Sky Ain’t The Limit – Chapter 1 & 2 – ScarsLikeVelvet

Chapter 1 – Coming Out Swinging

Evan Christopher Buckley entered the world absolutely swinging. Against what was normal in the world of Sentinels and Guides, he came out of the womb with all his senses primed to the max and focused on a bond he had formed while still growing inside of his mother.

The tiny Sentinel was screaming his head off, causing an empathic event that was felt not only by Guides but also by mundanes up and down the eastern seaboard, drawing masses of Guides to the hospital in Pittsburgh where he was born, as they wished to help and ease the overwhelmed young Sentinel.

Hospital security and the police had to keep the masses at bay, which caused the Sentinels to rush to the Guides’ help because there was no way that one of their own would go without help. They tried to storm the hospital, but an order from the Alpha of the Pittsburgh Tribe calmed them down, while the man’s Guide entered the hospital at a clipped run, searching for the cause of the empathic event, only to encounter another obstacle–a screaming mundane woman.

“He can’t be a fucking Sentinel! We made sure he had none of the genetics!” She was shouting, shaking the newborn boy who was screaming his head off. “We need him to donate bone marrow to Daniel!”

Her anger was another entity in the room, and Helen Hollander didn’t hesitate at all to use her empathy to drop the woman, because she could feel that the little boy had a sixth sense—empathy, something that was so rare in Sentinels, most considered it a myth.

Helen caught the newborn as the nurses grabbed the birth mother and glared at them.

“Why wasn’t he tested before birth? It is procedure!” she snapped, while wrapping her own shields around the newborn in an attempt to soothe him, though she knew that would only fully happen until she found whoever he had bonded with.

The nurses ducked their heads as they were taking care of the heavily bleeding woman—a birth complication, Helen figured—they pointed her toward the midwife as the doctor was heading over to the nurses.

“They weren’t set to give birth at this hospital,” the midwife admitted. “I don’t even know them, but she told us her husband had the paperwork and that her son doesn’t have any Sentinel or Guide genetics, which is why we had her in a mundane birthing suite. Else we wouldn’t be in this wing at all.”

“So none of the personnel here is schooled when it comes to Sentinels and Guides?” Helen questioned.

The midwife shook her head.

“We have the bare minimum of training, but there was no way for us to get someone over, because he dropped us all the moment he came free of his mother,” she admitted.

“Damn,” Helen muttered. “I need to find his bond mate.”

“It can’t be the mother. His father and sister are in the waiting room. I don’t know if they are a possibility, though. They don’t seem to have either Sentinel or Guide genetics.”

Helen nodded.

“Am I good to take him with me?” she asked.

“We need to take his data and get him cleaned up a bit. Then you can leave with him,” the midwife said after sharing a quick look with the doctor.

Helen sighed.

“I will need to be the only one touching his skin. He’s already developing a rash, likely from unshielded skin touching him. The boy is too young to built his own shields without someone assisting him,” she said, but walked with the midwife, who walked her gamely through weighing and measuring him. The only thing she insisted on doing herself was listening to the little boy’s lungs.

Once they had him wrapped in a Sentinel safe diaper and a muslin scarf, Helen focused on the surprisingly sturdy bond she could feel, and started walking out of the birthing suite, ignoring the commotion the nurses and doctor were causing in their attempt to save the mother.

She checked the waiting room only to find it empty.

“Where are the father and sister?” She asked her husband and Sentinel when Howard entered the area at a dead run.

“Not in this area of the hospital,” he replied and peered at the young child in his wife’s arms before he started guiding her along the hallways, following the scent trail the man and young girl had left in the air.

They entered the oncology ward, and Helen closed her eyes.

“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, soothingly rubbing the tiny boy’s back.

“What is it?” Howard asked. He felt his wife’s worry ratcheting up keenly.

“The mother screamed something about this little one being slated to donate bone marrow to his brother,” she replied as they searched the ward for whoever it was that they were seeking.

A nurse attempted to stop them when they reached a room at the end of the ward.

“You can’t go in there!” she told them firmly. “The patient is very sick and can’t be exposed to any outside germs.”

“Well, we need to go inside to save not one but two lives,” Howard said firmly, “so please show us where we can clean up enough to be allowed to enter, else you are likely to lose not only your patient, but this little one here too.”

Reluctantly she allowed them to enter the safety room in front of the hospital room their new charge’s bond mate occupied. They quickly scrubbed down, donned scrubs, and didn’t allow the nurse to take the newborn from them, despite her insisting that the youngling stayed outside.

