Fic: Observations on Sentinels & Guides in Victorian London - Part Four (PG-13)
Title: Observations in Sentinels & Guides in Victorian London
Author: Ryuuza Kochou
Pairing/Characters: Holmes/Watson
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4651
Spoilers: None; complete AU
Summary: A Victorian era AU where Sentinels and Guides are members of everyday society. Starring Sentinel! Holmes and Guide! Watson. Part Four: Sherlock has a brotherly discussion of the Holmesian variety....
Notes/Warnings: Sorry this took so long. I ended up rambling and over describing and had heaps of stuff to cut out - ugh, my editing is a mess. I tried to keep the story moving without getting loaded down in long explanations. Still had fun though! Adult themes and light bad language. Nothing real graphic as yet.
Disclaimer: All owned by the estate of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and associated folk. Written for fun and not for profit
Part One:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/684238.html
Part Two:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/698815.html
Part Three:
http://community.livejournal.com/holmeswatson09/699151.html
Observations on Sentinels And Guides in Victorian London - Part Four:
London was a city which ran on rumour. Newspapers were more or less a means of recording the official versions and were only the tiniest fractions of the amount of gossip passed from ear to ear, moving more rapidly than a blink. It was said that if a person stood up and screamed a word in the middle of the city, the rumour would have reached the Sentinel manned Wall Towers before the echoes died away.
Of course, it wasn’t the most perfectly clear or accurate source of information. There would be a thousand different ideas about what word it was, a hundred thousand reasons why it had been screamed and a lingering tale that it hadn’t been a scream at all but a sudden impromptu arcane dance. It was like the ocean. It may every kind of loud, silent, deserted, teeming, it might be roaring and violent as well as mirror tranquil. The only thing you could say for absolute was that there was water.
A tale - small at first, like a seed - was slowly creeping across the city. Two stories actually, but they wound and tangled around each other like ivy, masking the roots and knotting vines of the story beneath the whispering, chattering leaves. Stripped bare, the only points of commonality remained throughout were as follows.
A Dark Sentinel stalked the city, emerging and disappearing in sharp burst of violence and power in some of the darkest and most pit like areas of London. He lurked in the dangerous places, came the whispers, he glided into the worst iniquitous dens like some black phantom. It was said that if he was coming for you he was like the Reaper himself, except all the Reaper could do was kill you. It was said that if he hunted you, you would never see him coming. By the time you saw his shadow, it was too late to hide. It was said that he could track you from a speck of dust, that he could see all the lies you told like other men saw colours. It was said that he would be nothing but a blur in the fighting rings of the city, so fast and strong that his opponents wouldn’t even see the face of their enemy before they were groaning on the floor.
But on the other side, balancing and enhancing this tale was another. There was a stranger wandering around the poor districts. It was said he healed with but a touch, but a handful of words. It was said that disease and pain fled any house he entered, driven out by his very presence. It was said he could feel prayers and cries for help, even from those whom all help had long turned. It was said that hearing his footsteps, the echoing tap that followed them, was a sign you were protected, that no more ills would visit this night. It was said he could save a person all but dead, could practically turn death itself away from a household, could get half rotting lungs to draw sweet breath, could close a fatal wound to a scratch. It was even said that after he had long gone, good fortune stayed in his wake. It was as if the world was cleaner and brighter wherever he went.
Those that heard both stories muttered to themselves ironically. If the agent of Hell wanted to walk the streets of London, they said, then just as well an agent of Heaven chose to walk as well.
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Holmes lay on his couch, wreathed in tobacco smoke. If witnesses had been transported simultaneously from a moment a week ago to this, they would have sworn the man had never moved.
For his part in the scene, Holmes stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, his mind elsewhere. Many of his Sentinel trainers had worried about his doing this, about being physically immobile and letting his mind go elsewhere. It was a fugue, they argued, just without the overwhelming focus on one sense.
But Holmes had never ascribed to any habit which was hard to break. What was the point of having one, he thought, if you simply changed it week to week? And he would not give this up. This absolute meditative state was a haven from his increasingly uncomfortable body. He walked through his mindscape.
