(Sentinel
101 in Jim’s POV)
There was a buzz of electricity up and down his arm, the low voltage
only noticeable when it would suddenly pause, then start up again. Giving up on
sleep, Jim threw back the covers and swung out of bed.
His choices were narrowing at a rapid pace. He was now faced with the
choice of turning on the light or leaving the lights off . Turning the lights
on meant risking the excruciating pain that came when it overloaded his optical
nerves. Leaving them off meant he would either be able to see the loft as if it
were light as day or see absolutely nothing, his eyes refusing to process the
normal stray light from the street.
The visual stuff was child’s play compared to the auditory games his
senses were playing these days. He much preferred the deafness that came and
went, if only it weren’t accompanied by the incessant ringing. When his hearing
turned the other way, he was bombarded with excruciating pain and overloaded
with the information it brought.
It had been getting worse for weeks, and Jim worried that full-blown
Fincham Syndrome was near. He’d always known his reluctance to bond meant this
day would come—he’d known, but somehow thought he’d beat it.
“Shit!” The blankness had descended and he’d stubbed his toe on the
dresser.
“FUCK!” Angrily he shoved the dresser and heard the clock start to
fall. The sound of it shattering ripped through his head, taking him to his
knees.
When it passed, he was curled in a ball, shaking violently. Nothing a
bullet in his brain couldn’t cure, he thought, as he slowly pulled himself up
and crawled back into bed.
The part of him that valued his survival spoke up. “Just fucking find a
guide and get it over with. There’s a natural order and who the hell are you to
hold yourself above it?”
“Yeah, that’s what the plantation owners told themselves. There’s no
way my life should co-opt someone else’s.”
The voice of the man who still wanted to live was not so easily
quieted. “But guides need the bond as much as a sentinel. They’re fragile and
need sheltering. What else are they gonna do with their lives if not serve a
sentinel?”
“That’s a bunch of GDP bullshit.”
“Oh, yeah? What about Ned? You saw him after his sentinel went down.
He’d been a functioning, competent guide, and he was reduced to a blubbering
mess without his sentinel to shield him. He never did recover."
“GDP wouldn’t let him recover.”
“Now that’s just a bunch of Guide Liberation bullshit.”
“SHUT UP!” His voice ricocheted off the walls and he pulled the pillow
over his head. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It was a padded room and he’d been placed in after he’d “gone a little
crazy.” White noise generators droned on, masking variations in sound. Jim
slowly slid down the wall and let the sound soothe him. He was so tired, so
fucking exhausted.
It had been over a month since he’d been able to get any serious sleep.
Each night the damn nightmares rolled in, one after another, like a line of
thunderstorms. Eyes closed, he slipped into REM. A panther stalked towards him,
tail lashing angrily and veered around him, growling. Jim turned to see a wolf.
It was thin; ribs evident as it panted. The panther reached the wolf and
nuzzled it, then began pushing at it with his nose, urging it to get up.
The wolf tried to rise, but fell back, panting harder. Again and again
the wolf tried to respond to the panther’s demand that it rise, but its efforts
grew weaker and weaker.
Jim tried to crawl over to the beast, but found he was unable to move.
The panther gave up and instead circled the wolf, its growls
continuous. The wolf shifted its head and looked straight at Jim. Blue eyes,
filled with fear and pain and…. longing.
He felt the wolf’s yearning and its hunger filled him. Waking, Jim
shook his head, trying to clear the dream and purge the swirling emotions, but
instead his vision filled with red as emotions surged through him.
Standing up, he hurled himself at the door and a scream ripped from his
throat. He needed to get out, needed to— had to—needed to—there were no words
to express what he needed. There was only the need and he crashed into the
door, over and over, headless of the battering his body was taking until
finally the pain did register. It cleared his head long enough for him to see
that the door had resisted his punishment and stood just as solidly closed as
before.
He began to pace, four steps to the walk, pivot, four steps back,
pivot. Vaguely he was aware that he was making sounds. They rumbled through his
chest, another expression of his need to—his need to—his fucking need that he
didn’t understand. All he knew was that it felt as if his blood was on fire,
about to boil over.
