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Cold, windy nights were your favorite. When the starry sky above was gray with clouds, only illuminated by the city below, and the scent of rain hung in the air so heavy even your baseline senses could pick up on it. When the wind howled around corners and sharp edges, and no one dared to leave the house except for you. It was the perfect time to be outside.
It was also about the only time you were able to go outside, at least without having to pay permanent attention to your shields.
You closed the zipper of your jacket and hopped down the stairs of the Trader's hotel. Immediately, the night's chill crept up your jeans-clad legs, teasing around your ankles and blanketing your thighs. You shoved your hands into your pockets and turned towards the ocean.
A boy had been murdered here eight weeks ago. You'd read it in the papers. But you would have known anyway, from the moment you stepped off the bus: grief hung over Broadchurch like a burial shroud. You could feel it: the desperation of a mother tied to a streetlamp, or tangled around a door frame; the tired regret of a father wedged in between iron chairs and the gravel on the beach. Like tendrils, worry curled along the sidewalks. Determination, too. Brave people refusing to let the crime go unpunished.
They had yet to find the killer. Maybe you shouldn't be walking at night, all by yourself. Then again, you were hardly an eleven year old boy – and much less helpless.
Your consciousness flared around you, extending past the boundaries of your physical body to sweep the streets. The signal spread like sonar, pinging off every living thing in your vicinity: a cat in the bushes, hunting for mice; a sleeping lizard in the shadow of an empty beer bottle. Even the boys hanging out smoking in front of the pub down the street popped up on your internal map. They hadn't seen you. All of them were baseline human.
Right now, you were the only Guide in all of Broadchurch. Well, the only registered Guide. If there were any children with the gift ready to come online, the screenings at the schools had yet to find them.
You turned towards the beach, shoes scuffling on the asphalt.
The cat shot out of the bush, hissed at you and bolted past to duck under a nearby car.
"Sorry," you said, sending it a wave of apology. You were never actually sure if they could understand – scientists were eagerly researching the potential abilities of animal-Guides – but at least the hissing quieted.
You continued on your way, leaving the lights of the harbor behind you as you reached the sea front. It felt good to be alone. Not just being away from the other Guides at the Tower and the constant exchange of emotions your respective gifts forced you into, but the humans, too. Living in the city, in close quarters with thousands of people, meant you were constantly subjected to a deluge of emotions, moods and thought-fragments, all day, every day. Iron shields weren't able to withstand such an assault and you – well, you never had a talent for shielding. So, regular vacations to completely vacated stretches of Dorset coast to replenish your reservoirs it was.
The air smelled of salt and seaweed. Wind played with the strands of hair around your temples. You were just about to step off the broad walk, one foot in the air, when a wall of painchesthurthurthurt hit you like a slap to the face.
You stumbled, barely managing to catch yourself before losing your balance. In your own chest, your heart seemed to skip a beat and then launch into a rapid staccato.
Hurthelpbreathecan'tbreathe.
You spun around yourself, squinting into the darkness, trying to find the source of the onslaught. "Hello? Anyone there?"
But there was only the empty beach: waves rolling onto wet sand, cliffs rising in the distance. Not a single soul to be seen. But from where–
Darkhurt- dark.
He was passing out.
Alarmed, you took a step forward. Then another, and another, as your instincts got a grip on you. You had no idea where you were going, but your body knew.
Just like it knew that the anguished cry couldn't have come from a baseline human. Nor from another Guide.
No, it was a Sentinel. An unbonded, male Sentinel who was injured and confused; his own shields in tatters, and below the writhing agony there was the bone-deep ache of loneliness calling out to you – to anyone, really – for help. For guidance.
Hurtdarkhurt.
Ice crept up your spine. The Sentinel's pain tasted bitter and sharp on your tongue. It was starting to drown out his other senses.
You broke into a run. You would have even if your instincts had not been compelling you to. It was a Guide's duty to help a Sentinel, especially when they were sliding headfirst into a zone.
But even two hundred meters down the beach, you couldn't see anyone. The night was ink black around you and all your senses – not just your gift – told you clearly that you were alone. Where was the Sentinel?