Throughout the centuries, it had been called many different things. The spirit world. The country of the soul. The dreamtime. It was many things to many cultures. Every person in every land had one, though levels of access varied. It was totally inaccurate to say that human lived in one world. They lived on one planet, and it contained more worlds that could be imagined in a lifetime. Most of them, however, were invisible but for the individual that made and travelled within them.
What is was, at heart, was the sum total of the thoughts and memories that shaped a soul, all the familiarities that gave it it’s character, and the hopes and purposes that gave it direction. Most of them didn’t have a shape as such; they were more a mix of feelings and impressions, all swirling in a kaleidoscope of sounds, smells, flavours, memories. If they had a shape, then they were a strange, interconnected maze of childhood bedrooms, familiar streets, pictures of places you wanted to see, the susurrus of stories you’d been told, places you’d imagined....it was the strange and tumultuous crossroad between what you had and what you wanted.
Most were quite small, relatively. Most people, no matter how far they travelled, clung to the same memories. It made them feel safe. Holmes’ contained more space than most could even grasp in a lifetime.
This was his mindscape. Close too, it was rushing water. It was mostly clear, because anything murky soon became clear enough to him. It rushed like a rapid rushed, a boiling, roaring mass of power, fed from a hundred thousand falling waterfalls of sensory input. Step back a little, and it was a water works system, insanely complex, twisting and turning, diverting, connecting, boiling and freezing, great gouts of steam came as unnecessary facts were stripped away and vital clues were preserved. Thin streams of vapour hissed from the weak joins of faulty logic from the pipe works of his deductive faculties. It whistled and sang like music, strumming thin wires of his consciousness which in turn pulled water wheels and spun cogs and rattled ratchets and strange devices which were connected to other parts of the systems - the memories, the knowledge stored in his brain attic; his mind, literally, ticking like clockwork.
But take a step further back.....
See the streets and alleys through each clicking, interconnected mechanics of thought and deduction. See the buildings shaped flowing stone and intricate pipe shapes. See the river, snaking silent but faster than a sprinter, flowing out into the dark night, shrouded in a fog of miscellaneous theories and errant thoughts which were discarded. See the towering heights of the skyline, the deep pits and dark passages of the underground. Huge. Detailed. Controlled. Chaotic. Methodical. Familiar.
Sherlock Holmes held a map of the entire city of London in his head.
It was as if the ancient aqueduct builders of Rome had met with the greatest engineers of Greece, and built the city stone by stone within a pit of waterfalls. It was marvellous, powerful, exquisite; every tiny, intricate little working part intermixing with the flow of information from his senses, spinning and threading and working refined knowledge from the raw material flooding in.
Walking the streets, Holmes could see the information his senses fed him from the London on the outside. Around him, people who walked the streets at this very moment, their shapes made up of smells and footstep sounds, the rustle of fabrics and the tap of canes, moved like ghosts. They were never distinct images, they were colourless; they sometimes disappeared entirely as their sounds were drowned by a passing carriage or by a breeze shifting the scents around. They left footprints behind them, made of words. Patent leather, new, ink smell, bank clerk. Indian rubber, soldiers stride, riding crop at side. Married lady, pregnant, paper rustling of letter in coat pocket. Child, street arab, lives in Fleet Street area. And so on. The words glowed briefly behind the ghosts and faded.
The carriages and machines were constructed of words. Wheels made of hansom cab, left axle recently mended and cabins of society lady, elderly, walks with a cane, rolled in and out amongst the ghosts, almost solid but still colourless.
The footprints appearing and disappearing across the streets did so across shadows on the flagstones and walls that looked like water stains on cloth. Here was where they found the body of the Hon. Jackson Debrett, his silhouette a murky mark on the flagstones, murdered by his brother in law for the sake of a hidden cache of doubloons in his estate fish pond: there was where he’d taken on the Silent Six, the vicious robbery gang, dark splatters of shadow blood sprayed across the alley walls, here was where Lady Heathley hid her daughter and here was where the gold bracelet of Miss Benton had unluckily fallen and here, and here, and there, and here....shadows marks of memories added texture to the forbidding backdrop of the night lit city. Holmes’ mindscape was a night place, full of fog, stars, bursts of gaslight streetlamps and shadows.
