The Phantom of St. Bartholomew 4/?
Title: The Phantom of St. Bartholomew
Author: tipsy_armadillo
Rating: R
Warnings: violence, non/dub-con
Summary: John has spent his whole life hiding
Written in response to velvet-mace's fic Chameleon which was in turn inspired by this Prompt. It's a fic within a fic. We need to go deeper.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Sherlock spent the entire day at St Bart’s, making a nuisance of himself, harassing patients, and causing such a commotion that several Doctors and Nurses banded together to force him out of the Emergency Room or any room there might be patients.
It was several hours into his search and Sherlock was confident he had been over the place with a fine tooth comb. He was starting to get bored. The staff was ordinary, the nurses were boring, the doctors were boring, the Janitors were boring, even the receptionists were boring. This was bothersome but he was far from done. He had yet to see every Doctor in the building and the short, pale haired man was out there somewhere. One had seemed to fit his description earlier but Doctor Ingelston was about as far away from being a Guide as anyone he had ever met. The memory of the pudgy, balding Doctor and his acrid flop sweat indicative of advanced alcoholism still made Sherlocks lip curl in distain.
It was only at the end of the day when the night shift crew was beginning to come in that Sherlock smelled it. Womens perfume. Absolutely hideous scent to his overly sensitive nose but the smell triggered something in his mind. Something.
Sherlock walked towards the smell, following his nose to the reception desk in the ER lobby. There. The slightly overweight woman with the garishly red hair, obviously dyed. Not his Phantom but connected somehow. Connected to that horrible smell.
Well now.
“Oh you are good,” he said to himself, earning a strange look from a passing woman.
This was what Mycroft was talking about. Missing detail. Sherlock had encountered the smell of this particular women’s perfume today and yet he couldn’t recall where. Oh, a normal person would have dismissed such a thing outright but Sherlock was a man who relied in his senses to an extraordinary degree and his senses were never wrong, particularly when such a distinctive and offensive smell was involved. Nor was his memory ever wrong. Except for now, it seemed, because he had his senses telling him one thing and his memory telling him another.
This was such a small thing, very small, hardly enough to go on but it was a start.
An intriguing possibility.
It was time to call it a day.
Sherlock sent a text to Mycroft requesting all video footage of St Bart’s for the day to be sent to him. Mycroft was unusually obliging.
When Sherlock arrived at his flat the first thing he did was scan through the video footage of his time at St Bart’s. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.
The pale haired Doctor.
Sherlock’s heart sped up and his palms began to sweat when he saw the footage of his first few minutes in the ER. He paused the video and stared at the screen with intense focus, all his senses heightened to near unbearable levels as he stared at the impossibility on the screen and suddenly it was as though his senses took on a mind of their own. The sound of a bird wings fluttering on the rooftop was deafening to his ears, the touch of wool on his skin unbearable, the individual pixels on the screen seemed huge and every smell within a mile radius invaded his home with their clashing scents.
He twitched, eyes going wide and unblinking. His nostrils flared and everything was so vivid it hurt.
It was a good long while before Sherlock came back to himself, shaking himself slightly and feeling faintly ill. It seemed he had even drooled on himself.
He hadn’t zoned in years.
This case. Oh this case.
A small smile passed across his lips.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the paused image.
There he was, talking to the very same short, pale haired man that his brother had encountered. Not just talking, but showing off. He remembered the events leading up to it in vivid detail, Barty Rockwell the overweight hypochondriac, he remembered talking to someone, explaining his observations and that’s where his memory ended. The man, for obviously it was a man in the recordings, was indistinct in his memory. Had he not been looking at the recording Sherlock could not have said if the person he had shown off to was male or female, young or old, not even what race they were.
Every part of his memory and senses was saying he didn’t see anything and yet here was proof, solid, unshakable proof that he was wrong.
That man.
Sherlock touched the screen.
Such an unassuming figure. Shorter than Sherlock by a few inches and with a head full of pale hair kept short, but not severely so.
