London is Strange - KtwoNtwo (2024)

Chapter 1: Homecoming

Chapter Text

John Watson spotted her as soon as he cleared customs at Heathrow. She was leaning against a post in full view of the exit doorway looking at her mobile. John sighed. He could avoid her but maybe things were better this way. He’d find out what exactly Mycroft Holmes wanted before he tackled his primary reason for returning to London. It would be worth the time to know if the British Government was going to be a help, a hindrance, or a neutral party. John switched his duffle to his good shoulder then angled his line of travel toward Mycroft’s alias bearing assistant.

As he got closer he realized that the definitely-not-named-Anthea had sometime in the last two and a half years traded in her omnipresent blackberry for the newest model Stark-phone. She was also thinner, wearing a more sensible shoes, and was clearly running on a bit less sleep than was optimum.

She looked up as he approached and smiled, “Dr. Watson.”

He co*cked his head slightly in acknowledgement and replied, “So what should I call you this time?”

The smile went from being just a mask to something a bit more genuine, “It’s Abigail for the rest of the week.”

She finished her text then moved in beside him, covering the side carrying the duffle. John felt more than saw the two agents he’d pegged as soon as he’d exited the jetway peel off and head wherever agents went after they’d been dismissed from their particular task. Abigail-not-Anthea made an after you motion and they proceeded out of the concourse heading for a black limousine with heavily tinted windows waiting at the curb.

Abigail indicated that he should place his duffle in the boot then proceeded to open the rear door of the vehicle. John was a little surprised that she didn’t follow him into the car but instead simply closed the door behind him leaving him in the presence of Mycroft Holmes.

Mycroft on the surface looked much as he’d last seen him. John however had more tools at his disposal since that time and he carefully used the few which would be less likely to be noticed. Much like his assistant Mycroft was running on a less than optimal amount of sleep along with a high degree of stress. He was also rather worried about something, John could not tell just what without being obvious, so he decided to wait and see if he could discern anything from the conversation that was clearly going to commence shortly. The car pulled out into traffic.

“Let me be the first to welcome you back Dr. Watson.”

Mycroft’s voice and delivery was just as smooth as he’d remembered.

“It’s good to be back.”

“You’ve been quite the traveler since we last saw each other. New York, the Philippines, Nepal?”

Well that made things clearer. Mycroft Holmes, or more likely his minions, had managed to mostly lose track of him since New York. Well, considering what he’d been doing in the interim, John would have been more surprised if Mycroft’s people had been able to track him. All of which left the unanswered question.

“Why would you be interested in my travels? I’m sure there are much more important people which you need to track.”

There was a flash of something pained from Mycroft, “I made a promise,” was all he said.

John inwardly winced. He knew that there was only one person who could extract such a promise from Mycroft Holmes and have him keep it. It also meant that John was going to be on Mycroft’s radar permanently whether he wanted to be or not. John thought quickly. Maybe this could be a blessing in disguise. Use what and who you know to keep others from getting too interested in things they shouldn’t know anything about.

“I hope you didn’t fire anyone for losing track,” John started. “I’d hate to have inadvertently been the cause of someone’s job loss.”

“Nothing so dire; merely a reassignment or two, although I am interested in your travels over the last few years after that fuss in New York.”

“That mess in New York was actually where it all started,” John started to explain. “You were aware I was looking into Medecins Sans Frontiers?”

“Yes. I was under the impression you were looking for a MSF posting in Pakistan or Afghanistan.”

“At the time I was. Most of that region is coordinated out of an office in New York so after the funeral…”

John had to catch himself mentally to stop the emotions that went with that simple statement.

“I decided to take a bit of a holiday and check things out as a side project. Unfortunately for me I’d just managed to get over the jet lag when those aliens invaded Manhattan.”

“Not the most auspicious beginning for your time in the States,” Mycroft commented dryly.

“I ended up on the periphery of the fighting and spent most of my time helping get civilians into the shelter of the subway.”

It had been a bit more than that John remembered.

He’d heard the sounds before he’d seen anything. It had been a horrendous crash from somewhere ahead of him. Then he’d rounded the corner and saw the hole in the sky. Shortly thereafter he’d spotted one of the aliens on something that looked like a futuristic sled that flew taking pot shots at cars and people indiscriminately with blue energy beams from some sort of hand weapon. Surprisingly not everyone was running and screaming. As he watched from several blocks away some office workers with impeccable timing shoved a desk out a broken window dropping it directly on the flying sled, downing it. He didn’t see if the alien survived the fall.

John had started working his way toward the area where the sled had fallen. He’d figured that if he was lucky the hand weapon might just have survived. From what he’d seen of the armor on the aliens John had figured nothing short of armor piercing rounds or an extremely lucky shot would hurt them. Given how the blue beams had torn through cars he figured that his best bet would be to see if he could liberate one of the invader’s weapons. It had worked for the Taliban in Afghanistan and he didn’t see why it wouldn’t work here.

As he moved closer to the fighting John noticed that someone had managed to organize the police and other first responders. They were pulling fire alarms in buildings and getting everyone they could to head for shelter in the subway. He also noticed small groups of people carefully heading toward the fighting. As he came up on a group of three, John pegged them as veterans of some sort, one of them noticed him and asked, “Hey man, are you armed?” When John had said he wasn’t but that he planned to see if he couldn’t liberate one of those beam weapons they had laughed, called him a crazy Brit, and handed him a pistol along with a clip of ammunition. They had wished him good luck and headed down a side street together at a lope moving in sync like a seasoned squad.

But that wasn’t the strangest encounter of the day. John had managed to work his way to where he’d seen the sled fall. It wasn’t as straight forward as he’d intended since a couple buildings had partially collapsed meaning he’d had to take a detour or two. He’d found the sled and the alien but they were both half under not only the office desk but also what looked like a chunk of decorative concrete that had fallen off a building. Unfortunately, the weapon was stuck somewhere under the alien’s body and John knew that there was no way he’d be able to shift the concrete slab by hand to get to it.

Looking around he’d spotted a backhoe sitting at what looked like a street repair site. He’d been lucky, the keys were still in it and it started right up. He’d just managed to figure out what all the controls did when a ginger in a black cat-suit dashed around a corner a block or so away with two of the aliens hot on her heels. Judging how fast she was moving John figured she’d be able to lose them but for the fact that one of the sled flying things 2 blocks further down noticed the chase and decided to join it.

John hadn’t had to think very hard. He leaned out of the backhoe cab and whistled. The ginger took in the situation at a glance and headed in his direction. It was relatively quick. The flyer overshot the ginger attempting to head her off and John rotated the backhoe with the bucket arm up directly impacting the alien. The alien went flying into the side of a building, the sled kept on going up the street and John found that his rotation had stopped in the perfect position to drop the bucket on one of the aliens who was chasing the ginger on foot.

The crunch had been quite satisfying. He jumped out of the cab to see if the ginger was ok just in time to see her kick out the other alien’s knee joint and shoot him in the eye, killing him instantly. “Good shot!” was all John could think to say.

She smiled, barely breathing hard, and replied “Thank you” with a slight hint of a Russian accent.

She then looked at her former opponent and liberated a nasty looking weapon about the size of a short barreled shotgun. John looked at the size of the alien and figured that what she’d just grabbed was the equivalent of a handgun for them.

She handed him the weapon, “Blue stud fires, Line of sight, no recoil. Aim for joints and eyes. These are better than guns but the armor takes a bit to burn through.”

He had nodded his understanding sensing that she had more information to impart.