Small wonder no Guide had stayed. How could you wall the entire city? How could you build a dome all the way across that sunless sky?
He surveyed the deserted docks in Wapping and then tracked his way to the ghostly shadow of Billingsgate. Yes, the waters of thought filled this place bubbling up like silvery mercury gently between flagstones where he stepped before vanishing as he moved past, filling the air with the absolute stench of old fish and oil and damp woods. He took his mind back to a week ago, the shadowy remembrances of the people that he had noted in passing suddenly going about their business, the moments frozen in his mind like a fossil. He closed his eyes and focused, focused so hard that the ghosts all disappeared, the smells and sounds; nothing existed but what he had tried to find.
It was difficult. A lot of what he had recorded was almost obliterated by the fugue, the overwhelming input of stink from the fish markets which had caused him to over focus and go into that terrible, near breathless catatonia that was the disadvantage of these five enhanced senses. Lose control, let yourself get overwhelmed then the world would vanish and your entire being would be tied to the impression of one sense, eschewing all others. Many Sentinels would survive the worst wars and battles imaginable, only to be run down by a cart when they suddenly had a fugue in the middle of the street, and were so far gone they had no sense of danger. Or worse, they simply vanished mentally and slowly, inevitably, over days and sometimes weeks or months, stopped breathing.
Of course, bonded Sentinels barely had to be concerned about this. Bonding was more or less imprinting a Guide with every sense, having a living anchor for your senses and therefore your mind. Even sunk deep within a fugue, a Guide could bring you back.
A Guide....
Holmes focused. The scent trails painted vividly across the street showed him where everything is, had been and was going. He went through dozens of them, taking them in and discarding them. There, a tiny scrap among the tangle....
It was intoxicating, overwhelming. Billingsgate was nothing compared to the power of this, nothing at all. There he was.
It would be poetic to say the Dark Sentinel roamed the Underground tunnels like some dragon in it’s cave; bursting forth when necessary and subsided back to his lair when the deductive prodigy came back to the fore. The power of that viscerally primal being was indeed mostly suppressed in the spaces beneath the cobbled streets, that was true. But the city was the territory of the Dark Sentinel; he was the night in the sky, the marks and scored lines of old memory fights on the walls and floors, he stalked silently through the fogs and mists. The Dark Sentinel was a part of it. The Dark Sentinel watched from every shadow.
Holmes struggled to think past the world filling roar of Mine! It rattled the ground beneath his feet, caused the rushing river water to shudder and froth. But Holmes fought down the instinctive reaction, making the gaslights flare like fireworks. The Dark Sentinel settled briefly, but it watched intensely.
Male, he began with the obvious. Adult. Faint traces of medicinal scents. Carried with him. Orderly; likely. Sea salt, seafood, hemp ropes. Entered on a boat; small. Did not report to customs. Wood scent. Likely carries a cane or wood case.
Holmes drew back a little. Frustrating was his most powerful impression at the moment. All he had was a scrap, which told him nothing. There had been no scent with that sudden, searing connection he had felt at the Yard. All that had been was an overwhelming impression; it had contained fear and pain and an aching sense of loss, but underneath there was so much more. Warmth. Wonderment. Beautiful, tantalising silence. Holmes would have traded anything for something as simple and elusive as silence.
The Yarders would all have been amazed at Holmes’ easy acceptance of the sudden manifestation of what very well could be his destined Guide, especially considering his history. But Holmes did not dither in sentimentalities and comforting lies. Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains must be the truth. Senses; control deteriorating. Deterioration; more sharply evident in past week. Connected event; pulled to docks with no prior warning or evident reasoning. Second connected event; a spiritual presence felt on same day, had no effect on any other.
