wanting him so badly she would have been all over him if they’d given her even a tiny chance, fuck his gender, fuck the fact that he was her brother. She’d have fucked him. What would mum and dad have said about that? Harry groaned.
It was probably just as well they’d beaten her to the floor and tranqed her down. She had a shit-ton of issues.
She didn’t hear the door open, but she sure smelled it. The mute’s breath was like a vat of baingan bharta mixed with peppermint. Blech. She could feel the pressure of his voice against her skin, but whatever he was saying was lost on her.
“Can’t hear you,” she said, trying not to yell. The mute’s hearing wasn’t the problem. She felt her voice-box vibrate and the force of the air leaving her mouth, but from her ears, nothing. Forget trying to find the dial, it was jammed in mental amber. Fuck it. She’d rather just lean here against the wall and die of shame than deal with him anyway.
Then she sniffed the air as Guide-scent grew from a distant but omnipresent background smell to something bright and rich and in her face. She opened her eyes, laying her hot cheek against the cool matting, and saw an angel.
Maybe God did love her after all, because this was, hands down the most beautiful, sexy Guide in whole the Tower - fuck in any Tower. And she was the one to Guide Harry back to earth. Harry’d never been this close to her before. Brown hair like a shampoo commercial, delicate features, lips so soft. Sublime curves. Too bad she was bonded to the biggest arse (both literally and figuratively) in the whole place.
Hey there, sweetheart, what do you say we kill your Sentinel and run off together. Make sweet, sweet street patrolling together. And ho, God, I better not have said that aloud!
Thankfully it didn’t seem that she had, because instead of running to her Sentinel for safety, the angel put her cool hands against Harry’s face, stroking her temples, as if trying to rub out a headache. Smell receded, sound returned. The world fell into miserable place.
“You back with us?” she asked, her voice was light and pretty with only the tiniest bit of condescending humour.
“Fine,” said Harry pulling herself away. Her dignity might be tattered, but it still existed and she didn’t like it rubbed in her face what she’d never have. “Don’t step in my sick,” she said as an afterthought when the Guide backed toward the centre of the room. Several fat green drops of bile were about a foot to the right of the Guide’s shoe.
“I’m Anthea Holmes, by the way,” said the Guide, still beaming out that slightly patronising grin. “My Sentinel is Mycroft -“
“Yeah, I know him.” Like Harry could possibly forget the bloke who never, ever invited her on a hunt. Mycroft was even more at fault for her current condition than Hope. Bastard was the one who’d chased and terrorised her brother, finally brought him in to be given away to someone Harry didn’t know and definitely didn’t approve of. “So, are you just going to lecture me about my mental hygiene? Or are you going to ask how long I’ve known my brother was a rogue Guide.”
“Oh, you couldn’t have known about your brother,” said Anthea, looking surprised that Harry suggested it.
“Why not?”
“Because you’d be bonded to him if you had,” she replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “That was the intent of the frontal assault, wasn’t it?”
“Didn’t work,” said Harry. “I suppose you think I was being stupid.”
Anthea tilted her head, signalling that the thought had crossed her mind. “I think you were in shock and you were genuinely worried about your brother.”
Harry frowned. “Why are you being nice to me?” Why are you here at all? The job of dealing with the unbonded belonged to a trio of geriatric Guides whose Sentinels were too old to go in the field. Don’t you have better things to do?
“I’m here to help you.”
That hardly stopped any of the other Guides who’d talked her down from giving her the lecture. And for a lot less. Shit, she’d run like a lunatic through town wearing nothing but her nightie. That had to violate at least a dozen of the Tower’s conduct codes. And then storming the bonding suites, assaulting the Sentinel during his bonding, yeah. Harry was screwed.
But from the smell, Anthea was being earnest. She did seem to want to help. Odder yet, she didn’t seem the least put out by Harry’s behaviour - why?
“It would have been platonic,” Harry said, thinking again of what she’d done. “Me and John.”
“I’m sure it would have been,” Anthea agreed, “But it’s moot now. He’s bonded.”
“I figured.” Harry sighed. She remembered the lumbering ox of a man who’d slammed her to the floor. Poor John. That was so not his type. Maybe if he were lucky the Sentinel would be as heterosexual as Harry was gay and he’d let John go back to dating nurses and flirting with women out of his league. It’s what Harry would have done. “Well, that’s just awesome for them.”
“Are you working with Hope?” asked Anthea, as though it weren’t a complete non sequitor.
“What?” asked Harry, pulling her mind back from a brief, sweet, but hopeless fantasy of John, Sarah, Clara and herself sharing a lovely end of terrace in East Finchley. The idea of working with Hope was so repellent she nearly gagged again.
“Didn’t think so,” said Anthea, nodding as if she’d ticked off a box.
“Then why’d you ask?” Harry replied.
“Why do you hate Hope?” asked Anthea. Again, it sounded like a rehearsed question, but for the life of her Harry couldn’t figure out why anyone would ask it.
“Because he’s a fucking wanker, ’s why.” Harry let her anger and frustration roll over her. “Everyone toadies up to that little … toad. I haven’t the foggiest why. He’s a condescending, homophobic, misogynistic prick.”
Anthea’s brows knit so briefly that Harry would have missed it if she hadn’t been staring at her. “What makes you think that?”
“Have you seen the way he treats me? God, the contempt. He called my orientation an ‘affectation’. He did so!” Harry said at Anthea’s surprise. “He asked if I didn’t feel special enough being a female Sentinel, that I have to lay on other affectations to make things harder on him. He so deserved to be punched. It’s ironic, too, considering he was pretty into the gay fucking up to the point his Sentinel became a vegetable.”
Anthea winced.