“We are trying to keep them contained,” she had continued. “Can you hold this street?”

“I can try.” John had replied.

“I’ll see if I can send you some assistance,” she said as she started to turn away then she turned back as if a thought had occurred, “Don’t shoot the red and gold flying armor, the large blond with the cape and the hammer, or the big green monster…they are on our side.”

“After the hole in the sky closed up,” John continued, “I found my way to the nearest hospital and offered my services.”

Mycroft nodded, “I did get a report about that. Something about setting up and running a triage station in the Metro-General Hospital car park?”

“Spent over a week doing that before it wasn’t needed anymore,” John replied. “I ended up working with a bunch of really good people one of whom told me about a charity that needed help setting up a clinic in Nepal. I met with one of the principles of the charity stateside and in relatively short order I was in Kathmandu”

It sounded a little thin but there was no way John was going to relate what had really happened.

Dr. Stephen Strange was a damn good general physician despite the neuro specialty and damaged hands. John had found him relatively easy to work with. John had been warned by other hospital staff when the man had shown up to volunteer but the personal issues alluded to hadn’t appeared. John didn’t know whether it was his experience in dealing with the genius that had been Sherlock or if Strange had changed after the accident that had well-neigh ruined his hands or some combination of both he’d not had any complaints. The only problem John had with the man was the fact that he was eerily similar in stature and features to Sherlock. Luckily his accent, mannerisms, and specialty were different enough so John became inured rather quickly to the physical resemblance. In fact they had hit things off so well that Strange had hauled him off to what could have only been called a mansion when he found out that John had been bunking down in the Doctor’s lounge when off shift. After things had calmed down to the point the triage unit was no longer necessary John remembered thinking that things were finally going to get back to normal in his life. Of course, that’s when his entire world had been turned on its head.

They’d been sitting in Strange’s study with some good Scotch and talking about John’s future plans. Stephen had been quizzing him about his experience with alternative medicine. Apparently something he said sparked a cord because Stephen had got up, rummaged around in a desk, and came up with a medical file.

“Take a look at that and tell me what you think,” he’d said.

John had read the file. It was a file of a patient who’d been in a rather serious car accident. While the major injuries were bad enough the damage to the forearms and hands had been extensive. In fact, John wasn’t sure exactly how they had managed to save them. Just looking at the chart John knew that the patient would be living with serious pain and limited movement in his hands for the rest of his life. All in all it made the nerve damage and intermittent tremor in his left hand seem like a minor inconvenience.

“Patient of yours?” John had asked not looking up. “Amazing that the hands are even able to move but doesn’t he have serious problems with pain and range of movement?”

Strange had chuckled and John looked up from the file to see Stephen had both hands up and was wiggling his fingers at him.

John registered the location of scars and his jaw dropped, “What? Really? How??”

He reached out without thinking and grabbed one of Stephen’s hands to examine it. The scars were prominent, clearly the remnants of multiple surgeries but there was no stiffness or any other indication of limitation.

After a minute or so of John’s examination Stephen brought up his other hand then grabbed both of John’s wrists with a firm grip and pulled him to his feet dumping the file on the floor.

“Come. See.” Was all he said.

John had gone and that had started the most exhaustive, exhilarating and mind bending two years of his life.

“I ended up spending over a year and a half in Nepal setting up clinics and organizing medical matters for the charity,” John explained.

And stuffing my brain with everything and anything I could learn about the Mystic Arts.

“When I’d set up everything so it would all run mostly on its own I decided it was time to come home.”

Mycroft looked him up and down probably attempting to align what he was deducing with what John had said.

“Might I inquire as to your plans?”

John in a fit of impishness decided to answer the question with a simple yes and smiled.

Somehow this seemed to discomfort Mycroft because he continued, “If you find yourself at loose ends I still retain the lease to Baker Street and I do know of some openings which might be in line with your skills.”

Well, John thought to himself, Baker Street along with a job where Mycroft could keep a close eye on him and meddle if need be. He had expected some sort of offer but not a quite so blatant one. The stress that Mycroft was under clearly was having an effect. John decided that if he got a chance he’d at least give a shot at ameliorating the situation. Having the British Government in less than top form especially given the mystic portents and signs that Stephen had been picking up was to say the least a bit not good.

“I’m actually set for the moment,” John replied. “The charity has owned a London property for years. Unfortunately the last keeper of the place passed on and they’ve not managed to find a suitable replacement. Given the real estate prices the Board has decided to sell it but they need someone to make a full inventory of the place first just in case there’s something highly valuable hidden in the attic.”

Mycroft’s eyebrows went up, “I wasn’t aware you had that type of expertise.”

John grinned, “Don’t really need it. It comes with a stipend, a budget to hire experts, and of course there’s always the all-knowing google! I can also tap the Board members themselves if I run across something completely out of the ordinary.”

“I see,” Mycroft said. “So where should I drop you off?”

John relayed the address and the rest of the trip passed in silence.

When they arrived John reached out and shook Mycroft’s hand, skin to skin contact worked best for this sort of thing. He implanted a minor compulsion regarding proper nutrition and the importance of rest.

“Thank you for the lift and the welcome.”

“It’s good to have you back Dr. Watson.”

John stood on the pavement and watched the vehicle pull into traffic. He mentally sighed. Lying by omission to Mycroft Holmes was probably the least dangerous thing he had to do today.

Chapter 2: The Sanctum

Chapter Text

It took several hours but John managed to make a rough survey of the London Sanctum house from top to bottom. By the time he was done he repaired to the study seriously puzzled. The house, while warded to the hilt, just didn’t seem at all like a Sanctum. In fact, it appeared to be just a normal house albeit with furnishings that would have fit nicely into the collection of the V&A. There were quite a few magical bits and bobs scattered about but nothing of the caliber of item that John would have expected to find in a Sanctum. This didn’t even touch the fact that there was no damage at all that he could see. There was no indication at all of the destruction Strange and Wong had watched through the portal when Kaecilius had breached the Sanctum and killed its protector.

“Would you be willing to go to London and take control of the Sanctum there?” Stephen had asked him some weeks ago.

“I thought the London Sanctum was destroyed by the Kaecilius and his Zealots.”

“So did I,” he replied. “The explosion should have taken everything out in a half block radius but the house is still standing, apparently intact.”

“But I’m nowhere near trained enough for this,” John had objected.

“There’s nothing more that you need to learn which would require the intensive environment of Kamar-Taj,” Strange had replied. “I think anything else you’d be liable to need you’ll be able to get with self-study or just wing it now that you’ve got the basics down.”

"Fun and joy; just what I needed, another residency!”

Stephen had smiled at that, “Exactly! At least with this one you’ll have a shot at getting a decent amount of sleep.”

“Why does that not reassure me?”

“I know, I know. To be honest we are a little short of trained sorcerers right now.” Strange said ruefully. “I’ve had to over-staff Singapore. Since that was Dormammu’s access point it’s now a thin spot. Seems like everything, and their sisters, and their cousins, and their aunts who want to gain a foothold here are trying to use Singapore to move in.”

"Wonderful,” John replied. “Why don’t we have the same problem in London?”

“London was an attack both to and from this plane. I’m not sensing any weakness there. However, I’m sensing some intermittent fluctuations in general from the UK so I’d feel better if we had an idea of London’s status just in case.”

"Which brings us back to the initial question,” John stated, “Why me?”

