Title: Keeping His Mind

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Summary: Omegas are kept on suppressants at all times. John has his own formula because the side effects destroy the mind. No one knows because no one cares to find out.

Rating: M possibly even that M+ rating.

Notes: So, this sprang from reading a bunch of A/B/O fics over on AO3. Specifically from reading The Gilded Cage by BeautifulFiction. Admittedly, my exploration of things to do with what I think would turn Sherlock on don't require the omegaverse, and the idea I had about the stupid-making pills also doesn't need it per se, the omegaverse is an excellent place to create a justification for someone feeding a person those pills. Anyhow, aspects of this fic were inspired by that one, but I certainly don't claim it's as good a piece of writing. Also, it's distinctly lacking in both the length and detail required to make it really good, but I wanted this off my chest. So, here lies my first foray into the Sherlock fandom.

Notes2: This is unbetaed and unbritpicked, so any and all errors are due to my complete failure to put in the proper effort.


John was still amazed Sherlock had never deduced the truth. Then again, that catch-phrase, When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth,had one failing. If one of the things that you believed to be impossible wasn't impossible, then no matter what you deduced it had a risk of being wrong.

Everyone knew that omegas were stupid. Well, alright, these days it might be more politically correct to declare them intellectually disabled or mentally challenged or something, but it was generally agreed-upon that they didn't have enough brains to fill a teaspoon. They only got smarter when they were pregnant. The idea of an omega able to function in the outside world, let alone one able to become a doctor and serve in the army? That was like proposing that Mycroft Holmes was all cuddles and kittens. Interesting conceptually, but just fundamentally impossible.

The thing was, John wasn't some kind of unexpected mutation, he wasn't a sport or a freak of nature. He was just really, really lucky. Lucky that omegas were taken off of the brain-damaging chemical suppressants that kept their pheromones under control for the duration of pregnancies, lucky that, like his alpha sister, he hadn't been given his mum's breast milk because she hadn't started lactating for some reason, lucky that he'd become ill so young so that he was on the hospital suppressants which were nausea-inducing but didn't react with other medications and also didn't cause brain damage. Lucky because he and Harry figured it out on their own and managed by hard work and luck and reckless self-testing to make a better, non-damaging formula.

Well, he thought he was lucky on the days when he didn't remember that the alpha he . . . his best friend had pitched himself off the roof of a teaching hospital.

Instead he had lost himself in working around and behind Mycroft Holmes who also seemed to have no idea. John had learnt from Sherlock where many of the more hidden CCTV cameras were and how to spot others and worked around them to meet up with the parts of Sherlock's Homeless Network that had become his.

There were always a few omegas who slipped through the net, ones whose parents didn't want to hand them over to either state or private care centres to be given away to some alpha with the appropriate pedigree or amount of money. Omegas who got lucky in the ways John had who tried to vanish, who then turned up on the streets. Sherlock's network had let John contact them and provide them with his safe, non-nausea-inducing, non-brain-damaging, pheromone and heat suppressant. It was actually easy enough to manufacture once you knew how, and it took very little effort to get a few of the people who used to sell things like meth, ones having crises of conscience, to switch over to producing the suppressants.

The sales were almost aboveboard.

The more complicated part of things had been helping omegas escape to lead lives pretending to be betas. Help them escape from families who were patronising, if loving, smothering, if well-intentioned, and had no idea they were destroying the minds of their children but could never be convinced otherwise, escape from abusive families that just wanted the cash from their useless omega offspring, escape from institutions filled with well-meaning and patronisingly well-trained medical staff who thought omegas were like cute puppies.

They took advantage of that last one a lot, because it was really easy to escape from a place if you had all your mental faculties and they thought you were dumber than a bag of rocks.

But society at large had no idea. They never saw omegas for the most part, because you only got omegas when omegas were one of the parents and it was only a small collection of elite families (whether currently rich or at-one-time rich) who had omegas in the family to start with. Only the wealthy could afford to pay the government fees required to bring an omega into the home. Meanwhile, almost no one ever seemed to note that people didn't do proper scientific studies of them, hadn't since the Nazis, to whom John owed an unfortunate historical debt. While everything they'd done had been horrifying, they had left comprehensive documentation of experiments that John had used in his work (it being almost hilarious how he'd been able to wander into those archives under the auspices of a poor lost omega too stupid to be a security concern).

So John had, in the end, done his best, fled with Harry, both of them taking on fake names and then splitting up just in case someone went looking for the fraternal twins (obvious that Hamish Waters had to be with his sister because he was an omega and therefore couldn't be out on his own), but not much more than that. She was too worried about him being caught and he was too worried about her being arrested for kidnapping of the not mentally competent.

Technically he was supposed to be under the state's guardianship, his father having sent him off in exchange for a government stipend, since as an omega he was supposedly not competent to handle his own affairs, which meant that Harry getting him out would inevitably be seen as kidnapping.

He was brought out of his thoughts as he spotted a familiar face. It was a young girl, one who he'd managed to get out of a facility the week before. It was an advantage being a doctor, because it meant he could waltz into some of those places and fake the authority. Something else he'd learnt from Sherlock.

John swallowed sharply as he quashed the memory of a body falling through the air.

Refocusing he saw her fear and saw, several feet behind her, a five-person team. Two nurses, someone who had the look of an orderly, someone else from social services and what looked like a police officer. They weren't subtle, and if they kept on they'd find the safehouse that she was heading to. He had to step in, and got in between them and the girl. "Oi! You lot! What're you doing?"

"Nothing sir," said one nurse, trying to get past him. John stepped in her way, then weaved a little to the right, effectively blocking them, taking up their attention, just planning to hold it long enough for Alice to get around the corner and down the alley.

Memories of being trapped in one of those hellhole institutions grabbed him, and John had to struggle to stay calm. "You look like you're stalking that kid with a net," he told them. "She done something wrong?"

"Look, sir," said the orderly, "She's an omega and if we don't get her back she'll probably hurt herself running into traffic."

Like a stupid puppy, John thought with a brief clenching of his jaw.

And then it fell apart. Because he suddenly realised why he'd known the fourth one was a social worker, and she realised it at the same time. "Hamish Waters!" she exclaimed. "Oh my!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," John bluffed, suddenly terrified. Now? This was happening now?

And she dropped into the baby talk they all used with omegas because they thought it was soothing. "It's okay. I don't know how you've got on but we'll help you."

John took two steps back, disoriented at this sudden change and brought a hand up to push them away when he was hit with a taser. They were using tasers now? He thought to himself as he felt himself seize up and twitch. Then one of them hit him with a sedative of some kind and he passed out.