“Don’t you get it?” Helen snapped. “This little one is a Sentinel. He is the one who caused the empathic event that drew hundreds of Sentinels and Guides here, and until his needs are answered, they will not leave.”

“What does this have to do with my patient?” the nurse questioned, following them into the room without scrubbing down—the stupidest decision Howard and Helen had ever seen happen.

Helen and Howard ignored her as they stepped into the room and found themselves faced with all the sights, smells and other sense impressions a person sick with cancer came with.

There, in the center of the room, was a young boy around eight, settled with what looked like half a dozen infusions and enough monitoring devices on his person that it would have driven the sanest person nuts. The first thing that registered with Howard was the fact that the boy was a Guide. The second that he was given drugs that were explicitly forbidden to be given to Sentinels and Guides, whether they were online or not.

“What the ever-loving fuck do you think you are doing?” Howard asked, pulling his phone from his pocket and calling a medical team he had on standby to come and help them take care of the newborn and his brother.

While Howard squared off with the children’s father and the nurse, Helen stepped toward the bed and gently rested the newborn on his brother’s chest, which finally calmed the newborn’s agonising screams and helped the older child relax.

“Meet your brother,” Helen said gently before asking the boy and girl, who was sitting beside the bed with wide eyes, for their names.

“I’m Maddie Buckley and this is my younger brother Daniel,” the girl answered primly.

Helen smiled and asked them if a name for their brother had been chosen.

“Evan,” Daniel answered, and Maddie added a soft “Christopher.”

Helen smiled and rested her hand on the newborn’s back.

“You are save now, Evan Christopher Buckley,” she assured him, allowing safety to flood her shields, wrapping them not only around the newborn but also his brother, who relaxed more, which told her that he too had been online for quite some time with no one helping him handle the situation.

“What is happening? Where is Mom?” Maddie questioned, while Daniel focused on Little Evan.

Helen shrugged. He hadn’t focused on the woman enough to find her among the hundreds of people inside the building, too busy to keep the newborn alive.

It was Daniel who closed his eyes for a moment and eventually answered, “Ding dong, the bitch is dead.”

Helen bit her lip. For a young child to say something like this about his own mother, she must have been an atrocious mother, which she didn’t think was wrong even after only being in the woman’s presence for mere minutes.

The things she had said about her newborn child had been some of the worst she had ever heard, and she was quite sure that Maddie and Daniel had faced similar or worse as they grew up, because the woman seemed to be against Sentinels and Guides.

Maddie burst into tears, and it toom Helen a moment to realise that they weren’t tears of grief, not really. They were tears of pure relief, and then the conversation at her back stopped, and the father of the children, one Phillip Buckley, asked, “Is it true? Is my wife gone?”

When Howard used his senses to confirm what Daniel had said, Phillip collapsed in relief.

“It’s over … it’s finally over,” he muttered.

Helen and Howard shared a confused look with each other when four new presences joined the room from the Psionic Plane. A honey badger cub curled against little Evan’s side, and an emaciated otter rested against Daniel’s side, while a bedraggled-looking tabby kitten rested on Maddie’s shoulders like a scarf and a nearly dead swan settled next to Phillip.

“No,” Helen breathed out.

“Margaret has done her best to keep our Spirit Guides away from us and broke her own gift, going dormant. I think that is what killed her in the end, but honestly, I don’t care. I do not get how she could be a Guide herself and manipulate us all the way she did,” Phillip said, tears rolling down his cheeks, as he finally asked his tribe leader for help, now that he was able to do so.

“You all need extensive help,” Helen murmured.

“We’ll welcome it,” Phillip said, holding onto his Spirit Guide as if it were a lifeline, which it quite likely was.

“Your wife nearly succeeded in killing her son,” Howard muttered as the door flew open and his medical team entered the room at a dead run, followed by a second and third one as their Sentinels had listened in to the conversation.

Two Sentinel and Guide teams each took charge of Maddie and Phillip, while another team joined Helen and Howard Hollander to take care of Evan and Daniel, who were the most fragile in the room.

It took them quite some time to get the family of four out of the hospital, given that a number of legal shenanigans had to be smoothed over before they could take their charges to a psionically shielded ward inside the Sentinel and Guide Center that sat in the middle of Pittsburgh.

Any attempt to separate Evan and Daniel for their evaluation was shut down the moment both boys’ vitals started to crash in response to the attempt. Even touching Evan was a no-go unless the person doing the touching was shielding heavily.

“I don’t think the boys can stay with their father and sister,” Howard murmured.

Helen nodded softly.