There was nothing to go on. It was exactly the same evidence he had gotten from Mycrofts encounter with the Phantom and yet when he had been face to face with the Phantom himself it still wasn’t enough. Even knowing what to look for and keeping alert for any changes in his memory he still hadn’t realized his memories had been tampered with until he had smelled that perfume. A coincidence had been an important movement forward in this case. That was frustrating. Sherlock loathed coincidence, preferring cold, hard facts to luck. And yet what else could he rely on but luck in a case where his own memories were called into question?
Sherlock felt a faint uncertainty. He relied so heavily on his memory and senses, to have it taken away felt like violation.
He couldn’t remember a single detail of his meeting with the Phantom. If only he could remember a feature, just one feature.
No. he was focusing on the wrong details.
Appearance didn’t matter.
He was playing this the same way countless other desperate Sentinels and Ghost Hunters had done before him and he was failing as miserably as they were. As a Sentinel he had gone the route most tend to when searching down a rogue Guide. He ‘put the whammy’ on them, so to speak. A not so clever term for sending out strong pheromones and using his heightened senses to pick up any reciprocating scents or behaviors. Sentinels and Guides, regrettably, worked on a more primal level than normal humans. He was generally not as weak minded as his fellow Sentinels, Sherlock used his senses as much as they could benefit him in a case and discarded the biological urges that came with his heritage.
It seemed he was not wrong to do that as his, in retrospect, rather stupid approach of going in with guns blazing had seemed to have hurt his investigation more than aided it.
It was clear the Phantom had picked up on his plan and had acted appropriately, somehow altering his memory of their meeting. A clever move. Yes the Phantom had revealed himself to Sherlock but what use was the revelation if Sherlock couldn’t remember enough of it to even piece together a name or even a physical description.
Vexing.
Sherlock pressed play again and spent the better part of the night connecting footage and piecing together the Phantoms routine and usual haunts.
There was one place in particular that seemed promising. The old wing of the Hospital.
Several times a day the Phantom seemed to visit there, a place where there were no patients and where video cameras couldn’t follow.
Sherlock came to the rather obvious conclusion that this was the Phantoms sanctuary.
It made perfect sense, a Guide, one who was obviously using his mental abilities and empathetic tendencies to hide in plain sight would quickly become exhausted and need a place to relax. In the past when Guides had been common, before the Bioplague, their natural empathy and mental capabilities had made them suited to the medical field. These past Guides had required special rooms away from the public as touching so many minds in a day exhausted them. It must be no different for the Phantom who had the added strain of concealing himself from Sentinels on what was likely a daily basis.
It was promising yet distressingly little to go on after a full days investigation.
Sherlock forced himself to remain calm and rational. This Phantom, no matter his advanced mental capabilities, was still only human. He would slip up eventually.
They always did.
***
John was becoming convinced that someone was out to get him. Not just someone. Sherlock Holmes.
“You can’t be here, Mr. Holmes. The old ward is off limits to visitors.”
The tall man who had clearly been snooping straightened up from where he appeared to be examining the floor. “Ah, Doctor - “
“Watson. Doctor John Watson.”
“Ah. Of course. What brings to the old ward?”
“Supplies.”
“Well don’t let me keep you,” Sherlock said cheerfully.
“You’re going to have to leave, Mr. Holmes,” John insisted.
“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary. I have clearance to access all areas of the Hospital. The old ward is of particular fascination to me, on a personal level that is. So much history. Oh the stories these walls could tell. Don’t you agree Doctor?” Sherlock asked, doing a good impression of a man who actually cared what he was talking about.
“Well, yes.” John admitted carefully, wary of giving away too much. “This is my favorite area.”
“I can see why,” Sherlock said enthusiastically. “Modern hospitals are too white, to uniform, they don’t have any personality.”
“Yes. It’s a shame we don’t use this ward anymore. I remember patients always used to say they felt a little more relaxed here, it didn’t feel so much like a hospital to them. The fluorescent lights and white floors put people on edge. I guess it looks too sterile to them or something.” Sherlock looked interested, a little too interested. John cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well, anyways, I’ve got to be going.”