“Wong has been doing research and the one thing that he’s found consistently in the records is that the London Sanctum is considered a bit finicky. It seems to function just like the other Sanctums when a master in residence but there are indications, especially in the older records, that there’s something different about it.” John must have made a face because Stephen continued, "It’s not like you are going to be out of touch. There are such things as cell phones and in a pinch you’re only a sling ring portal away from here.”

"Yeah,” John muttered, “If I could only get one to open up consistently in the place I aim for not somewhere else, like halfway up Everest.”

"Strange had ignored that last comment and merely replied, “Besides, I have a feeling about this.”

John stood in the study and tried to think it through. He knew that the house had been known as the Sanctum for quite a while, at least from the Victorian era. He also knew it looked like the Sanctum, at least in the mystical warding sense, from the outside. However, given that Kaecilius didn’t attack the house directly and there was no external damage to speak of; logically the main part of the Sanctum must be elsewhere. That meant that what he was looking for was a magical access point connecting the house to the actual Sanctum.

The only magical access points John was familiar with were the mystical gates used to travel to Kamar-Taj and the windows in the New York Sanctum. He was aware that neither of those constructs radiated much magic unless they were in active use. Suddenly, all the small magic items strewn all over the house made a lot more sense. After all, the best place to hide a red fish was in a pond full of other red fish. An inactive magic doorway or window would radiate less than the umbrella he’d found in the stand in the hall which was charmed to lessen the intensity of rain in its general vicinity. John sighed and sat down in an overstuffed wing back chair. This was clearly going to take a bit of mental work to isolate the doorway’s magical signature from those of all the other items. He opened his senses to the mystical and started in.

John woke up. Judging from the light coming in the windows it was late in the afternoon. Jet lag had clearly caught up to him. For the umpteenth time in the last 48 hours John cursed the fact that he’d had to use mundane travel to get home. He then reminded himself, again, that given his interception at the airport, doing things the quick way would have raised many more questions than he was prepared to answer, especially from the British Government.

John decided that he needed to get back to his task and suddenly realized he knew where the doorway was located. He had to smile about it. Even though the access point most likely had been there since the house was built he still found it funny that the doorway to the magical world was the cupboard under the stairs. He wondered if this was a case of literature imitating life and then discarded it. If that had been the case the access point would have just as easily been located in the attic, the basem*nt, or maybe even a wardrobe.

It was relatively easy to find the door which in and of itself did not look terribly remarkable. John opened it carefully only to see what he would normally expect to see, a set of shelves containing storage boxes. He shut the door and looked at it again. Placing his hand on the door jamb he sent a small pulse of magic into the wood. Previously invisible runic writing started to glow all around the door frame. Unfortunately, it was in a language that John couldn’t read. He looked at it and attempted to memorize at least a few of the runes so that he could see if someone at Kamar-Taj or elsewhere knew what they were. As he watched though, the runes seemed to waver and morph into something that looked similar to Latin. Now that John could work with. Keeping his hand on the jamb he read the Latin silently. Nothing happened. John then murmured the words out loud, just in case it happened to be an incantation. Sure enough, the door felt different. Opening the door again he found that his hunch had proved correct because instead of the storage cupboard there was now a stairway leading down.

The stairway was dark but someone had left an old fashioned metal torch hanging by a leather strap from a hook on the wall. John grabbed it and much to his surprise it not only worked but produced a decently bright beam of light. He chose to interpret this as a good omen and proceeded to carefully descend until he reached another door.

John tried the same trick with the lower door jamb only to find that nothing happened. The jamb didn’t glow and the door wouldn’t open regardless of what he tried. Frustrated he looked around and noticed that the door at the top of the stair was still ajar. I wonder if this is the magical equivalent of an air lock, he thought to himself. Only one way to find out, he concluded as he trooped back up the stairs to close the door. This time around the lower door obliged with glowing runes, a different incantation and entrance into what, John presumed, was the actual London Sanctum.

From the state of the room, John could see that this was where the explosion Stephen and Wong had witnessed had happened. The damage was extensive. There had been a main explosion emanating from the area opposite the door and partially taking out walls into the adjoining rooms on either side. Judging from both the debris and the magical residue this had once been and area for item storage. There were blackened spots in a variety of places on the ceiling and the remaining walls. Kaecilius had grabbed what he’d wanted from the rooms then had somehow ignited any unwanted items which had survived the initial. It wasa testament to the original builders of the Sanctum that the damage had been limited to three rooms and whole area hadn’t collapsed in on itself.

John moved into the destroyed area playing the torch over the floor. A thunk behind him made him turn. The door he had entered by had closed and disappeared. He went back to examine the wall. Visually the door wasn’t there. Tactilely it was right where he had expected it to be. He experimented. The second incantation made the door reappear at least until he took his hand off it which made it promptly disappear again.

Interesting John thought. The entrance door had been at the point of a triangular room. The explosion had originated at another point. He could see that the adjoining rooms had also been triangular. John moved through to the adjoining room to the right. Examining the walls as he went he discovered the remnants of some rather substantial magical protections. John’s admiration for the original builders went up another notch. Whomever had designed this area had anticipated a potential explosion, at least from the inside, and planned accordingly. Logically this meant that there may be more to the Sanctum than just this storage area.

John carefully began picking his way through the rubble trailing his hand along the wall. It didn’t take long for him to find another door which he could feel but not see. He tried the second incantation again. Nothing happened. He tried the incantation for the door at the top of the stairs; still nothing. Remembering the alleged finicky nature of the Sanctum John decided to try something.

“Please let me in?”

The door appeared. John figured that politeness would be in order.

“Thank you,” he said and opened the door.

The room beyond was also triangular in shape. It was furnished as a comfortable reading room in a mish mash of Victorian to 1950’s style. As he moved into the room he realized that there was very dim indirect lighting not caused by his torch.

“Lux?”

The lighting brightened to the point that the contents of the room were clearly visible. John walked up to a chair with what looked like a lamp beside it. The lamp obligingly turned on. He looked carefully at the lamp; there was no cord. Even Kamar-Taj had electricity and wi-fi. Only in the depths of the Library was magical lighting still used, primarily to protect the ancient tomes stored therein. Despite the furniture John reasoned that this place was old enough that the builders did not want the books and other manuscripts damaged by candles or oil lamps which, at the time of its construction, left magic as the only option.

Since another door was clearly visible John decided to continue exploring. Three triangular rooms later John exited what he had begun to think of as the library into what looked like a workshop. There were two workshop rooms. The door from the second workshop exited back into the area that had been destroyed. By this point John was beginning to get a mental picture of the shape of the complex. If he was correct then all these triangular rooms were arranged around a center which was most likely shaped like a pentagon.

You can’t beat the classics when you are trying to protect something, John thought to himself. He’d bet his sling ring that the heart of the sanctum was in that center area. All of which meant that the door he needed would most likely be located directly opposite the door to the stairs. The biggest problem was going to be finding it.

It turned out not to be a problem at all. By the time John had worked his way back into the library room that was directly opposite where he had entered there was a door visible that John knew he hadn’t seen the first time.

“Thank you,” he said aloud.

John wondered briefly about the nature of the Sanctum. He knew that many of the very powerful ancient magic items tended to be at least somewhat sentient and, in effect, picked their wielder. Stephen’s cloak of levitation was an extreme example. The thing had attached itself so closely to Strange that he had a hard time getting it to stay home on the rare occasion he needed go somewhere without it. Stephen even joked that he thought the thing might be in love with him. At this point John was beginning to suspect from the behavior of the doors, the historically documented “finicky nature” of the Sanctum might just be due to the fact that it, in and of itself, was a powerful at least partly sentient magic item.