Panting, you pulled out your phone. You kept your GPS disabled – didn't want certain web services to follow you around, after all – so it took a moment to load. An endless moment.
Hurthurt… hurt.
Fuck, you wouldn't get there in time. Even if your online map could tell you where you were. Where he might be.
The Sentinel needed help now.
Were he here with you, within touching distance, you would place your hand on his arm, draw his attention. You'd make eye-contact and check for visual injuries. You'd sit quietly beside him, letting him focus on you – your heartbeat, the rhythm of your breath and your Guide scent, all the things a Sentinel needed to ground himself in reality. If necessary, you'd provide skin contact and touch comfort to keep him calm until the ambulance arrived. Passive Guiding was what they called it at the Tower. But he wasn't here and you could do none of that. You had to get to him yourself. Taking a deep breath, you cupped your hands over your ears, closed your eyes and reached out.
Following his mental cries to the source felt like thundering down a mountain in the midst of an avalanche and crashing right into a lion's den. Emotions rained down on you. Urgency, rising panic, and a nagging worry. None of them were as sharp, as poignant, as the Sentinel's. Ignoring all others – they wouldn't be able to discern your presence, anyway – you dove straight for him.
He didn't become aware of your presence immediately. Too much pain and shouting around him.
You approached him; or, that was what it felt like, even though the actual process was different and not yet fully understood in the scientific community. Still, he was unaware. It was only when you touched him, slipping past the pitiful remnants of his shields, that he perked up in alarm. Like yarn of different colors, his senses spun around you in an empty room: a root system through his inner self. Interconnected like neurons in the brain and yet so much more, spread out into the darkness of the world. Upon noticing your arrival, his consciousness lit up like a neon sign, recoling in fear. Sirens started blaring.
Startled, you did the mental equivalent of baring both hands and your throat, for good measure, keeping yourself on the outer edge. I come in peace.
He shoved you so hard it caused you to stumble physically. You dropped into a crouch on the sand, fingers trembling in your hair.
Thankfully, the connection still held. As a Sentinel, his control over his inner landscape was fragile at best. Not that it stopped him from trying his hardest to step on your metaphorical toes, in between navigating the bright pulses of his senses. They glowed like city roads at night; live wires, brighter and brighter. In a few moments, it would overwhelm him.
You needed to calm him down. But first, you needed to show him you weren't a threat. How, though?
He wasn't here so you wouldn't be able to talk to him, or sign at him. You couldn't even touch him. It was a new agony, not being able to touch the Sentinel you were trying to help; before, you'd always been able to establish some kind of contact. No thought-transmission without touch.
Okay. If the only thing you had access to was his mind, it was time to change tactics.
Instead of trying to penetrate deeper, get at the tangled mess of sensual input and coax the knots apart, you turned to his shields.
He went very still.
"Shh, it's alright," you said, knowing fully well that he wasn't able to hear you. You were just too far apart.
His sense of hearing – spun gold thread in the void – corroborated your assessment by not reacting in the slightest.
Carefully, you reached out and started to smoothe the edges. They were like metal that heated under your imaginary fingers, eager to bend.
Your own heartbeat quickened, as it tended to do when you became aware of what you needed to do - and how to do it. Guided by the crystal clarity of a thousand year old instinct, you helped his shields assume a working shape again. You wouldn't be able to restore them fully, but you could ease the ache. It had to be enough, for now.
All of a sudden, he was right behind you, all of him, quicker than you'd thought possible. But instead of shoving you again, he was observing, probably feeling what you were doing to him, and coming to a decision. He waited until he had your attention before retreating a little, giving you space. Inviting you in.
Adrenaline surged through your veins. Tentatively, you took a step forward, aware that he was watching you like a hawk. Ready to strike at any sense of danger. Only when he was sure of your intentions did he retreat further, closer to where his senses were curling themselves tighter and tighter around each other.
You had no idea how long it took you both to reach the knot, all in all. It was hard to keep track of time while inside someone else's mind, and it wasn't like you could pop out briefly to check your phone, lest you lost the connection. After what felt like a small eternity but might has well have been only half a minute, you got there.