Solution; a Guide has recently arrived in London who calls to me.
The logic chain was as simple as that. Holmes did not believe in shouting about unfairness to an uncaring universe. Not only was it undignified, it was also a fruitless, thoughtless waste of energy. Did it mean that he had to partner with a complete stranger for the rest of his life? No evidence was apparent, though it was possible. But even that possibility wouldn’t deter him. Holmes both loved and hated a problem he couldn’t solve, and this looked to be a particularly interesting one.
Holmes examined the docks of his mind, but there was little else to be found there. Ah, his damned senses. If not for the fugue he could have tracked the elusive and magnetically attractive Guide before he’d even vanished into the House. Homes couldn’t go there. Not into the lair of Lady Beatrice, who was itching to be the Matchmaker for the first Dark Sentinel since Good Queen Bess.
He could feel the pull of that sweet scent even here, in this place built of echoes. All Guides were attractive, of course. Opinion was divided on whether they were congenitally made so as a sort of evolutionary strategy for drawing in Sentinels, or if their empathic abilities could project the attraction into others spiritually, making the impression of them attractive. Guides drew people to them, even people repulsed by their gifts. It was one of the reasons people were repulsed. They saw Guides as a walking incarnation of carnal temptation, which is why they were, almost without exception, cloistered within the House until bonding. For Sentinels it was much worse, because the scents unbonded Guides gave off were like nectar to a bee. When they were in a bonding state, Guides were irresistible. Many a fight to the death between Sentinels had been triggered by it.
He surveyed the horizon of his mindscape, the mirror image of his city as the towering clockwork of his thoughts clicked like a metronome. This was his city. Oh, there were those that ran it, those that had the paperwork and those that brandished it to other nations. But in every way that counted, this city was his. Others may claim the land, but the tribe was his. And without the tribe, there was no London. It belonged to him. Every footstep, every squabbling voice, every rattle of a closed in carriage with rich rococo finish and professionally silenced wheels...
Holmes opened his eyes. “Ah Mycroft,” he spoke Sentinel soft as the ghostly image in his mindscape melded with the sound of the carriage that had pulled to a stop outside 221B. “Still dining at the Grand I see, from the scent of that horrifically woody brandy.”
“Sherlock,” came the deeper and slightly amused voice of his brother. “Still getting into fights at the Punchbowl I see, from the sweat on your clothing.”
A rustle of fabric. “Still getting gifted with silk from the Chinese embassy, I see.”
“Still smoking that awful shag by the bag full, I note.”
“Mycroft, have you actually been taking constitutionals around the Sanctuary gardens?” Holmes sniffed the air.
“As surely as you’ve been scouring the Knightsbridge as recently as four hours ago.”
Holmes tuned into the other person in the carriage with his brother. “Wilikins really needs to see a professional about his back. He’s using more of that ointment again.”
“And the bloody split in your knuckles? I expect you haven’t had those seen to.”
Holmes listened to his brother’s feet shift. “Really, brother, a man who strains his ankle climbing the marble stairs of his residence should be in no position to criticise my medical needs.”
“Neither should a man covered in welts deny good advice, brother mine. That salve won’t help.”
“Landlady using lilacs again?”
“I see your own had switched from Earl Grey to Darjeeling.”
“Your barber was most careless with your shaving this morning, judging from the scraping.”
“At least I have shaved in the last few days, brother mine. And washed!”
“It is an excellent disguise. People expect Sentinels to be clean. I suspect cleanliness helps you when you suck in the foul hot air brayed out by the Parliament at your meeting with them this morning. Lord Holsting has really started to drink heavily, hasn’t he?”
“No worse than Shinwell Johnson whom you have met with again. Disappearing Guides?”
“Interestingly, not entirely from the House. They’re scouring the asylums for new inmates.”
“Money is changing hands.”
“Oh yes. Far more than any smuggler would usually have access to.”
“Hmmm....they find likely candidates on the outside.”
“Obviously. Then they stick them into the asylums.”
“Hiding them away...”
