Disclaimer: See chapter one, from here on this will not be repeated.

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

CH 2

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

John Watson was in his single bed, asleep. However, he tossed and turned. His mind filled with scenes from the war he'd recently left. His head moved once more and his hands reached for his absent pistol when his body twitched hard enough to wake. It was akin to that odd falling sensation that one occasionally feels when asleep and was quite a jar to the system.

He rubbed his face and covered his eyes, hiding the pain he felt at the feeling of not having done enough. He had done everything he could, but some days it felt like he hadn't been able to save as many soldiers as he had done.

There had been Sentinels there with their Guides, but sometimes when a Guide died it was too much of a shock to their Sentinel. So much so that they went primal and destroyed everything in their path, before they had been taken down by enemy fire. The reverse was often true of the Guides, as well.

Whenever he happened to witness those moments, he was grateful that he didn't have a Guide and that he had still been classed as a GNA Sentinel. He wouldn't have wanted to experience that kind of extreme emotional loss during a battle situation. In truth he didn't want to know that kind of loss or pain under any circumstance, and had wondered if activation is worth it. His own sibling had been a perfect example of that kind of situation.

Harriet (Harry) Watson had lost her first Guide to a childhood illness and had been trying to compensate for it for the longest time. She'd even married a low level Guide in the hopes that it would alleviate some of the pain that she lived with on a daily basis. But even that didn't seem to be helping as the marriage was in a rocky state or so he'd been told just upon his return. She had handed him a used cell phone with the order that he was to keep in touch with her.

John just shook his head at the thought of going to her for any kind of assistance when she actively chose not to go to the Sentinel Council (SC) for the help she so desperately needed. Like he was one to talk, but there was nothing that any division of the SC could do for him since he hadn't activated during his time on the frontlines. They had no evidence that he ever would activate.

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

Days Later

In a small, windowed office a stately looking black woman looked at the shorter man sitting in front of her. She looked at her note pad and then looked at him asking, "How's your blog going?"

John looked at her and replied, "Yeah, good...very good."

"You haven't written a word have you," she stated, more than questioned. It was clear in his demeanor that he hadn't.

"You just wrote, 'Still has trust issues,'" he observed.

"And you read my writing up-side down," she pointed out. "You see what I mean though?" She paused hoping he'd chime in with something about himself, but knew that he wouldn't. "John...you're a soldier. A GNA Sentinel with a few senses that are stronger than others. It's still going to take you a while to adjust to civilian life. Writing a blog about everything that happens to you will honestly help you."

"Nothing happens to me," John stated in a slightly defeated manner, as he thought back to his pistol, hidden in his room. Though, as a Sentinel classed citizen, active or no, he was still granted a specialized exemption to the concealed firearm carry and defence law (...i...) of his home country.

"Nothing happens," he repeated.

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

Hours later John walked in a local park close to familiar territory. His medical training and schooling had taken place in a University, affectionately known as 'Bart's', nearby. He wondered if the reason he chose to walk in this direction was so that he'd have the possibility of meeting up with someone from his past or if he had just been feeling slightly homesick for the hustle and bustle of his University days when everything about medicine was fresh and new to him. It was a time when he'd never heard the sound of gunfire or witnessed bloody death.

A voice called out, "John..."

John stopped his frustrated stride forward. He looked around and was about to begin again, thinking that he'd imagined someone calling his name. He paused again as he heard, "John Watson."

A short, slightly portly man approached him. "It's Mike... Mike Stamford."

"Oh, yes," John's mind raced and then remembered his old study buddy from med-school. "Mike, how are you?" He held out his hand and shook the other man's in greeting.

"Fine, fine," Mike said and then asked, "Coffee?"

"Yes please," John agreed with an eager nod.

They took their Clarion Café cups to a nearby bench in the park. Mike had said that he only came out during his breaks because the coffee at the Clarion was still the best and only coffee to drink, which John happened agreed with.

As they sipped their drinks and Mike began to ask questions about John's current living situation. "What happened to you, John? I heard you were abroad somewhere getting shot at."