“I already reached out to Sentinel Ellison and Guide Sandburg. They are the only ones with both the necessary training and ability to shield the way the boys need long-term without any serious repercussions to them,” she said. “I’m honestly surprised that the Spirit Guides even managed to appear on the physical plane given how hurt they are.”

Howard nodded.

“I don’t think Phillip’s and Maddie’s will survive long-term and we both know what it will mean for them,” he said.

“They will be remanded into permanent care due to traumatic dormancy and it is unlikely they will ever put foot outside of a care facility ever again,” Helen replied, with Howard nodding in confirmation.

“This has been a mess from start to finish,” he said.

“I seriously doubt it was just the start that was messy,” his wife said while she and Howard walked back into the room Daniel and Evan would share until the Alpha Sentinel Prime and Alpha Guide Prime of North America arrived to take custody of them.

“Phillip won’t be happy to learn that he can’t take care of his children the way he likely planned to with Margaret dead,” Howard agreed before they entered the room and closed the door behind them.

Evan was still resting on his brother’s chest, wearing nothing more than a diaper and a muslin scarf tucked around him.

“I think he pooped,” Daniel said, his nose scrunched up. “And he’s hungry.”

Evan was making soft sounds, though they didn’t seem to distressed just yet.

Helen stepped forward, tightening her shielding as she lifted Evan of Daniel’s chest and gave his diaper a quick sniff, confirming what Daniel had expected.

“I’ll take care of the diaper situation and Howard can help you get situated so you can continue skin-on-skin time with your brother and feed him his bottle,” she explained to both boys, knowing that even though Evan was newborn, his advanced senses would appreciate the reassurance that he wouldn’t remain separated from his brother for too long.

Helen worked quickly as she cleaned Evan up and returned him to Daniel the moment her husband returned with a small bottle of breast milk donated to the Sentinel and Guide Center for cases like this.

“Why is the bottle this tiny?” Daniel questioned, all the same offering it to his brother, who latched onto it and greedily started to suck down the offered milk.

“A newborn’s stomach is really tiny, so it barely fits somewhere between 10 and 20 milliliters,” Helen explained with a smile. “It’s the reason the little ones feed every two to three hours usually. It takes some time for their tummy’s to grow accustomed to bigger amounts of milk.”

“Oh,” Daniel said. “I didn’t know that.”

“They don’t teach that in school,” Howard said with a smile.

“Are there books about raising babies?” Daniel questioned.

Helen nodded.

“Yes. There are,” she confirmed.

“Can I get a good one? I don’t want to do anything wrong when handling Evan. Mom said I am not allowed to see him at all until I am healthy again, but I don’t think I can get healthy the way she wanted it to happen … and Evan deserves to be taken care of properly,” Daniel rambled before yawning.

“I will see to getting you a good book about taking care of babies and how they grow,” Helen promised. “But you don’t have to take care of your brother alone.”

“Neither Maddie nor Dad will be able to help,” Daniel said firmly. “They are too hurt, even though they don’t admit it.”

Helen closed her eyes and questioned why a young boy like Daniel Buckley had to be as perceptive as he was. It wasn’t fair that he already knew this much about the hurts the world could heap on people just because his mother hated what she was on a profound level and attempted to stamp it out of her family.

If she hadn’t wanted Sentinel and Guide children, she shouldn’t have procreated. It was in her genes, too, after all.

Chapter 2 – Protection comes in packets big and small

“I know they said it was only felt on the Eastern Seaboard,” Alpha Sentinel Prime Jim Ellison said. “But to be honest, I felt that little boy’s onlining all the way to Cascade. I don’t know if that is a quirk of our position or if he is that strong.”

Alpha Guide Prime Blair Sandburg snorted. He knew Jim hated talking about what he called metaphysical bullshit, but he did it when required of him.

“The general Sentinel and Guide population and some of the more sensitive mundanes felt him all over the Eastern Seaboard, and that is how it should be in a case of extreme distress like that little boy’s,” Blair started to explain.

“I hear a but coming,” Jim muttered.

“I am a Shaman, Jim,” Blair continued tartly. “Our connection with the Psionic Plane is way more profound than a regular Sentinel or Guide’s. It’s just part and parcel of our genetics and nothing we can do about it no matter how much we’d like to be exempt from some of the shenanigans that come with us being Alpha Primes.”

Jim huffed and crossed his arms in front of his chest, remaining silent as he mulled over his partner’s words.

“What do you think is going on in Pittsburgh?” he questioned.