Could be dangerous, John thought as he opened the door to the center of the complex.

The room did not, as he had expected, have 5 walls. Instead it was circular with a dome arching several stories over the center of the floor. The floor itself was also interesting. It seemed to be a circular ring of flagstones that gave way to a grassy circle. Of course the thing that drew the most attention in the room was the rough-hewn standing stone that stood in the middle of the grass directly under the center of the dome. There was some sort of light source in the dome that shed a circle of light down directly on the grass and the stone while leaving the flagstone circle in partial shadow. The temperature was balmy like a pleasant summer day in contrast to the 10 degrees normally found in an underground structure.

Come to think of it, John mused, this entire area is warmer than I expected given the fact that it appears to be completely subterranean. I wonder if this is the reason.

Well, Stephen had told him to wing it so John didn’t hesitate for long. He took off his shoes and socks then walked carefully across the grass and put his hand on the stone.

At first nothing happened then John found himself immersed in his own memories. Training in Kamar-Taj, the battle of New York, the fall, meeting Sherlock, getting shot, training, medical school, university, protecting his sister from his alcoholic father; in short, everything that had made him into the person he was now was laid bare in quick succession. It left John gasping but he did not remove his hand from the stone.

The images started again. This time it seemed to be a mix of people and historical events. Some he recognized like Lestrade and the Olympic opening ceremony others he didn’t. There was a night of fire and terror that John thought might be the Blitz. There were reunions of soldiers returning from the trenches of WWI. A fancy wedding and some sort of lower class family celebration were shown in turn as equally important. Each image appeared to be older than the previous and there seemed to be just as many people shown as events. A couple of gentleman in Victorian era attire walking arm in arm caught his attention before they were gone. A bit further on he saw someone in Elizabethan style dress working by lamp light in a garret room on some sort of manuscript. The images were fast and relentless. John felt like he was being force fed history via an old fashioned video tape on rewind.

Just about the point where John thought he couldn’t take any more the images ceased. John opened his eyes. He was still standing on grass with his hand on the stone. That, however, was where the similarity ended. The stone and its grassy circle seemed to be in a ring of trees starting just beyond the flagstones. The air smelled clean and fresh with a hint of wood smoke. John had just enough time to look around when he heard someone talking.

“Yes, Yes, I’m coming,” the male voice said. “I understand you need to show me something. I’ll get there momentarily.”

John looked in the direction of the voice and spotted what looked like a man through the ring of trees. He had on what John could only surmise was ancient clothing. At least it looked sort of like the kind of things people wore in that TV series about the detective monk. John tried to remember when that had been set and vaguely remembered it had been allegedly sometime in the 1100’s. Of course that presumed that the producers had been somewhat accurate in their clothing depictions.

John knew exactly when the man spotted him. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at John for a moment before moving onto the flagstones and into the grassy area. He came to a stop about six paces in front of John.

“Hello,” he said.

There was a slight echo John noted. It sounded a bit like when you were midway between two speakers and they were slightly out of sync with each other.

“Hello,” John replied and thought about moving away from the stone.

“I don’t think you want to let go of the stone,” the man said before John could move. “I have no idea what would happen not to mention that she’d be a bit perturbed at both of us since she has gone to such trouble to allow us to speak to each other.”

“Ok,” John replied befuddled. “So if I might ask, who are you? Who is she? And what the heck does she want us to talk about?”

The man laughed and he suddenly looked much younger. John’s estimate of the man’s age dropped from the mid-30’s to mid-20’s.

“Sorry,” the man said, “I seem to be doing things backwards as usual. To answer your questions; I am Emrys, she is Londinium and I have no idea at all as to what she wishes us to talk about.”

“Wonderful,” John muttered under his breath. “I’m John, nice to meet you,” he continued in a conversational tone. “I have no real idea what the heck is going on except I was having a series of visions going backwards in time until I stopped here.”

It seemed to be Emrys’ turn to mutter something under his breath before continuing. “From whence did you start?” he asked.

“Probably a thousand years or so from now plus or minus.”

“Hmm,” Emrys seemed to take that statement in stride, “Have the Gods returned?

If this was really the past and not just some elaborate hallucination, John wondered if Emrys had the gift of prophecy. That would explain his lack of surprise from John’s clothing and statement. The other alternative was some sort of alternative dimension or parallel universe. John had seen some other dimensions and knew about the multiverse but they all had a vaguely unreal feeling; this didn’t. It definitely wasn’t that bizarre construct that was the mirror dimension, where anything could happen and usually did. He supposed it could be an entirely parallel universe; such things did exist although he’d never heard of anyone who had traveled to one. Given the rewind effect John decided to continue with his time travel hypothesis and answer accordingly.

“A couple of the Asgardians who were once worshiped as such have shown up. There are also a bunch of people with unique abilities who might have been considered god-like in times past.”

Emrys pursed his lips, “Are there sorcerers still who protect this plane?”

“Yes.”

Emrys’ gaze grew distracted. It was similar to the look Sherlock had on his face when he was making a foray into his mind palace.

“I see,” he said clearly not to John. “This is the beginning then. Yes you were correct.” His eyes cleared and Emrys addressed John again with a smile, “Good luck living with Londinium, I am relatively sure that we will eventually see each other again and you’ll need to tell me how it goes.”

With that cryptic message the clearing waivered and John could see the walls of the room in the center of the sanctum coming into focus just at the tree line. Right before Emrys faded from view John thought he saw a very familiar looking chain around the man’s neck.

Well that explains a lot, John thought just before he slumped down the stone and everything grayed out for a moment.

Chapter 3: The Master of London

Chapter Text

John quickly discovered over the next few weeks that his little time trip had somehow forged a connection with the Sanctum. He seemed to always know just where he was in relation to not only the Sanctum house doorway but also to the physical location of the Sanctum itself most notably the stone at its center.

The stone itself was an anomaly. No other Sanctum had one yet the London Sanctum had clearly been built around it. John was almost certain that the intelligence he was seeing in the Sanctum’s reactions to his exploration of the contents was also somehow tied to the stone. If magical weapons and artifacts like Stephen’s cloak of levitation could, over time, develop a sort of sentience John didn’t see why a stone that had been sitting at the center of a magical building for generations couldn’t too. Even that, however, didn’t fully explain what John was sensing. John had spent hours on the phone with Wong to see if there was anything in either the Kamar-Taj or the New York Sanctum libraries which might be helpful in explaining just what this stone was and what it could do.

Finally, an exasperated Wong had told him, “You are clearly now the master of the Sanctum. It has a library. If you think it’s intelligent just ask it to show you what books are lying around that would be helpful!”

Having nothing to lose John had asked. He was lead to a small leather bound notebook. It was one volume of the private journal of an unnamed “Majical Master of London.” Judging from the language and the style of script John figured that it had been written somewhere in the 1600s. The book itself was marginally helpful. From it, John had learned the Sanctum housed the physical anchor of an entity which was referred to as Londinium and nominally gender identified, to the extent something that was without a biological form had a gender, as female. This wasn’t much of a surprise. John had suspected it might be something like this from the conversation he’d had with Emrys but it was nice to have it confirmed. To make things even more surreal, the author of the book asserted that Londinium was nothing more or less than the magical embodiment of London and its environs and that it had been so since at least the time the Roman Empire had invaded. He also learned that the connection he had with the Sanctum seemed to be only the first step in a process. The journal also vaguely referenced a ritual that allegedly “attuned” the sorcerer charge with guarding the sanctum to the entity. That set off another round of research and eventually a late night call to Stephen.