"Got shot," John said and lifted the walking stick that had nothing to do with his actual war wound. He looked at the abashed face of his old friend and then asked a question of his own. "Are you still at Bart's then?"

"Yeah," the other man replied jovially. "Teaching now...bright young things like we used to be," he sighed and then continued with a slight grin. "God I hate them. What about you, just staying in town while you get yourself sorted?"

"I can't afford London on an army pension," John snorted into his cup of coffee.

"Can't Harry help," Mike asked.

"Like that's gonna happen," John replied with a scowl at the thought of his sibling.

"I don't know, then," Mike paused to think about a likely response or solution to his friend's dilemma. "Maybe you could get a flat share or something?"

"Come on," John turned to the man. "Who'd want me for a flatmate?" His friend looked at him oddly, as though he'd said something strange. "What?"

"Well...," Mike paused and shook his head. "It's just that you're the second person to say that to me today."

That interested John and nothing much these days interested him. So he had to ask, "Who's the first?"

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

Morgue Section of Bart's

A young man, in his late twenties, strode into the morgue upon receiving a text message from one of his familiar contacts. He needed the morgue access and more importantly access to the bodies for certain scientific experiments.

"How fresh," he asked, as he looked at the old man laying on the gurney.

"Just this morning," the young woman in a lab coat told him. "He used to work here...he was nice." She said. She had mentioned unnecessary information to the young man again, which he chose to ignore as irrelevant.

"Right then," the man had said. "Let's start with the riding crop."

Several minutes later, the youngish looking man was beating the corpse, quite vigorously with a riding crop. He had the look of someone enjoying his activity, but in his eyes there was seriousness in his purpose. His mind was cataloguing several factors of the activity, including the strength and weight he used in his task.

The young female researcher looked down upon the young man from an observation booth with admiration and longing in her eyes. It was clear that she would have liked to be more than a casual acquaintance to him, but her courage always seemed to fail her.

Today was going to be different though, because she'd made a special purchase during her lunch hour. It may have been a whimsical purchase, but it had made her feel bold enough to make some kind of attempt at familiarity with the young man.

The man finished his activity, checked the time on his watch and made a few notes in the notebook he carried around just to keep the records of his experiments clear and separate from the multitude of others he had going on in his head.

"So," the woman came back in and attempted a joke that just didn't work. "Bad day was it?"

"Call me the minute bruises start forming," the young man said. "A man's life depends on it." He looked up at the woman and immediately noticed the change she'd made, but said nothing about it. He knew that the situation would present itself shortly anyway. Life was so boringly predictable sometimes.

"Listen...I was wondering," she said with some hesitation in her voice. "...maybe later, when you're finished..."

The man pretended to be surprised, but it looked convincing to the young lady, "You're wearing lipstick." He paused for half a moment before he continued quickly. "You weren't wearing lipstick before."

"I, uh," she hesitated, but finished in a quick breath and a shy smile. "I refreshed it a bit."

"Sorry," the man said. "You were saying?"

"I was wondering if you'd like to have coffee..." she was about to add, 'with me', but he interrupted her.

"Black, two sugars please," he said immediately cutting her off. "I'll be in the upstairs lab, thanks." He left so quickly that she just stood there. She felt as though she'd just been brushed by with a strong wind.

"O...kay," she said, almost about to look around to see if he had been joking with her, but in the secret part of her heart she knew that he hadn't been and that he'd just left her there to perform a basic fetch and carry task.

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

Laboratory Section of Bart's

Mike had been escorting John about the old place and they reminisced about classes and some of the antics that they, as students used get up to during their school days. They talked about the antics that the newer crop of students had gotten up to, as well. They talked about how some things never seemed to change.

They eventually walked into one of the supposedly old familiar labs, but things looked changed to John. The room was not a familiar one anymore what with the newer instruments replacing old or dated ones. Plus there was an interesting and strange young man at one of the microscope station that seemed occupied, as he looked intently at the contents on the glass slide.

"Well," John commented and looked about the room. "Bit different from my day," and Mike just shrugged, as though knowing that something was about to happen and it would all be because of the younger man at the far microscope.