“It’s not just me,” said Harry, seeing her skepticism. “He talks to everyone like that. Like you are all idiots. And everyone just nods their head at him like he’s being the sweetest thing there is. He insults everyone to their faces as well as behind their backs. When I tell people that, they look at me like I’m the rude one.” Harry snorted. “Am I working with him? Hell no. I avoid him as much as I can.”
Anthea’s eyes widened and then she nodded. “I can’t offer you John, but Mycroft and I do have a proposal for you. If you help, we will do everything in our power to see that this incident … disappears. We can even see that you get fast tracked to finding a Guide.”
“Oh?” asked Harry, doubtfully. This seemed far too good to be true. She’d always pegged Mycroft as being just as bad as Hope. But obviously they wanted something from her. And it certainly couldn’t hurt to get on the Guide Finder’s good side. She just wished she knew what it was she’d done that had impressed Anthea of her competence. She had a damn hard time thinking of anything herself.
“How would you like to help remove Hope from his position as Matchmaker.” Anthea’s smile positively glowed. Angel indeed.
Harry felt her heart lighten. She grinned. “Are you serious? Where do I fucking sign?”
Mycroft checked one last thing and then logged out of his computer. When he turned around Jeff Hope was standing, pale as a wraith, in the doorway to his office. He jumped back, horrified. How had the Guide bypassed his senses and infiltrated so deeply into Mycroft’s territory without tipping him off? Perhaps he’d learned the ability from the Phantom.
Mycroft was helpless to hold back the surge of fear and defensive fury. Every instinct in his body identified Hope as being a preeminent threat. He could not, as a Sentinel, ignore it, even though it poked holes in his cover.
“What is it?” he snapped, hoping he could pass himself off as simply being in a foul, antisocial mood.
Hope just stared at him for a long couple of seconds, searching, analysing. Then without warning, Mycroft’s anger and fear receded to nothing and instead he a surge of friendship and intense camaraderie. The feelings were so at odds with Mycroft’s sense of logic and order that it felt as if he’d turned empathic and were reading someone else.
“I’m sorry for yelling,” he said, more or less honestly. “What can I help you with, Hope?”
“I’ve got the security clerk bugging me about a young woman at the front desk. She’s making a scene over Harry Watson. Now I’d like to tell her that Harry is on a plane back to Aberdeen at this moment, but it seems that she’s still down in lock up. I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only person in this goddamn Tower that takes his job seriously.”
“Of course, they are in the cool downs. They’ve only just woken up. Don’t be impatient, we’ll have them out before the day is over.”
“I need them out now,” said Hope. “Right now. We can’t afford this, Mycroft. Home office is breathing down my neck. They want this divorce finished and their Sentinel bonded ASAP.”
Mycroft knew that Home Office hadn’t said any such thing. He had alerts on both Hope’s email and phone and nothing had come from Home Office or Wilkes since yesterday afternoon.
“I think the stress of Lu’s illness on your bond might be affecting your sense of judgement,” Mycroft responded calmly. “I’ll deal with Home Office. I’ll deal with Harry’s girlfriend. The normals can see to John’s needs. Go spend some time with Lu and tomorrow, bright and early, you can start on the divorce.”
“Don’t condescend to me, Mycroft,” snapped Hope. “Everything’s not fine. The longer that bond sits, the better chance those two have of firming it up, the harder it will be to divorce them without causing damage. I’ll deal with John. I’ll deal with Home Office. You just do the thing I asked you for: get those two Sentinels out of here. I checked, they’ve been awake for more than an hour. There is no reason they aren’t at least on their way to Heathrow right now.”
Mycroft opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped as the oddest mismatched set of thoughts and emotions raced through him. Part of him agreed with Hope entirely. The last thing he wanted was Sherlock to be hurt and the longer he was allowed to think of John as his, the more devastating it would be when John was rebonded to someone else. Losing one’s Guide was one of the most dangerous events in a Sentinel’s life. The statistics for Sentinels who committed suicide in the wake of losing their Guide were grim. He simply couldn’t risk Sherlock that way. Breaking his bond quickly would be easier than dragging the process out.
But even better would be to protect Sherlock’s bond from breaking at all. Which is what Mycroft intended to.
“Very well. I have already started the arrangements. I’ll send a few mutes to the armoury to weapon up, and then gather Harry and Sherlock from cool down. They’ll be out of the Tower in ten minutes.”
“Mutes?” said Hope. “Why not Sentinels. There are several from Sebastian’s group just sitting around on their thumbs with nothing to do. They can play escort service.”
Mycroft resisted a powerful desire to agree. “I expect them to be called back any minute, now that they aren’t needed. And besides, Mutes are better. An unbonded Sentinel might be disturbed by the idea of breaking a bond. Sherlock is a genius at manipulation and Watson has never liked either of us much. The two of them could set off a chain of damage. Better to keep it in house. Six well muscled mutes would provide loyalty without over-sympathising and they are all capable of sedating a Sentinel if the need arrises.”
Hope nodded. “That would be bad. I… I think you are right, my bond with Lu is effecting me a bit. As soon as this divorce is done, I’ll go see him.”
“I do hope Lu feels better soon,” said Mycroft.
Hope gave him a look that screamed paranoia, but then then shook his head. “You are a good man, I’m glad you are on my side.”
The irony of the statement almost made Mycroft laugh. Thankfully he had very good self control. He used his mobile to order the mutes around, then texted Anthea a head’s up. Hasty and half formed as it was - it was time to set this plan in motion. If all went as Mycroft predicted - if John stayed strong, and if Harry and Sherlock actually worked together instead of killing each other, if Mycroft and Althea could work the phones in peace for a few hours without Hope’s awareness or interference, if Home Office listened to reason instead of heeding inertia - then Hope should be largely defanged by before nightfall.
Hope smiled and said, “Thanks.” He retreated out the door, looking oddly fragile and alone.