John turned to leave.
“Doctor Watson! Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Right. His ‘supplies’. “Oh! Of course.”
He turned back around and almost bumped into Sherlock. John took a startled step backwards and almost tripped. The other man grabbed him by his biceps, steadying him with large warm hands. “Careful.”
All of a sudden it was as though the room had spiked in temperature. John tried to get his body under control. His face felt hot and his instincts were demanding he reach out with his mind and touch the Sentinels own. The memory of the damaged, madness tinged mind called out to him.
John didn’t dare raise his eyes, it was bad enough he was staring at the other mans temptingly exposed collarbone. And what a silly thing to find attractive, a piece of bone covered in a layer of pale skin. Such smooth skin.
John desperately pulled his thoughts close and camouflaged himself but he knew it was too late, he had slipped.
Stupid, stupid mistake. A mistake he had avoided so easily yesterday only to fall straight into it within mere moments of seeing the man again.
Why he so undone around this Sherlock Holmes?
Sherlock’s breath was hot against his face, leaning down towards him, shockingly intimate and yet John couldn’t help but relaxing into those firm hands like every bad soap opera he had ever seen where the sultry Guide melted into the arms of the dashing Sentinel.
John slowly raised his hands, planting them on the thin heaving chest in front of him.
He could feel Sherlock inhale and shudder slightly. John hadn’t been quick enough to cover his scent and the Sentinel had just gotten a nice, good whiff of Illegal Guide: Doctor John Watson.
“Phantom,” Sherlock whispered into his ear, his hands tightening on Johns biceps to the point of pain.
John shoved as hard as he could.
Sherlock yelped, falling to the ground in a heap of flailing limbs and long black coat. The grip on his biceps sent John tumbling down with him. Landing on Sherlock, he purposely dug an elbow deep into the man’s sternum.
The wordless gasp was worth Johns own bruised knees as he fell to land straddled across Sherlock’s hips.
He wasn’t quick enough to get off. Sherlock grabbed a handful of his hair and tugged, keeping John close by his hair and his bicep. John cried out, digging his palm into the others face, pushing, needing nothing more that to be as far away as he could get. In the back of his mind his instincts, both as a Guide and Doctor, were screaming ‘do no harm’ in response to the escalating violence. Sherlock had no such handicap as he yanked and grabbed hard enough to leave marks.
John cried out in pain, grabbing at the hands that were forcing his head down.
That was when John noticed it.
His little chameleon blinked up at him from Sherlocks coat, holding on to the fabric with its odd looking limbs. It melted into the fabric of the coat, turning the texture of well woven wool and mirroring the cut of the fabric. A reminder. He wasn’t defenseless and physical strength was not going to win him this battle. John followed his chameleons lead, dimming his presence, melting into the walls while simultaneously forcing himself deeply into the frantic recesses of Sherlock’s mind to plant the suggestion: ‘there’s nothing here. You don’t see me. I was never here.’
Sherlock’s eyes went blank for a moment and then cleared. “Oh no you don’t. I know you who you are, John Watson. I see you.”
“No you don’t! You don’t see anything. You can’t see me.” John shouted, lifting his head and staring straight into Sherlock’s pale eyes, putting as much force behind the words as he could muster. He went deeper into Sherlock’s mind, touching the edge of madness.
Sherlock blinked, looking confused, his eyes sliding off John and staring up at the ceiling in confusion.
John worked quickly to untangle Sherlock’s hands from his hair. Once he was free John pulled his mind away from Sherlock’s and nearly sobbed aloud when he discovered he wasn’t able to.
“No! No! You let me go.”
Johns mind screamed as Sherlock seemed to overwhelm him, the man’s brilliant, clever mind wrapping itself around his thoughts, burrowing deep into him. Sherlock opened up and that blazing, horrible emptiness common in older Sentinels lacking their own Guide seemed to draw him close, urging him to fill the void, bond himself to this man.