“And then collecting the crop,” Holmes lit a cigarette, feeling disgusted. “Harvesting them...”
“Packing them in a boat...at the Wapping Basin, obviously, where they have access to the London Docks.”
“And sailing them away....more likely West than East.”
“There are Sentinels involved in this.”
“Well clearly! How else would they be able to spot potential Guides? What is bothering me...”
“Is that the process is backwards. Usually Guides stolen from tribal peoples are shipped here.”
“Indeed. Every scion of hereditary snobbery is aghast at the indiscreet emerging of Sentinel gifts. They seek...”
“A discreet solution, which spares them...”
“Having to deal with common folk in the House,” Holmes snorted. “Lord knows what happens to Guides born into such families.”
“We both have a few ideas, I imagine. And as Sentinels, possibly and most probably foreign are involved, this is why I’ve had report of a spectacular amount of fist fights and generally violent behaviour you have been involved in over the past few days.”
“A Sentinel out of his territory is usually quite out of sorts. Tense and aggressive. These ‘Guide Hounds’ are most likely unbonded, which only adds to that reaction. They most likely seek some release.”
“Whore pits and fighting rings. You do keep interesting company, brother mine.”
“I have narrowed down the possibilities some. There must be some sort of warehouse or other space near the docks where they can gather their...cargo. Somewhere close to the fish markets, where the stench would mask a lot of frightened and upset Guides from Sentinels passing by. Once this is found, I can most likely find the gentry who are profiting from this trade.” Holmes rose abruptly, wincing at the way his once soft cotton shirts were now like sandpaper across the irritated welts of his back. “But you didn’t come here to speak to me about my little deductive forays, brother. Not with the perfume of the House reeking around you.”
He heard Mycroft sigh, which was a bad sign. “Your senses are getting worse, Sherlock.”
“Yes, well,” Holmes muttered, not liking where this was going at all. “A day or two in your estate will set me to rights, I am sure. As soon as I have finished....”
“Sherlock,” Mycroft voice was a warning. “This is not a minor sensory quibble. You are descending into full sensory chaos. The fugues are happening hourly. You barely sleep. You do not eat.”
“Surely,” Holmes spat acidly. “A man so far up in governmental affairs has far better things to spy on his homeland. Really, brother, you are wasting resources.”
“Hardly wasted,” came the mild retort. “As you said, my talent is omniscience. That, unfortunately, includes you. This cannot continue, brother. I have asked the House to arrange an event. Every eligible Guide in London will be there. You will be there, even if I have to have you dragged there in shackles.”
Holmes leapt to his feet, outraged. “Ah, there it is!” he snarled. “The sheer compassion and care of a sibling revealed!”
Mycroft snorted from the street. “You aren’t moved by compassion or provoked by care, Sherlock. It has no effect on you. You ignore sentiment until it departs in disgust. Threats - the idea that you cannot control the outcome at least motivates you. Far more than even the risk of your life.”
“Ah, you see,” Holmes jabbed a finger in the air even though his brother could not see. “You have hit upon the key fact. It is my senses, my health and my life! Mine to waste and mine to save.”
“Sherlock,” Mycroft interjected. “Before you vent your no doubt impressive spleen, please note that this was not my preferred course of action. The Royal Sentinel, on orders from the Queen herself no less, has impressed upon me that something must be done. You are...unique.”
“I am a Dark Sentinel, you mean,” Holmes replied through gritted teeth. “Which France and Germany and even America do not have. That must make the politicians jump with glee. Mycroft, surely you are not suggesting that I bond to make Parliament happy?”
“They have pressured me for it long before now, as well you know,” Mycroft retorted. “And I have ignored them. I have gotten you private trainers to keep you out of the clutches of the Sanctuary. I even arranged for special dispensation for you to live here at Baker Street, with no Guide and no Consort. It is never the will of the government that made me acquiesce, Sherlock. You need this. It is necessary. Give me a good reason to stop it.”