John inhaled and suddenly his eyes focused on the younger man at the other end of the room. He could see the grey flecks in those intensely focused blue-green eyes. His sense of smell was suddenly assaulted by the numerous chemicals and varied sweet and sour body odours.

His own body stiffened in an automated, soldier-like assessing manner and response. It had gone still in an attempt to gain control of his suddenly activated hyper senses.

The odours were sharp and somewhat unpleasant. The chemicals mixed with the bodily odours of all those in the room. His eyes had dilated to a degree that he'd been forced to take long blinks to clear his focus. His hearing was assaulted by the thumps of three heartbeats, which he quickly regulated in order to hear the conversation around him and not the ones occurring in rooms further down the corridor or several floors away from him.

His mental landscape had been prepared for this moment…for years. He'd always imagined his chosen tools to regulate his senses and they had changed over time from a child to a teenager to his final adult status. Now he had to use them very quickly or be caught in a fugue or zoned state, without the recourse of a Guide to get him out of it.

This was it. The moment he'd waited for and it terrified him. The major event that he'd never once thought would happen to him after going so long without any twinge of an extra sensory spike.

His senses had suddenly activated in this teaching hospital and not on the battlefield like he'd believed or had hoped. He'd been repeatedly told that the likelihood of ever finding his Guide was so slim to almost be non-existent because of his lengthy GNA status.

His GNA Sentinel level and potential could not even be registered correctly on the scales that were currently used by the Sentinel Centres. They all assumed that he was at a level so low that it would never register. They figured that is why his status hadn't changed. That is... until today.

"Mike can I use your phone," the younger man asked the slightly shorter of the two gentlemen.

"I left it in my other coat," Mike replied. "Sorry! Why don't you use the land line?"

"I refuse to use something that could be easily traced," the young man replied with a slight disappointed frown. "Besides I prefer to text. It's quicker and I don't have to talk to idiots."

John had a hand clenched around the cell phone in his pocket and had registered the conversation, but could barely hear it under his new circumstances. "Here," he said, in what he hoped was a normal tone of voice. He pulled out the cell phone he had barely ever used. He limped over to the end of the table of instruments and held it out. He had tried to appear unaffected by his activated senses and it seemed to be working since the other two had not remarked on it. "You can use mine."

"Thanks," the young man said with another quick glimpse, he assessed older man standing next to him. He texted a message out with the speed of one born using the small keys on the miniature keypads of modern day cellular telephones, much to the envy of the other two men in the room.

"Afghanistan or Iraq," the younger man questioned, as he was about to hand back the phone.

"Sorry," John asked as his body shivered from the most innocent of human contacts, as the phone was placed in his hand. It felt like it had been brushed with a scouring pad made of steel wool instead of the fingerprints that should never have registered in the first place.

"Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?"

"Afghanistan," John answered. He looked confused and started to ask, "Sorry, how did you..."

"Ah, Molly...coffee, thank you," the young man exclaimed, as the young woman from earlier came into the lab to deliver a cup of coffee. He paused to sip or gulp part of it down and then he asked her, "What happened to the lipstick?"

The young woman blushed to have been put on the spot about such a little thing like cosmetics. She replied, "It wasn't working for me."

"Really," the young man said. "I thought it was a big improvement. Your mouth's too small now."

"O...kay," Molly whispered to herself. She flushed in embarrassment and quickly left the men to their talk and experiments.

The younger man returned to his microscope. He looked into the lens, made a minor note in his notebook and then he asked out loud, "How do you feel about the violin?"

"I'm sorry," John asked in a distracted tone. "What?"

"I play the violin when I'm thinking," he glanced up at the other man's confusion. "Sometimes I don't talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other. Don't you think?"

"Are you..." John looked confused. He then looked to his old friend and questioned. "You told him about me?"

Mike grinned mischievously and told him, "Not a word."

John looked back towards the younger man. His senses finally getting under control much more quickly than he'd imagined would happen. He sighed with quiet relief when the settled near normalcy and then asked, "Who said of anything about flatmates?"