It was so tempting, his natural instincts and empathy urged him to heal this man, tend to the fraying mind and ease the madness. He his heart ached in response to the man’s pain, his unacknowledged loneliness, and for the years spent sitting in an empty room by himself. He felt the boredom so profoundly, the need to talk and be heard and recognized and to have puzzles to solve and mysteries to unravel.
He saw himself through this man, another puzzle waiting to be solved. The Phantom. A prize worthy of the world’s only consulting detective.
Perhaps if that was only it Johns will might have been overshadowed by a mind stronger than his own and their little battle of wills would have ended in them bonding right there on the floor. It wasn’t a terrible fate; the man’s mind was orderly and highly intelligent with a surprising vulnerability John found compelling. His instincts betrayed him, urging him to make the bond, to become a Guide to this lost soul.
The urge was so tempting to give in. He was so tired, his mind reeling and every part of his body damp with sweat.
He might have.
But something out of the corner of John’s eye startled him.
A giant spider, translucent and almost invisible against the white linoleum, crept across the floor on its many legs, fluid in a purely arachnid way. John saw it immediately for what it was. A spirit animal, the visual manifestation of everything Sherlock was; his body, mind and soul.
It frightened John, frightened him worse than anything he had ever felt before.
The heat in his body turned to ice. He crouched over Sherlock, paralyzed with fear and the realization of the enormous monstrosity that spider represented. God, what sort of terrible soul could produce a spirit animal so … wrong. Many black eyes stared at him, then down towards the lapel of Sherlock’s coat where John’s tiny, vulnerable little chameleon lay and John had a terrible vision of the spider eating his little protector. His body immediately recoiled and his mind separated itself so violently from Sherlock’s his stomach heaved, sending John curling up on himself and choking back the rise of bile in his throat.
Sherlock cried out in pain, his finger grasping desperately for John. Distantly, before the connection between their minds was severed John heard a frantic plea.
‘Don’t leave me.’
John heaved himself to his feet and ran, stumbling and falling, righting himself and tearing away, as far away from Sherlock and that pale spider as he could get.
Author: tipsy_armadillo
Rating: R
Warnings: violence, non/dub-con
Summary: John has spent his whole life hiding
Written in response to velvet-mace's fic Chameleon which was in turn inspired by this Prompt. It's a fic within a fic. We need to go deeper.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Sherlock spent the entire day at St Bart’s, making a nuisance of himself, harassing patients, and causing such a commotion that several Doctors and Nurses banded together to force him out of the Emergency Room or any room there might be patients.
It was several hours into his search and Sherlock was confident he had been over the place with a fine tooth comb. He was starting to get bored. The staff was ordinary, the nurses were boring, the doctors were boring, the Janitors were boring, even the receptionists were boring. This was bothersome but he was far from done. He had yet to see every Doctor in the building and the short, pale haired man was out there somewhere. One had seemed to fit his description earlier but Doctor Ingelston was about as far away from being a Guide as anyone he had ever met. The memory of the pudgy, balding Doctor and his acrid flop sweat indicative of advanced alcoholism still made Sherlocks lip curl in distain.
It was only at the end of the day when the night shift crew was beginning to come in that Sherlock smelled it. Womens perfume. Absolutely hideous scent to his overly sensitive nose but the smell triggered something in his mind. Something.
Sherlock walked towards the smell, following his nose to the reception desk in the ER lobby. There. The slightly overweight woman with the garishly red hair, obviously dyed. Not his Phantom but connected somehow. Connected to that horrible smell.
Well now.
“Oh you are good,” he said to himself, earning a strange look from a passing woman.
This was what Mycroft was talking about. Missing detail. Sherlock had encountered the smell of this particular women’s perfume today and yet he couldn’t recall where. Oh, a normal person would have dismissed such a thing outright but Sherlock was a man who relied in his senses to an extraordinary degree and his senses were never wrong, particularly when such a distinctive and offensive smell was involved. Nor was his memory ever wrong. Except for now, it seemed, because he had his senses telling him one thing and his memory telling him another.