Holmes rolled his eyes. Having Mycroft arrange this was a clever trick from those stuffy fools. He was perhaps the only man in London who could match him in wits. “I,” Holmes gnashed his teeth in frustration for a moment. “I might have found a Guide.” There. He admitted it. It cost him a great deal.
“That’s wonderful, Mister Holmes,” came a calm feminine interruption from below, breaking the stunned silence.
Holmes felt Mycroft jerk in surprise at the sudden addition to their argument.
“It’s not polite to eavesdrop, Nanny,” he pinched his nose.
“Your landlady is a Sentinel? Why did I not know this?” Mycroft demanded.
“Guardian, Mister Mycroft. And for your information, Mister Holmes, eavesdropping is lurking at doors and listening to whispers,” Mrs Hudson sniffed. “It is not standing back and putting your hands over your ears to keep from being deafened. I’d hardly need a pair of extraordinary ears to hear you two yelling at each other. Tea, Mister Mycroft?”
Holmes was perversely amused to see Mycroft slightly taken aback. “Uh...no thank you.”
“And your Guide?”
“No, it’s fine. We are leaving momentarily. Sherlock!”
Holmes shrugged, amused and unseen. “You never asked, dear brother.”
Mycroft muttered something even Holmes could not pick up. He did hear a brief breath of a laugh from Wilikins, Mycroft’s nearly silent Guide. “I was wondering about your loitering near Knightsbridge. I can go down to the Sanctuary and...”
“You will do no such thing,” Homes growled. “No such thing, Mycroft! You will not tell the Sanctuary you are looking for my Guide.”
“Unbonded, you can’t enter without leave from the Matchmaker. Ah, I see...”
“Yes, I should hope so. Lady Beatrice would give quite a lot to have me bonded to one of her minions; this close to sensory chaos I might merely respond to any bonding scent, regardless of actual connection. And then the entire political animal of the Sanctuary has access to my every affair. But if they find out I am actively searching for someone particular, they will do everything in their power to keep him from me.” The Dark Sentinel growled, low in his throat. “That is unacceptable.”
“You are certain then, that this man is not already one of her minions? Ah...yes, the incident at the docks. He has recently arrived.”
Holmes grimaced. “Nothing is private in this city.”
“Of course not, Sherlock. What a foolish thing to say.”
Holmes snorted. “No enquiries, brother. Not even your famous discreet ones. You are watched.”
“Sherlock,” Mycroft sighed. “You realise I cannot call off the event. To do so would look suspicious.”
Holmes waved a curt hand at the empty air. “Well obviously, dear brother. I suppose I must thank you for once again putting insurmountable difficulties in my way.”
Mycroft tapped the roof of the carriage and replied sardonically. “You are not at all brilliant unless you are truly challenged, brother mine. You have one week.” His voice faded at the carriage rolled into the wash of London.
“Wonderful,” Holmes muttered, running fingers through his hair. “It wasn’t as if I was used to the idea of wanting one at all.”
Mrs Hudson’s voice came from below, quietly. “Is it really so awful, Mister Holmes? Sharing your life with someone else?”
Holmes grimaced. “Eavesdropping, Nanny.”
The woman gave an unembarrassed sniff. “My house, Mister Holmes. You don’t seem at all pleased about the prospect of bonding. It’s not some terrible prison sentence, you know. I may not have been a Sentinel, but I don’t regret a single day I had with my husband. Not one single day.”
Holmes huffed out a breath. “Nanny, I almost appreciate your sentimental attempts to comfort me, but there is no comfort to be found in the knowledge that some romantic soul will be forced into collusion with me, probably to the detriment of their sanity. Guides don’t stay, Mrs Hudson. They never stay,” Holmes voice was bitter. “And nothing is without regrets. You may have treasured every day with your Consort, but I suspect with some accuracy that you dearly regret the day he died.”
He heard the woman’s sharp intake of breath, but he didn’t allow himself to feel sorry. He savagely snatched his coat. His life as he knew it was shifting under his feet and neither he nor the Dark Sentinel liked it. “Do not bother with dinner. I will be out most of the evening.”
He desperately needed to hit something.
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End Part Four