"I did," the younger man stated. "Told Mike this morning that I must a difficult man to find a flatmate for, now here he is and just back from lunch with an old friend. Who's clearly just been invalided from military service in Afghanistan, it wasn't a difficult leap."

"How did you know about Afghanistan?"

"I've got my eye on a nice little place in Central London. Together we ought to be able to afford it." He gulped down the rest of his coffee and wrapped his scarf about his neck. He strode towards the door. "We'll meet there tomorrow evening, seven o'clock. Sorry, got to dash." He opened the door. "I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary."

"Is that it," Watson asked in a sharp tone that made the other two men pause. Mike recognized that tone in a person's voice, especially from a Sentinel whose senses were active.

"Is that what," the younger man turned back and away from the door. He involuntarily shivered from the tone, but made no outward motion to indicate that it had affected him, as he tucked both his hands into his coat pocket.

John asked, "We've only just met and now we're going to look at a flat together?"

"Problem?"

"We don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting," he paused. "I don't even know your name."

"I know you're an army doctor, whose just been invalided home from Afghanistan, and you're a recently activated Sentinel, probably occurred during the war. You're here without a Guide which could be a mark of your level according to the measures used by the SC and a fact I find quite odd considering how the Government prefers to keep all of its activated soldiers, invalided or not, all of which is an interesting mystery that I'm going to solve quite soon," the younger man barely paused to take another breath and continued revealing things that John never knew could be determined by the littlest of things.

"I, also, know you've got a brother who's worried about you, but you won't go to him for because you don't approve of him...possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife." He tucked his hands into his coat pockets. "And I know that your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic, quite correctly I'm afraid. That's enough to be going on with, don't you think?" He then opened the door and stepped out of the laboratory. He popped his head back in and said, "The name's Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street. Afternoon..."

Sherlock popped back out, but not without a cheeky wink to Dr. Watson before the door shut on him.

John was stunned at the bombardment of information that Sherlock had supplied from their brief encounter. He looked to his old friend for some kind of explanation.

"Yeah," Mike said with a nod. "He's always like that. So you activated while you were away. I'm surprised that you don't have a Guide yet. Why didn't you tell me?"

John looked back at the closed door. His senses suddenly came back down to normal and they seemed a little more...dull with the absence of Sherlock Holmes. "No, I didn't activate while I was in the army. I'm still listed as GNA with the SC." He looked at Mike's confused expression. "Although, I'm not quite sure that it should be the case anymore, please leave it alone until I can figure out what's going on."

"You got it," Mike said. "But if you want to speak to someone about it, my wife can help..." He drifted off, leaving the invitation open for some off the books advice.

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

Meanwhile Sherlock's thoughts were on his current case, but they turned periodically to the soldier Sentinel that he'd just met. He'd been hoping that Mike Stamford would bring him someone reliable to help him out, because there was no question the man would be able to find someone needing a flatshare. It would also, likely be someone used to the scientific environment and bodily experimentations. He mustn't have said that he wasn't looking for a Sentinel.

'Why bring me an unbonded Sentinel,' Sherlock thought. 'He knows that I'm an activated Guide. There's always a danger in such situations...Unless he didn't know that his friend was activated, which makes perfect sense, if Dr. Watson was hiding it. But why would he hide something like that, there's nothing shameful in having hyper-active senses. Is he ashamed, why would he...I'd much have preferred being the Sentinel instead of a useless, unbondable Guide.'

He arrived back at the Mortuary and soon his thoughts were back on the cases at hand. He glanced at the body that he'd battered and noted that a few bruises had started forming. He snapped a picture of them and noted in his mental notebook that the ones appearing were the ones he inflicted with mid to maximum strength. He stared at the others that were forming and snapped some images of those too, making more mental notes.

The thought of living with an active Sentinel had been temporarily put aside in his mind for more interesting things. Although he added a note to the shadow form of Dr. Watson, which took on an outline of an armed soldier, in his mind and he thought, 'Must see if he'll allow me to do some sense experimentation,'

Then he took off to follow another lead to his current case.

Sherlock - Holmes - John - Watson

TBC...

(...i...) Made up law, meant to partially reflect some that exist, since I believe that the UK has a non-gun policy.