So do you think I should go ahead and do the attunement ritual? John had asked.

“From what you’ve found and what we’ve uncovered it doesn’t look like you need it to be the Master of the Sanctum,” Strange had replied.

“Why do I hear an incipient ‘But’?”

“Probably because I was thinking it rather loudly.”

“Why?”

“Something is coming,” Stephen said. “The nine realms are showing some instability and it’s getting worse by the day. Earth is the primary connection between them and the rest of the universe so anything coming out of the realms will have to go through here. Every indication I’m getting is pointing to somewhere in Northern Europe being the epicenter of whatever it is.”

John had to ask, “You can’t get anything more specific by looking ahead?”

“Too many variables at this point. If you don’t have a specific event as a starting point using the time stone to examine the branching futures all too quickly results in an exponential number of possibilities.”

“Becoming effectively useless.” John stated flatly then added, “Inevitably, by the time you get something concrete you can work with we’ll be up to our ears in whatever the incoming mess happens to be.”

“No doubt.”

“You think we’ll need everything we have then?”

“Yes.”

“The only thing Wong has found about this ritual indicates that it hasn’t been done since sometime before World War II. I’ve found some hints in a few of the books that indicate it’s dangerous to your sanity.”

Strange snorted a half laugh, “Then given the fact that your sanity has been questionable for years you should have no problem at all!”

"Oh aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” John had responded before agreeing to let Stephen know before he attempted anything and ringing off.

What little information John managed to find indicated that the person attuning him or herself needed to be ritually prepared and enter the chamber containing the stone. Only the person to be “attuned” could be left in the chamber when the door was closed. As for exactly what the ritual itself entailed, unhelpfully, there was no description at all; only a note that the “unworthy” or “unprepared” would be “driven mad”.

If that wasn’t worry some enough the alleged preparations were similarly vague. The closest thing John could think of, from a single description in one old manuscript, was patient protocols for intestinal surgery. Cross checking with Wong indicated that historically the cleansing prescribed for dealing with major magical forces was indeed surprisingly similar to preparations for abdominal surgery. John supposed that having the contents of your alimentary system strewn about the place would be just as detrimental to magic as it was to surgery and thus was best avoided.

Three weeks after he’d taken his first trip into the basem*nt John was prepared. Stephen had used a portal to get to London and sat in the basem*nt library while John had entered the center to commune and hopefully attune himself to the stone. From John’s point of view, the actual attunement had proved to be a bit anti-climactic. He had simply stated his intent to be attuned to the Sanctum, waited a bit, put his hand on the stone, then walked out with a clear sense of connection to the entity calling itself Londinium. Stephen’s congratulations had disabused him of his perceived anticlimactic nature of the event; he’d been gone for three days.

John very quickly discovered that his attunement came with the ability to mentally communicate with Londinium. Unfortunately, this communication did not take the form of words. It seemed to be pictures accompanied by emotions. Surprisingly, it only took him about a month to adjust to the mental intrusion of visuals, feelings or both coming from the stone; then it took another half a month to convince Londinium that there were proper times and places for such communication to occur. It was somewhat like dealing with an excited Sherlock on a case; all ‘slow down’, ‘please explain that’ and the occasional ‘bit not good.’ He figured out shortly thereafter that Londinium could, in effect, look over his shoulder whenever and wherever he was. By the time he had a chance to really think about things John concluded that Emrys’ parting words to him had been one-part sarcastic and one-part commiseration.

All in all John found that having a connection to Londinium was more useful than bothersome. In a lot of respects it was better than a London A-Z. He started taking long walks just to get her to show him what things had looked like earlier in her history. She knew all the best ways to get from one place to another, pointed out the CCTV cameras and as near as he could tell she could even influence them by slowing their rotation or messing with their focus or both. John assumed that some poor minion of Mycroft’s who was supposed to keep track of him was probably going completely nuts trying to figure out why the CCTV was suddenly so unreliable.

Londinium also would provide what John came to mentally think of as “commentary” on certain people. He wasn’t quite sure what her criteria was but she clearly deemed some of her denizens more important than others. There was a random guy walking down the pavement that she associated with gambling halls and vaudeville shows. Sarah, Molly and Mike Stanford all evoked medical professionals each from a different time period. Mrs. Hudson she seem to have classified as one in a long line of ladies who rented rooms or ran boarding houses. One of the more interesting responses to a person occurred when he met Lestrade for a beer for the first time after he’d been attuned. John was a little surprised when he received a series of images of what looked like a variety law enforcement personnel from numerous different time periods going all the way back to a Roman soldier along with feelings of excitement and appreciation. Clearly, Londinium had a “thing” for the police who patrolled within her borders.

Her reaction to Mycroft was also interesting. When he intercepted John at the far end of one of his rambles with an offer of a ride home she gave him an image of a spider in a web. Over the course of the ride she gave him images of a Knight in full armor protecting a hazy figure that clearly had a crown, a suited gentleman standing in what looked like the shadow of Winston Churchill, and Mycroft himself standing behind Dame Judy Dench as she had appeared in her roll of M in the more recent James Bond movies. Not that any of this was a surprise. Sherlock had told John that Mycroft was in effect the British Government. John just sighed to himself and vowed to engage in some serious binge watching to give Londinium a better selection of popular culture referents to use in communication.

Despite all that was on his plate, things seemed to be going pretty smoothly. John was making progress doing just what he’d told Mycroft that first day, clearing out the sanctum house in preparation for sale. In the actual Sanctum he was busy, with a crew imported via sling ring, shoring up walls and reestablishing the arcane protections.

Sherlock’s homeless network had also discovered he was back, presumably by spotting him on one of his rambles about the city, and seemed to consider him worthy of protection. They would provide the occasional tidbit of information and he reciprocated by providing non-judgmental medical advice about what could be treated “over the counter” so to speak and what really needed professional intervention. To make matters even more interesting he seemed to have acquired a second group of informants who overlapped partially with the homeless network, made up of lower power psychics and majik practitioners in the city. Those that weren’t homeless seemed to be all sorts; secretaries, delivery people, a tattoo artist, a private detective specializing in skip tracing, and of course fortune tellers and working psychics. The thing they all had in common was that they all recognized him for either one of two things, his position as the magical Master of the London Sanctum or his link to Londinium.

As Madam Olga Zanzeppe told him in her fake heavy Eastern European accent “They feel and know you, ‘Speaker for London.’”

John found himself busy enough that he didn’t really have too bad of a time dealing with what he mentally referred to as “Remnants of Sherlock.” Yes, there were things that reminded him of cases and incidents. While time and distance had helped a lot, he still tended to avoid Baker Street and the area around St. Bart’s if he could. Londinium tried to console him showing him images of Sherlock dashing about chasing criminals, interacting with his informants, and even just occasionally standing still looking dramatic. He finally had to tell her to stop quite firmly to avoid being overwhelmed. Still it was nice to know that Londinium considered Sherlock one of hers and that she missed him as much as he did.

Mycroft continued to be somewhat of an issue. Not only did he attempt to keep John under surveillance, either via CCTV, or more recently with actual agents, but he also seemed to think it was his duty to invite John for a meal of some sort every week or two. It became some sort of strange game between the two of them. John would, with some regularity, ditch his shadows. Mycroft or his minions would switch to the CCTV which John would avoid or Londinium would mess with the cameras on his behalf. If he happened to be meeting with either the homeless network or what John was now mentally referring to as his psychics he was extraordinarily careful. Of course, every time John avoided the surveillance the agents, the CCTV, or both would eventually pick him up again and the whole game would rinse and repeat. This would go on for a week or more until either John called Mycroft for a reference to deal with some antique or another that he’d exhumed from the Sanctum house or Mycroft would call John to set up a date to meet. John counted it a “win” when Mycroft would call rather than just randomly kidnapping him off the street.