And then, finally, the door swung open and something was thrown inside.
It hit the wall and groaned.
The sentinel approached the being on the floor, snarling when it moved.
It couldn’t be allowed to get away and he lunged for it, saying words that were
ancient and fixed.
"CLAIMED AND MARKED GUIDE!” The thing was nothing—small and bony
and its movements against his hands were feeble and weak.
"NO! Not like THIS!" The unexpected ferocity of the yell
surprised him and caused a shaft of pain to go through his head. Angered, the
sentinel pulled the thing’s head back, exposing the throat. It cried out and
then hit the Sentinel in the jaw, stunning him.
"NO! PLEASE!"
Flinging the screaming being away from him, the sentinel tried to deal
with the pain—and something else that was making him feel sick. He circled the
thing, the—guide.
Guide, guide, guide…
His guide.
He knew this guide.
It was his.
He dropped down to sit on his haunches and study “his” guide. It
smelled. Bad. Of sweat and fear and---as his primal brain registered the scent,
he roared. Someone had attempted to mark his guide. Someone else had laid hands
and—he screamed again, a primal sound of fury.
He was about to launch himself on top of his guide, his need to claim
and mark making him wild, when the panther from his dream appeared. It ran
straight toward him and then straight into him. The impact was intense, an
exquisite vibration of energy. With it came a small measure of calm that
allowed the sentinel to pause and really look at the guide.
He was hurt. The sentinel took in the swollen, cracked lips, the
bruises that seem to mar every exposed piece of flesh and the hunched set of
his shoulders, which spoke of bruised or broken ribs.
As the sentinel catalogued all the ways his guide had been misused and
hurt, he heard his guide speak. In a voice graveled with pain and despair, he
intoned, “Mark and Claim, Sentinel.”
Galvanized, the sentinel moved and knelt down, then began to touch his
guide, starting with his hair. It was filthy and he felt the lice attached to
the matted strands. His touch seemed to ease the guide’s pain, as he sighed and
relaxed a fraction. Some small emotion bloomed inside his chest at that small
bit of trust. He started moving his fingers across the planes of the guide’s
face, needing to explore further, but afraid the guide would struggle. When he
didn’t, he growled his pleasure and continued mapping the guide’s features.
Bone, muscle, skin… his fingers memorized the shape of his guide’s face.
Next, he ran his hands gently over his guide’s back and buttocks. The
guide tensed and started to pull away, then stopped. Baffled, the sentinel
smelled tears and looked down to see a trail of them on the guide’s bruised and
dirty face.
This wasn’t right. Something was all wrong. Wrong. The guide needed—the
guide needed—Gently he touched the dirty cheek with his thumb, clearing the
tears away. He slowly patted the damp face, humming almost silently, until the
guide settled down. When he seemed to relax a bit, the sentinel opened his
senses and allowed the sensory information to tell him about his guide.
He became aware that the guide was in pain and his anger returned. The
guide was shivering, hungry, thirsty, bruised and filthy. He wanted to drag the
guide to his territory and take care of him, restore him, wash all others’
scent off him, protect him.
But first he had to claim and mark the guide as his, so no one could
ever mistake whom this guide belonged to. The need was filling him again—the
drive to mark and claim was so overwhelming it made his vision narrow and the
red come back.
Then the stink of fear filled his nostrils and he jerked back. The
wrongness…slowly he turned the guide onto his back, then pulled him up so that
the guide faced him. They were kneeling and he steadied the guide with a hand
on his overalls. The coarse material was scratchy, and his sensitive fingers
could feel bugs crawling on the material.
Instinctively he snatched his hand away, but the guide started to fall
and he immediately grabbed hold again, pushing aside his disgust. Cupping the guide’s
face, he tilted it, so he could look into the blue eyes that now meant the
world to him.
The guide reached out a hand and tentatively placed it over his heart.
There was warmth and the sound of the guide’s heartbeat, hard and fast. He put
his hand on the darkly stubbled jaw and stroked it, pleased when the heartbeat
slowed.