This was such a small thing, very small, hardly enough to go on but it was a start.
An intriguing possibility.
It was time to call it a day.
Sherlock sent a text to Mycroft requesting all video footage of St Bart’s for the day to be sent to him. Mycroft was unusually obliging.
When Sherlock arrived at his flat the first thing he did was scan through the video footage of his time at St Bart’s. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.
The pale haired Doctor.
Sherlock’s heart sped up and his palms began to sweat when he saw the footage of his first few minutes in the ER. He paused the video and stared at the screen with intense focus, all his senses heightened to near unbearable levels as he stared at the impossibility on the screen and suddenly it was as though his senses took on a mind of their own. The sound of a bird wings fluttering on the rooftop was deafening to his ears, the touch of wool on his skin unbearable, the individual pixels on the screen seemed huge and every smell within a mile radius invaded his home with their clashing scents.
He twitched, eyes going wide and unblinking. His nostrils flared and everything was so vivid it hurt.
It was a good long while before Sherlock came back to himself, shaking himself slightly and feeling faintly ill. It seemed he had even drooled on himself.
He hadn’t zoned in years.
This case. Oh this case.
A small smile passed across his lips.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the paused image.
There he was, talking to the very same short, pale haired man that his brother had encountered. Not just talking, but showing off. He remembered the events leading up to it in vivid detail, Barty Rockwell the overweight hypochondriac, he remembered talking to someone, explaining his observations and that’s where his memory ended. The man, for obviously it was a man in the recordings, was indistinct in his memory. Had he not been looking at the recording Sherlock could not have said if the person he had shown off to was male or female, young or old, not even what race they were.
Every part of his memory and senses was saying he didn’t see anything and yet here was proof, solid, unshakable proof that he was wrong.
That man.
Sherlock touched the screen.
Such an unassuming figure. Shorter than Sherlock by a few inches and with a head full of pale hair kept short, but not severely so.
There was nothing to go on. It was exactly the same evidence he had gotten from Mycrofts encounter with the Phantom and yet when he had been face to face with the Phantom himself it still wasn’t enough. Even knowing what to look for and keeping alert for any changes in his memory he still hadn’t realized his memories had been tampered with until he had smelled that perfume. A coincidence had been an important movement forward in this case. That was frustrating. Sherlock loathed coincidence, preferring cold, hard facts to luck. And yet what else could he rely on but luck in a case where his own memories were called into question?
Sherlock felt a faint uncertainty. He relied so heavily on his memory and senses, to have it taken away felt like violation.
He couldn’t remember a single detail of his meeting with the Phantom. If only he could remember a feature, just one feature.
No. he was focusing on the wrong details.
Appearance didn’t matter.
He was playing this the same way countless other desperate Sentinels and Ghost Hunters had done before him and he was failing as miserably as they were. As a Sentinel he had gone the route most tend to when searching down a rogue Guide. He ‘put the whammy’ on them, so to speak. A not so clever term for sending out strong pheromones and using his heightened senses to pick up any reciprocating scents or behaviors. Sentinels and Guides, regrettably, worked on a more primal level than normal humans. He was generally not as weak minded as his fellow Sentinels, Sherlock used his senses as much as they could benefit him in a case and discarded the biological urges that came with his heritage.
It seemed he was not wrong to do that as his, in retrospect, rather stupid approach of going in with guns blazing had seemed to have hurt his investigation more than aided it.
It was clear the Phantom had picked up on his plan and had acted appropriately, somehow altering his memory of their meeting. A clever move. Yes the Phantom had revealed himself to Sherlock but what use was the revelation if Sherlock couldn’t remember enough of it to even piece together a name or even a physical description.
Vexing.
Sherlock pressed play again and spent the better part of the night connecting footage and piecing together the Phantoms routine and usual haunts.
There was one place in particular that seemed promising. The old wing of the Hospital.
Several times a day the Phantom seemed to visit there, a place where there were no patients and where video cameras couldn’t follow.