It was the lunches which allowed John to discover exactly what had been causing Mycroft to be so chronically overworked. They’d been dining at the OXO Tower Restaurant. Mycroft had not been as overbearing as usual; he hadn’t seemed quite as sleep deprived as the last time they had met. John had actually managed to make him laugh with a story about his numerous attempts to get a particular antique tallboy out of the house. John had been afraid that he was going to need to knock a hole in the wall to get it extricated safely. Mycroft, after he had stopped chuckling about the numerous, and admittedly funny in retrospect, attempts to deal with the unwieldly piece of furniture, actually offered to send him a contact for a moving service that would avoid any such hassles in the future. John realized at that point Mycroft was not just following up on a promise to his dead brother but he was actively attempting to befriend him. That was not something John had ever anticipated from the elder Holmes.

After Mycroft had left for a meeting John received a note along with his coffee. One of his psychics, who just happened to work at OXO, had spotted him and wished to pass on some information. John had figured out quite a while ago that Mycroft, among his other duties, was nominally in charge of the agencies colloquially known as MI-5 and MI-6. What he hadn’t known, until his informant told him, was that Mycroft was up to his ears in the process of reactivating MI-13, a WWII era security branch dealing with mutants and superpowered humans.

John had to admit that given the set of code names and alleged powers his contact described, Mycroft probably had his hands full. There was “Captain Britain” who either was the original super-soldier from WWII or his genetic offspring that had somehow inherited his strength. “Union Jack,” presumably a different individual, was also some sort of super-soldier. “Spitfire” was a mutant with the capacity for extreme speed who just may or may not, according to the scuttlebutt, be a vampire. The most dangerous of the bunch in John’s estimation had the code name “Psylocke” and was, according to his informant, a full-fledged telepath with some telekinetic powers thrown in on the side. After thanking his contact John made a mental vow to attempt to stay the hell out of the way of any of these erstwhile super-heroes if at all possible.

Two weeks later John was still wondering whether or not the newly reconstituted MI-13 was going to end up blowing his cover. As Stephen had explained early in his training, the masters of the mystic arts all needed to keep a low profile. It tended to help keep the dabblers and civilians from getting in trouble and it also made it quite a bit easier to stop incursions from the metaphysical planes as the potential invaders had a distinct lack of information regarding earth’s magical protectors. John was already uncomfortable with the fact that quite a few of the more powerful psychics knew of his link to Londinium to the point they were referring to him as “Speaker for London” or more often “the Master of London.” He was even more uncomfortable when he found out that many of those same psychics were getting job offers from MI-13 as part of their support and logistics division. Despite Londinium’s reassurances, with a rumored telepath on staff and Mycroft Holmes at its head, John figured his days of anonymity were numbered. Of course all of John’s worries seemed to came to a head when he next had lunch with Mycroft.

About half way through lunch Mycroft casually asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know John, why 10 out of the last 15 people I’ve hired just happen to have some connection to you?”

“I don’t know,” John had quickly replied. “They fans of the blog or something? I mean I thought all the notoriety had died down after…”

Mycroft gave him the same don’t be dense look that Sherlock used to give him. John, however, was just happy that Mycroft was tactfully ignoring his bad choice of words.

After an awkward moment Mycroft pulled a paper list from his pocket and handed it to John saying, “Maybe you could indulge me with an explanation?”

John read the list and winced internally. Londinium was happily providing faces and locations for every name on the list. He quickly realized it wasn’t even six degrees of separation, it was more like three at most for every single name. Then it dawned on him what he needed to do. He’d give Mycroft the truth, just not the whole truth, for the people on the list. John put the paper down on the table and started in.

“You know over half of these people I know due to Sherlock. These three are former members of his homeless network,” John said as he indicated the names with his finger. “and these four are probably related to cases we had. I’d need to look at the blog or my notes to be absolutely sure.” John looked at the list again, “From the surnames these two of these could be relatives of patients of mine when I was working at the clinic and doesn’t this guy work for the MET?” He looked at the next name, “She’s the granddaughter of the owner of the botanica around the corner.” John pretended to think some more then added, “I’m not completely sure about these four though.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow, “The last young lady goes by the sobriquet Cat.”

“Cat who worked at the Pret? Oh yeah, I heard she’d landed a new job. She’s working for you now?”

Mycroft picked up the list and remarked dryly, “The two remaining ladies and one gentleman all have attempted to chat you up at one point or another.”

John was well aware of that fact and diligently ignored Londinum’s snickering in his head, “Really?”

“Yes.”

Clearly Mycroft wasn’t completely satisfied but he didn’t seem inclined to say anything more on the matter. Luckily, their main course arrived at just that moment which meant that the subject could be politely dropped without any awkwardness on either side. By the end of lunch John felt like he’d dodged the bullet at least for the time being.

Chapter 4: Of Holes and Portals

Chapter Text

For at least a week after the lunch where Mycroft had presented his list John fully expected either Mycroft to haul him into a secure location or someone from MI-13 to show up at his door demanding explanations. This was despite reassurances from Londinium. She kept giving him images of two versions of himself on either side of a wall, a chasm, or of a river that looked suspiciously like the Thames. Given that one version was dressed as he had been in the sanctuary at Kamar Taj and the other was his normal jumper clad self, John hypothesized that she was somehow actively keeping people from making the connection between the “Magical Master of London” and plain old Dr. John Watson. Of course, just about the time John was beginning to feel he’d dodged that particular bullet was when the universe decided to start throwing curve-balls.

It started on a Thursday. Londinium was decidedly unsettled and would not, or could not, tell him what was wrong. John, in an effort to determine what was going on, touched base with both the homeless network and his psychics. The former promised to keep an eye out while the latter could only tell him that something was “coming to completion.” While he was out and about John had decided to wander vaguely in the direction where Londinium seemed to be the most out of sorts. It wasn’t really anything specific, just wandering around following a ‘not quite right’ feeling then turning in a ‘more decidedly uneasy’ direction. While he did manage to definitively locate a couple of the clearly ‘not right’ spots there was nothing at all visible to either regular or magical sight. To make matters worse the spots would fade away to nothing relatively quickly only to be replaced by another spot half-way across town.

This went on intermittently for a couple of days before John just happened to be close enough to one of the spots when it appeared. To his surprise what he found was for all intents and purposes a magical hole, less than a foot in diameter, disgorging a cold fetid breeze. As he approached it shrank down to nothing leaving the vague feeling of wrongness that he had sensed before. Given the fact that he was apparently dealing with portals of some sort John decided that discretion was the better part of valor and decided to make a phone call.

Taking a page from Sherlock’s paranoia about Mycroft’s omnipotence John ditched his current tail, avoided the CCTV cameras, and only then purchased a pre-paid mobile with cash. He then went to one of the busiest tourist destinations in the city to lose himself in that clamoring mass of humanity in motion which was Trafalgar Square. He was lucky. He managed to get Stephen on the first try. He explained what he had found and requested whatever assistance, research or otherwise, that could be provided.

“This may be tied into the nine realms instability problem,” Stephen said. “We’ve been researching it and what we may be seeing is the precursor to a Convergance.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s like planetary syzygy only on a realm wide scale.”