Blair closed his eyes and focused on his connection with the Psionic Plane, relaxing into the touch of his Spirit Guide, a beautiful wolf. He searched for the little boy who finally seemed to have calmed down, now that his bond mate had been found, though the messages he had received from the regional prime pair weren’t all that encouraging as the onlining of a newborn Sentinel was only part of the mess.

“I think we will find ourselves returning to Cascade in charge of at least the newborn, if not his brother too, though that depends on if the boy survives what was done to him by his mother or not. If he loses his Spirit Guide it is likely that he will succumb to the psionic injuries he is currently suffering. Either way, we will be parents by the end of the week because there is no way the father’s spirit guide survives what it’s been through from what Prime Hollander wrote,” he eventually said.

Jim grimaced. They had fostered before, but this was about teenagers. These children were different. One was a literal newborn, and the other was years away from being a teenager and sick as a dog from what he gathered from Blair’s words. Either way, their lives would be turned upside down, and Jim wasn’t sure he could continue to work as a cop with a newborn in the house. Just the thought of leaving his mate alone with two children made his Sentinel side go homicidal in ways he wasn’t ready for at all. He would learn to work with it, though, as the children deserved to grow up in a safe environment, and if they were the only people who could provide it, they would. It was as simple as that. Even if it meant a lot of changes and steep learning curves in their near future.

“Guess I need to make a couple of calls to our pride, so they can set up at least a nursery and a bed for the boys,” he said calmly, causing Blair to laugh.

“You should probably call your captain and ask him to process your early retirement from the force,” Blair told him, gently nudging his bonded’s side before leaning up to steal a kiss from Jim’s pouting lips.

“Asshole,” Jim mumbled against his lips.

“You knew that before we got bonded,” Blair replied and relaxed against him, closing his eyes to monitor the situation in Pittsburgh from afar.

——-

When they arrived in Pittsburgh late at night, the Sentinel and Guide Center wasn’t as calm as they expected it to be. The moment they stepped inside, they could feel how busy the medical teams were in their attempts to save the Spirit Guides from succumbing to their injuries, but Blair knew they would have little success. The only thing they could realistically do was counsel Maddie and Phillip Buckley to allow their Spirit Guides to retreat to the Psionic Plane where they could go to rest—either permanently or until they were healed enough to be assigned to guide someone else because there was no way they could return to the Buckleys’ side.

It seemed the Buckleys were recalcitrant of the counseling, though, and when Jim looked at Blair, he knew they would need to make it an Alpha Order without even asking his Guide. This whole situation really was an absolute mess, and he wanted to have no part of it despite this situation being part of his circus and his monkeys. Being the head honcho of thousands of people wasn’t all it was cracked up to be in Jim’s opinion.

“Go, seek out our boys,” Jim said. “I will take care of the Spirit Guides and help them go to rest whatever way the wish.”

“You hate using that part of your abilities,” Blair protested.

“That’s neither here nor there, Blair. The boys need you. I can feel how restless their Spirit Guides are and you have always been better with children. I will learn. But first, I’ll have to take care of the mess that are their relatives,” Jim replied.

“Alright,” Blair agreed without too much protest, because they both knew that Jim was right and they both were willing to do what needed to be done in the defense of the Psionic Plane, even if it meant to get very stern with people who were very hurt.

Blair reached out and hugged Jim tightly for a moment before brushing a fortifying kiss against his lips and walking away from his Sentinel.

Jim watched Blair walk away from him, took a couple of calming breaths before walking down a different hallway after signing himself and Blair into the Center properly.

He entered the isolation suite after checking in with the head of the medical team to get current information about the situation he was about to walk into. What he found was a heartbreaking sight.

A young girl with long brown hair and hazel eyes was holding onto a tabby kitten, her Spirit Guide, that looked to be close to death. She was begging it to stay with her, and Jim could already feel her connection with the Psionic Plane flickering in and out.

The man, her father, seemed to be absolutely out of it, focusing on his own Spirit Guide, a swan.

Jim looked at the nurse standing beside the girl’s bed, who shook her head, letting him know that she had tried to counsel Maddie Buckley into letting go, but the girl didn’t stop begging her Spirit Guide, who was far too enmeshed with the girl to understand that they were both suffering needlessly as some things were inevitable.

He knelt beside the bed and carefully reached out to the young girl. Jim quietly introduced himself, giving her a moment to become acclimated to his presence before he told her why he was with her instead of her brothers as she had been told.

“Your Spirit Guide is very hurt, Maddie,” he explained.

“I know,” Maddie sobbed. “But she will be okay eventually, won’t she?”

Jim gently shook his head.