Sherlock came to the rather obvious conclusion that this was the Phantoms sanctuary.
It made perfect sense, a Guide, one who was obviously using his mental abilities and empathetic tendencies to hide in plain sight would quickly become exhausted and need a place to relax. In the past when Guides had been common, before the Bioplague, their natural empathy and mental capabilities had made them suited to the medical field. These past Guides had required special rooms away from the public as touching so many minds in a day exhausted them. It must be no different for the Phantom who had the added strain of concealing himself from Sentinels on what was likely a daily basis.
It was promising yet distressingly little to go on after a full days investigation.
Sherlock forced himself to remain calm and rational. This Phantom, no matter his advanced mental capabilities, was still only human. He would slip up eventually.
They always did.
***
John was becoming convinced that someone was out to get him. Not just someone. Sherlock Holmes.
“You can’t be here, Mr. Holmes. The old ward is off limits to visitors.”
The tall man who had clearly been snooping straightened up from where he appeared to be examining the floor. “Ah, Doctor - “
“Watson. Doctor John Watson.”
“Ah. Of course. What brings to the old ward?”
“Supplies.”
“Well don’t let me keep you,” Sherlock said cheerfully.
“You’re going to have to leave, Mr. Holmes,” John insisted.
“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary. I have clearance to access all areas of the Hospital. The old ward is of particular fascination to me, on a personal level that is. So much history. Oh the stories these walls could tell. Don’t you agree Doctor?” Sherlock asked, doing a good impression of a man who actually cared what he was talking about.
“Well, yes.” John admitted carefully, wary of giving away too much. “This is my favorite area.”
“I can see why,” Sherlock said enthusiastically. “Modern hospitals are too white, to uniform, they don’t have any personality.”
“Yes. It’s a shame we don’t use this ward anymore. I remember patients always used to say they felt a little more relaxed here, it didn’t feel so much like a hospital to them. The fluorescent lights and white floors put people on edge. I guess it looks too sterile to them or something.” Sherlock looked interested, a little too interested. John cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well, anyways, I’ve got to be going.”
John turned to leave.
“Doctor Watson! Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Right. His ‘supplies’. “Oh! Of course.”
He turned back around and almost bumped into Sherlock. John took a startled step backwards and almost tripped. The other man grabbed him by his biceps, steadying him with large warm hands. “Careful.”
All of a sudden it was as though the room had spiked in temperature. John tried to get his body under control. His face felt hot and his instincts were demanding he reach out with his mind and touch the Sentinels own. The memory of the damaged, madness tinged mind called out to him.
John didn’t dare raise his eyes, it was bad enough he was staring at the other mans temptingly exposed collarbone. And what a silly thing to find attractive, a piece of bone covered in a layer of pale skin. Such smooth skin.
John desperately pulled his thoughts close and camouflaged himself but he knew it was too late, he had slipped.
Stupid, stupid mistake. A mistake he had avoided so easily yesterday only to fall straight into it within mere moments of seeing the man again.
Why he so undone around this Sherlock Holmes?
Sherlock’s breath was hot against his face, leaning down towards him, shockingly intimate and yet John couldn’t help but relaxing into those firm hands like every bad soap opera he had ever seen where the sultry Guide melted into the arms of the dashing Sentinel.
John slowly raised his hands, planting them on the thin heaving chest in front of him.
He could feel Sherlock inhale and shudder slightly. John hadn’t been quick enough to cover his scent and the Sentinel had just gotten a nice, good whiff of Illegal Guide: Doctor John Watson.
“Phantom,” Sherlock whispered into his ear, his hands tightening on Johns biceps to the point of pain.
John shoved as hard as he could.
Sherlock yelped, falling to the ground in a heap of flailing limbs and long black coat. The grip on his biceps sent John tumbling down with him. Landing on Sherlock, he purposely dug an elbow deep into the man’s sternum.
The wordless gasp was worth Johns own bruised knees as he fell to land straddled across Sherlock’s hips.