The guide sighed and the sentinel felt a rush, like a tidal wave coming
at him. The energy sizzled and pulsed, the bits and pieces of sensory
information about the guide coalescing into a moment of knowledge so deep and
clear and intense that he thought he might die of it. He knew this being, this
man, this guide.
Knew him with every fiber of his being. Knew him and needed—him.
His guide placed his other hand on his cheek and he nuzzled it,
content.
"Claimed and Marked Guide." It came out almost as a sigh.
"Claimed and Marked, Sentinel." It was a hoarse affirmation.
He pulled the guide to him and held him close, cradling his head. His
guide was warmer now, his breathing had eased and his heart had slowed. There
was a bright moment of hyper-awareness, as if his guide had latched onto to
him. This was good. This was—right.
The rightness lasted for a few heartbeats and then the anger returned.
It was semen that he’d smelled. And more than one man's. Semen and blood, and
other bodily fluids that spoke of a body brutalized. He wanted to scream out
his rage, but what emerged from his throat was a growl, low and deadly in its
intent.
His guide tensed and the smell of fear filled his nostrils.
"I'll kill anyone who tries to touch you. You're safe now, MY
GUIDE."
Latching onto his shirt, his guide pressed himself closer to Jim, who
pulled the kid in closer, reveling in the feeling of being near the source of
his focus. The energy was thrumming through his body now without pause and his
senses were sharp, integrated. A name surfaced—Blair, Blair Sandburg and he
realized he knew this kid.
Jim flashed to the last time he’d seen
Sandburg. They’d been in the interrogation room, wrapping up after Alex Barnes
had been killed by her guide, Pet Barnes. Blair Sandburg.
The
kid who had been known as Pet Barnes had sat in that room looking both beaten
and defiant. He’d had the gall to announce he was now Jim’s guide and thought
to negotiate his position.
Simon had been appalled, hell, Jim had been
appalled—that a hippie punk who’d just killed his sentinel would think he could
move up into the position of being Jim’s guide.
That Jim’s life had been saved by her death
hardly qualified Sandburg to claim the position of guide to a dark Sentinel.
Jim had walked away; glad to escape the genetic chains that everyone seemed so
eager to place on him.
And Sandburg had been branded a rogue and
thrown into GPD system, where evidently, they’d used him as a punching bag
and—Jim’s mind fled from thinking about what all the GPD had done to
rehabilitate this rogue guide. The man in his arms was not much more than bag
and bones and long dirty hair. Beaten and starved but Still defiant, the GPD
had failed to grind Sandburg down, and Jim
Instinctively, Jim extended his hearing,
creating a wide perimeter inside of which his guide was safe. For a moment they
rested, his guide lightly sleeping, his hand still wrapped in Jim’s shirt.
Pushing some of the hair away from the dirty
face, Jim studied the man whose life was now as important as his own. It was a
face darkened by a few days worth of beard, bruises and dirt, thin to the point
of gauntness. Jim didn’t know if his imagination was taking flight, telling him
what he wanted to know, but it was a face of intelligence and perhaps even
nobility.
The truth was, even if this kid was a liar
and thief, even if his year with Alex Barnes had made him as corrupt as she
was, it wouldn’t matter. Wouldn’t make any difference. Wouldn’t change the
bond. Fuck. He was good and stuck now. This was his guide, who would be by his
side as long as he lived.
Thank goodness for the GPD hostels where he
could place Sandburg when he didn’t need him. It wasn’t as if they had to be
wedded at the hip or anything. A small pain shot through his head and Jim
rubbed at his temple. It had been a hell of a day. And now he was the—owner?
Jim rejected that outright—keeper? protector?—of the man in his arms.
Jim stopped trying to make sense of the
emotions that tumbled through his brain. All he knew was he was content.
Content to be where he was, on a cold floor, holding the dirty, disgraced mess
that was now Jim Ellison’s guide.
(of my intrusion
into Susan Foster’s world) (at least for now).