“There is nothing we can do to help her survive here on the physical plane,” he told her gently. “You need to let her go. She is staying for you and it is hurting you both more than you will ever be able to realise.”

“I can’t let her go … if I let her go, she will die,” Maddie said, sounding absolutely horrified.

“Maybe, maybe not. She won’t ever be able to guide you again,” Jim said. “What your mother did destroyed your connection with her, but if you let her go now, there is a chance that, in time, she might recover and eventually rise again to guide a different Sentinel or Guide.”

Maddie looked at him with tear-filled eyes.

“Do I really have to let her go?” she asked. The girl knew what losing her Spirit Guide meant. At least in terms of her own connection to the Psionic Plane, not what it meant for her future. Not yet, at least.

Jim inclined his head.

“You do,” he confirmed. “If it makes it easier for you, I can make it an Alpha Order, but it will hurt just the same.”

He wasn’t one to sugarcoat things, not even for children.

Maddie closed her eyes and released a slow breath before focusing back on her Spirit Guide. She buried her face in the kitten’s metaphysical fur to hide her tears as she softly said her goodbyes, feeling the kitten lick her tears away one last time before it faded from sight as their connection fully broke.

Jim caught Maddie and held her as she cried herself to sleep. Only when she was fully dead to the world did he release his hold on her and motioned for the nurse to take over.

He had another Buckley to take care of. As he approached Phillip Buckley’s bed, the man looked up from his Spirit Guide in his arms.

“He’s gone,” Phillip said, his voice rough. “I tried to get him to return to the Psionic Plane to heal but the stubborn old cuss clung onto our broken bond until it drained him dry.”

Jim looked at the lost Spirit Guide and realised that it wasn’t looking as vibrant as it had when he had entered the room minutes before.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mister Buckley,” Jim told him, not reaching out to the man as he could see that he was barely holding on as it was.

“Thank you,” Phillip Buckley said. He forced himself to focus. “Please save my boys, Alpha Prime. They don’t deserve what happened to Maddie and me.”

“There is no need to beg,” Jim told him. “Your boys are already safe in my bonded’s care. I will make sure you and your daughter are as settled as possible before I will join them.”

“Make sure they don’t remember Madeline, Margaret and me. They do not deserve those memories. They will only hurt them,” Phillip couldn’t stop himself from begging.

“You do not want to keep contact with them?” Jim asked, sounding surprised.

Phillip shook his head.

“No,” he said firmly. “I already signed paperwork in that regard while I was still considered able to make choices for my children. Madeline has already been suffering from depression and psychotic episodes due to her suppressed connection to the plane, and I know I am barely clinging to reality as is. The moment I go to sleep, I will probably fall into a catatonic state, and I have already declined end-of-life care. I will die since my time has come for me to pay the piper. I wasn’t strong enough to stop Margaret from hurting all of us, and I will pay the price. My daughter won’t ever live outside of a facility, and I made sure no-one ever gets the bright idea to release her. She is just as far gone as her mother and despite what she was just saying, she has been spoon-fed Margaret’s bullshit from the cradle … if she is allowed to leave the watchful eyes of the community, she will likely try to hurt other Sentinels and Guides the way she got hurt.”

Jim listened carefully and nodded in understanding.

“I will ensure that your wishes are adhered to,” he said, finally reaching out to take the man’s hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

The dead Spirit Guide faded from view, and Phillip Buckley collapsed. Nurses rushed to his bedside as Jim stepped back. He looked at the unconscious father-daughter pair for another minute before leaving the room to do as he had promised and reiterating Buckley’s instructions to never allow his daughter to go free and to allow him to fade on his own time.

Once he was sure the doctor had taken all the necessary notes and Jim had countersigned them, he walked to the garden in the back of the Sentinel and Guide Center to meditate a couple of minutes so he could allow the overwhelming feeling of loss he had absorbed to fade into the care of the Psionic Plane.

His own Spirit Guide, a deep-black jaguar, made an appearance and purred softly in an attempt to help Jim’s frazzled nerves. It took a couple of minutes for Jim to find his equilibrium again. He went through exercises Blair had shown him years ago, which he continuously called ridiculous despite regularly using them to help him focus on the here and now.

The warm weight of his Spirit Guide helped too, and eventually, he felt back on an even keel and decided that it was time to head back inside to meet his sons. Blair would likely be surprised to learn that Phillip Buckley had already signed the legal paperwork necessary to allow them not only to become the boys’ legal guardians but to allow them to adopt the boys.

It was the one good deed he had done before sealing his own death warrant, and Jim could respect that.

With a soft sigh, he pushed himself back to his feet and turned to walk inside.