He wasn’t quick enough to get off. Sherlock grabbed a handful of his hair and tugged, keeping John close by his hair and his bicep. John cried out, digging his palm into the others face, pushing, needing nothing more that to be as far away as he could get. In the back of his mind his instincts, both as a Guide and Doctor, were screaming ‘do no harm’ in response to the escalating violence. Sherlock had no such handicap as he yanked and grabbed hard enough to leave marks.
John cried out in pain, grabbing at the hands that were forcing his head down.
That was when John noticed it.
His little chameleon blinked up at him from Sherlocks coat, holding on to the fabric with its odd looking limbs. It melted into the fabric of the coat, turning the texture of well woven wool and mirroring the cut of the fabric. A reminder. He wasn’t defenseless and physical strength was not going to win him this battle. John followed his chameleons lead, dimming his presence, melting into the walls while simultaneously forcing himself deeply into the frantic recesses of Sherlock’s mind to plant the suggestion: ‘there’s nothing here. You don’t see me. I was never here.’
Sherlock’s eyes went blank for a moment and then cleared. “Oh no you don’t. I know you who you are, John Watson. I see you.”
“No you don’t! You don’t see anything. You can’t see me.” John shouted, lifting his head and staring straight into Sherlock’s pale eyes, putting as much force behind the words as he could muster. He went deeper into Sherlock’s mind, touching the edge of madness.
Sherlock blinked, looking confused, his eyes sliding off John and staring up at the ceiling in confusion.
John worked quickly to untangle Sherlock’s hands from his hair. Once he was free John pulled his mind away from Sherlock’s and nearly sobbed aloud when he discovered he wasn’t able to.
“No! No! You let me go.”
Johns mind screamed as Sherlock seemed to overwhelm him, the man’s brilliant, clever mind wrapping itself around his thoughts, burrowing deep into him. Sherlock opened up and that blazing, horrible emptiness common in older Sentinels lacking their own Guide seemed to draw him close, urging him to fill the void, bond himself to this man.
It was so tempting, his natural instincts and empathy urged him to heal this man, tend to the fraying mind and ease the madness. He his heart ached in response to the man’s pain, his unacknowledged loneliness, and for the years spent sitting in an empty room by himself. He felt the boredom so profoundly, the need to talk and be heard and recognized and to have puzzles to solve and mysteries to unravel.
He saw himself through this man, another puzzle waiting to be solved. The Phantom. A prize worthy of the world’s only consulting detective.
Perhaps if that was only it Johns will might have been overshadowed by a mind stronger than his own and their little battle of wills would have ended in them bonding right there on the floor. It wasn’t a terrible fate; the man’s mind was orderly and highly intelligent with a surprising vulnerability John found compelling. His instincts betrayed him, urging him to make the bond, to become a Guide to this lost soul.
The urge was so tempting to give in. He was so tired, his mind reeling and every part of his body damp with sweat.
He might have.
But something out of the corner of John’s eye startled him.
A giant spider, translucent and almost invisible against the white linoleum, crept across the floor on its many legs, fluid in a purely arachnid way. John saw it immediately for what it was. A spirit animal, the visual manifestation of everything Sherlock was; his body, mind and soul.
It frightened John, frightened him worse than anything he had ever felt before.
The heat in his body turned to ice. He crouched over Sherlock, paralyzed with fear and the realization of the enormous monstrosity that spider represented. God, what sort of terrible soul could produce a spirit animal so … wrong. Many black eyes stared at him, then down towards the lapel of Sherlock’s coat where John’s tiny, vulnerable little chameleon lay and John had a terrible vision of the spider eating his little protector. His body immediately recoiled and his mind separated itself so violently from Sherlock’s his stomach heaved, sending John curling up on himself and choking back the rise of bile in his throat.
Sherlock cried out in pain, his finger grasping desperately for John. Distantly, before the connection between their minds was severed John heard a frantic plea.
‘Don’t leave me.’
John heaved himself to his feet and ran, stumbling and falling, righting himself and tearing away, as far away from Sherlock and that pale spider as he could get.