“A what?”

Stephen sighed, “It’s a very rare occurrence. Every 5,000 years, give or take a couple thousand, the nine realms line up in a specific metaphysical configuration called a Convergence.”

“And this Convergence does what?”

“The records are not terribly clear. Atmospheric disturbances, easier access between realms, and potentially displacement of things from one realm to another.”

John thought for a moment, “So if I’m finding holes it’s entirely possible that something may drop through?”

“Yes,” Stephen replied. “To make matters worse these things are also like eclipses. You can have everything from a partial, where only a couple of the realms align, to a complete Convergence where all nine realms end up connected for as long as fifteen minutes.”

“Oh, wonderful. Do you have any idea yet as to just what we will be dealing with?”

“Unfortunately, no. We may be at the start of a full Convergence. On the other hand, someone may be playing with a minor alignment of the realms to create portals. Everything is still in too much flux to get a good read on things.”

“So, I’m going to be dealing with anything from the occasional bit of off-planer flora and fauna to a hostile invasion by parties unknown?” John asked.

“Not quite that bad,” Stephen reassured, “We know that Asgard, Vanaheim, Nidavillir, and Alfheim are unlikely to invade. Things may come through by accident but we presume that if we are dealing with a full Convergence then Odin will be organizing with the rulers of the other realms to actively prevent things from slipping through their side of the portals. Mulspeheim is a fire realm and we are mostly too cold for things from there to easily survive. Jotumheim has the opposite problem because it’s a realm of ice. We are generally too warm for their comfort. I don’t expect that anything would willingly come through from either of them. Accidental transference might be a problem but that wrong feeling you described will cause most of the non-sentient species to run in the other direction.”

“That leaves two realms of concern,” John replied.

“Nilfheim and Svartalfheim,” Strange replied. “and we don’t know much about either of them at all.”

“Lovely.”

“It gets better,” Stephen said sounding apologetic, “If it is a full convergence I’m not going to be able to send you help. The outer gates are under staffed right now as is and if anything gets in from the multiverse then there is the potential for it to blow right on through us and on into the other realms.”

John thought for a moment, “My remit is London so unless the attack is coming through here I won’t be able to do much about things from the outer gates.”

“I don’t expect you to,” Stephen replied. “We don’t even know if we are really dealing with a Convergence at this juncture or if this is something completely different. I’ll send you what we have managed to dig up so far. I’d appreciate it if you would search the London Sanctum’s library and see if you have anything.”

“Ok,” John replied then asked, “Since I seem to be dealing with what might be dimensional holes, do you think they will affect using our sling rings or vice versa?”

“Use overnight express to send me anything you find. I think we’d better not chance using the sling rings to transport things long distance. If they intersect with one of your holes I have no idea what will happen. Best case would be they cancel each other out and drop whatever you were trying to send into the outer darkness. Although, you might want to try and experiment and see if you can use your power to close one.”

John snorted, “If I can catch one open. I’ve only managed to get near enough to get a visual on one once. The things are bloody intermittent with no clear rhyme or reason as to where and when they open up.”

“I don’t know what to tell you about how to catch a hole in the act; just do your best and keep me posted.”

The London sanctum library didn’t have much about convergences, either partial or full, and Londinium herself didn’t have any memories of similar events. John sent off what little he found via international express mail to Kamar-Taj. The information that Wong and the others had dug up and sent in return was only relatively useful. Apparently the last known full convergence of the nine realms had been centered in Sumeria approximately 3,000 BCE. The only real conclusion that Wong had made was that the tales about Gilgamesh doing monster eradication duty in the tree of the Goddess Inanna may not have been as mythological as previously assumed. The only other thing of interest was that Masters of the Mystic Arts had inadvertently documented a number of partial convergences mainly because they had to deal the flotsam and jetsum which ended up on Midgard as a result. After reading some of the accounts, John became convinced that many of the creatures of myth and legend probably had their basis in just such incursions. He did get a chuckle from one of the researcher’s notes. The researcher in question had scribbled next to a particular description of something that had inadvertently dropped through that this could be evidence that a convergence sometime in prehistory might, at least in part, explain the peculiarities of some of the flora and fauna in Australia.

On the plus side, Londinium was getting better at locating the convergence caused portals even before they opened completely. Over time it seemed the portals were fewer in number but were larger and more distinct. With a bit of experimentation John found that he could close a portal. Attempting to alter or move a portal proved to be quite difficult and it took more effort than to just close it. He also discovered that sling ring created openings remained stable unless they happened to intersect with what John was now calling ‘convergence holes’. All in all, that meant using sling ring portals within greater London was not advisable. Luckily the link between the house and the sanctum seemed to work on a completely different mystical framework and appeared to be completely unaffected.

It was a few more days before the convergence holes were big enough for a man-sized object to traverse with ease. John had warned both the homeless network and the psychics about the holes as well as the potential for things to come through them. He was also hoping that by alerting the psychics word of the potential danger would also make it onto the radar of MI-13. Between himself and MI-13 John figured that they could handle most anything that would wander through from one of the nine realms. However, John’s biggest fear was that someone from this side would walk through one by accident and end up god-only-knows where.

Of course, that was not what ended up happening. Londinium had sensed a bunch of convergence holes forming in close proximity to each other. That was strange enough to send John to investigate post haste. Instead of doing his normal avoid the cameras, loose the human tails routine John decided to have Londinium play holy hell with the CCTV and to use a spell that Wong liked to refer to as ‘Notice-Me-Not.’ It was a relatively simple bit of misdirection that worked directly on people so they wouldn’t really register the sorcerer regardless of what strange thing he or she was doing. The biggest limitation was that the effect diminished substantially when viewed through a camera in real time and disappeared entirely if the image was recorded and then played back. There was also a minor percentage of the population that appeared to be resistant to the effect. Stephen himself called it ‘Nothing-to-See-Here’ but given the limitations John preferred to think of it as a ‘Someone Else’s Problem’ field; thank you very much Douglas Adams.

He arrived at the self-storage complex which seemed to be where the portals had appeared to find a lorry floating in midair and two young adults looking at a laptop. There was a bunch of equipment scattered about at their feet. A third, a slightly older woman, was using something that looked a bit like a radar gun and pointing it in various directions; surprisingly not at the floating lorry. As near as John could tell they were using the equipment to measure the convergence holes somehow. Just what he needed, John thought, mad-scientists to add into the mix.

A slight change of plans was in order. John quickly backtracked and then circled around to come at the convergence holes from a direction that would not expose him to the scientists. His experiments had shown him that he needed to get a line of sight onto a portal to be able to close it. The first one he got closed easily. The second was a bit trickier as it was closest to the young people and their equipment. John managed to close it which caused the lorry to suddenly stop floating dropping several feet with a loud crash. The third, well John had trouble getting into a position where he could get a good look at it because every time he seemed to get close he ended up having to dodge the older scientist who was roaming around the complex with her radar gun. When he finally managed to get into position he was in no way prepared for what happened.

John mentally and magically reached for the convergence hole. This one was bigger than any of the prior ones he’d dealt with and it also, for lack of a better explanation, ‘felt’ different. Unfortunately, just as he was preparing to grab it the third scientist came around the corner. She had ditched the radar gun since the last time he’d avoided her. As he watched, it seemed she did have some sense of self preservation since she stopped and looked at the obvious hole from a distance rather than immediately approaching it.

“I found the anomaly!” she yelled over her shoulder, presumably at her younger companions.