He wouldn't be able to see it – not without a stable connection to your mind, and across the distance, he couldn't reach you – but he must have been aware of his own vulnerability, like this, because you sensed a stab of fear. Agitation. A man pacing in an empty room.
"I'm not going to hurt you," you reassured him, trying to project that emotion outward. It must have come through, because he calmed – and only startled a little when you touched the knot.
As with the shields, this part of him seemed to recognize you. The gleaming threads dimmed under your caress, as if your presence alone was enough to keep his panic at bay. Guide, you sensed, the information transmitted along unseen pathways like little electrical shocks. Guidesafehelpsoothe.
Warmth flooded your consciousness. The sheer trust of an injured Sentinel in you, simply because you were you, never failed to take your breath away.
With tender fingers, you coaxed the first strand – orange, like a traffic cone – out of the knot. A scent of sand and kerosene hit you, of night air mixed with salt, and a woman's deodorant. Familiar deodorant; the Sentinel knew her, and having her there calmed him more than it riled him up. You let the sensation slip through your fingers.
The next glowing connection – green – brought an explosion of bile on your tongue; metal against your teeth. He'd bitten the inside of his cheek in his desperation for air and now the blood was driving him wild. You closed your hands around the thread, clenching your mental fists. Silent, you ordered. The color dimmed to gray, settling.
The Sentinel beside you let out a breath of relief.
You moved on, tugging and sliding, weaving and re-forging ripped connections. Slowly, the tangled mess of colors unraveled, laying beside each other like the streaks in a rainbow. While working your way deeper through the chaos, you came across a thicker, purple wire that felt very alive in your hands. His awareness, you realized with a start. Red – the pain in his chest – was curled all around it, feeding into it. It hurt him.
Gently, you increased the pressure on that particular connection, feeling it give. His eyelids grew heavy. His reactions slowed, consciousness slipping through his fingers like water. Before he knew it, he was out cold.
The space around you darkened. The threads curled around your hands slackened. You draped them gently into the empty space, far enough apart they wouldn't bundle up again, then started doing the same to the others.
A slap to your face – his face – broke your concentration.
"Don't pass out on me, Hardy!", a voice yelled.
You lost your balance and landed butt-first on the damp sand. Icy cold seeped through your jeans and prickled against the backs of your thighs; a sensation so disorienting it snapped your attention back to yourself, severing the connection.
Fuck, shit, goddamn. You climbed to your feet, trying to calm your rasping breaths. The world spun around you, nearly tripping you over your own feet. You felt light-headed. You were shaking all over, as if your sugar levels had dropped through the floor in the past few seconds. With a startle, you realized you couldn't reach out again. You didn't have the energy.
Cursing, you stumbling up onto the broad walk, casting your consciousness outwards, desperate for a wisp of his. Sentinel? Sentinel, where are you? But it was futile. Finding him without his screams of pain would be impossible. You didn't know where, or who, he was.
"Okay, okay, breathe," you mumbled, clutching a hand to your chest.
He was only sleeping. It wasn't a zone. Thanks to your intervention, he would probably able to keep a hold on his senses without zoning. He was safe. He had to be safe. The Guide in you couldn't accept if it were otherwise.
White noise roared in your ears, in your mind. Somewhere on a street behind you, an ambulance howled.
Oh, good, you thought, feeling yourself go cross-eyed. Someone was here to help him. They probably wouldn't mind if you laid down for a moment... maybe took a short...
-
You awoke when a woman walking her dog kicked your shin. "Wake up. Sleeping on the ground is bad for you."
"You don't strike me as someone who'd care," you said, before your brain engaged. Your eyes widened. "Sorry."
Generally, people didn't want to be called out on how they really felt.
The woman shrugged.
The events of last night crashed into your mind. Fuck. The Sentinel! You rubbed your eyes. "Is there a hospital around here?"
"Yeah. Other side of the town, fifteen, twenty minutes from here."
"Thank you."
You got to your feet and decided with a shiver - it was quite chilly - to go for a change of clothes at the hotel first. Wouldn't want to meet that reckless Sentinel, whoever he was, soaked through with seawater.
A smile crossed your face. Time for an interesting daytime walk.