She then cautiously started moving around the hole. John revised his estimate of the scientist; self-preservation was clearly losing to curiosity as far as she was concerned. John decided that, regardless of the danger of being discovered, he probably should close the hole. Just as he started to do so the convergence hole seemed to twist from his magical grasp and move. It quickly engulfed the scientist almost as if it had decided to swallow her whole. John grabbed at the edges of the hole mystically. He figured that at a minimum he could attempt to keep it open so the scientist could get back; provided that something didn’t happen to her on the other side. That’s when things became even stranger. John found he was struggling with the hole. It was almost as if either the hole itself or something else was fighting his hold on it. There was another twist, a sudden pull and despite John’s best efforts it suddenly closed with a snap. Bloody hell, John thought.

The only good thing about the situation was that during the struggle John had managed to get a rough feel for the hole’s terminus. John didn’t even hesitate; with that knowledge he attempted to open a sling ring portal to the same place. Unfortunately, the only thing that seemed to do was create a distinct area of instability right where the hole had been. Knowing his decided lack of accuracy with sling ring portals John decided to give it another try and, of course, that’s when the scientist’s two companions came running around the corner with their equipment. John pulled back a little. He had no idea whether either the scientists or their equipment would be able to detect the “Someone Else’s Problem” field which was still active. Better safe than sorry.

John was impressed at how quickly the young people managed to set up their gear. It was only a couple of minutes before they had an array of small devices pointed at the area where the hole had been and where his sling ring had created what John thought might now be a thin spot. After using the radar gun like instrument, they managed to pinpoint the area of instability. Once they had measurements they started having an animated discussion punctuated by both of them leaning over the computer. John overheard bits and pieces about something called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge as well as the names Selvig and Heimdall. They didn’t seem to be having any better luck than he had with opening the hole again. John thought it might have something to do with the fact that they couldn’t really determine the ending location.

He settled in to wait. The thin spot wasn’t going anywhere and appeared to be stable. John figured that he could take another shot at making a portal when the two scientists were distracted from their equipment. Judging from the conversation this was the first set of concrete readings they’d been able to obtain. With any luck they’d miss-identify anything he did as a side effect of the convergence hole as opposed to the mystic arts. Unfortunately, the two young scientists were both excited and diligent. It took over four hours before John judged them sufficiently distracted to attempt anything. Of course, that’s when the police arrived.

The resulting argument gave John the distraction he was looking for. This time he was able to open a portal. It felt like the correct location and sure enough the third scientist came stumbling out less than a minute later. That effectively derailed the ongoing argument between the younger scientists and the officer and started a new one between the officer and the third scientist. John surreptitiously closed down the portal hoping that it would take the instability he’d inadvertently created with it and prepared to quietly vacate the premises.

It was at this point that several things happened simultaneously. The officer attempted to touch the third scientist and was blown into a wall by a blast of what John felt more than saw was some sort of dark mystic energy. At the same moment Londinium forcefully gave him an image of a rainbow and a bridge, followed by a picture of a man in armor with a red cape, horned helmet and a hammer. Great, John thought, just what I needed to add to this mess, the bloody Norse God of Thunder!

Chapter 5: The Battle of Greenwich

Chapter Text

John had managed to vacate the self-storage complex before the God of Thunder showed up. He’d been halfway back to the Sanctum house when Londinium gave him another image of a rainbow and a bridge. Thor’s showing up, staying for 40 minutes then departing was odd but John had other things on his mind. No, he had a more pressing engagement with the Sanctum’s library to see if he could figure out just what possibly could create the effects he had felt with that last hole.

A day or so later John had exhausted all his local material and engaged in several phone calls with both Wong and Stephen. Collectively, they had determined that the instability was either the result of a convergence hole opening near a highly powerful artifact on the other side or someone was using a magical construct, similar to a sling ring, that could control the hole. John was hoping for the former but suspected the latter. It was early on the third day after the self-storage yard incident that John’s suspicion was confirmed.

John had been doing katas in the garden when Londinium indicated that a large convergence hole was forming in one of the nearby parks. John was glad he was wearing standard Kamar-Taj gear. One of the first things Stephen had done upon becoming Sorcerer Supreme was to modernize the official working uniform. The end result was trews that looked close enough to sweat pants as made no difference and the tunic could pass for a specialized jumper. In fact, it looked so much like generic work out gear that someone could join the morning joggers in most any modern city in the world and not stick out. Even better, the tunic had a built-in hood and mask which would work to conceal identity if one suddenly was forced to take a more active role. That didn’t even mention the armor-like properties of the cloth, the magic resistance runes and the fact that with all that protection it still managed to be both comfortable and flexible.

John hopped over the back fence and took off at a run. From Londinium’s communication John was expecting a man-sized or larger hole. He wasn’t expecting the five grey-skinned, pointy-eared, humanoid figures that were standing in a bunch in front of the portal as if they’d just stepped through. They were all in some sort of armor and three of them were alertly scanning the area holding things that looked suspiciously similar to the Chithari weapons John had seen and used in New York. The other two were conferring over some handheld device and a folded paper that might just have been a tourist map of London. John thought they looked like a reconnaissance squad. The goons on guard spotted him only a moment after he had seen them. They pointed their weapons at him and alerted the two conferring over the map.

John didn’t wait for them to start shooting. He opened a sling ring portal under their feet. He was lucky and managed to get all five. John set the other end of the portal several thousand feet straight up. He then opened another portal and placed it directly below the prior portal’s exit. The exit to the second portal he made vertical, parallel to the convergence hole. John briefly hoped that none of these whomever-they-were could fly. Well, he thought, they either couldn’t or didn’t as only a moment later the reconnaissance squad “fell” out of the vertical portal and their momentum sent them right back through the convergence hole. As the last whomever-they-were passed through, John dismissed the portal and yanked the convergence hole closed forcefully. That should send a rather distinct message to whomever it was on the other side especially if they were actively trying to invade.

John didn’t have time to savor his bloodless victory. No sooner had he closed the convergence hole, Londinium alerted him that another hole was forming. John took off again. This time he put the tunic hood and mask up just in case. If his travel time was slower than the ability of the other side to fully open holes, there was a high probability that he’d have a fight on his hands with no time to conceal his identity from the CCTV cameras.

John was lucky. The other side, probably due to some sort of power or targeting limitations, seemed to be opening the portals sequentially and not terribly far apart. John managed to arrive just as the next group came through. He treated that group as well as a third one using his original tactics. Unfortunately, at that point someone on the other side got a clue and opened the next hole farther away from his current location. Even at a dead run John knew he wouldn’t arrive in time to avoid a fight. John ran anyway.

It was a good thing he had run John thought, as he rounded a tree just in time to cold co*ck one of the grey-skinned creatures. The invader had been pointing his weapon at an older civilian who was in the process of choking another of the pointy-eared invaders with his cane. Apparently, the anatomy of these creatures was similar enough to humans because John’s carefully placed blow caused his opponent to drop like a rock just as the civilian’s captive succumbed to the lack of air. John grabbed his opponent’s weapon and looked around. The two other members of the squad were laying unmoving on the ground in front of the convergence hole.

“Thanks,” the civilian said as he dropped his captive to the grass. “We need to somehow block that,” he pointed at the hole with his cane, “I’m assuming that these are advance scouts.”

John recognized the tone. This guy was a veteran and probably had been an officer in one or another of the services.

“I can close it,” John said, almost adding Sir in reflex, “although we should probably toss the bodies back through first,” he added.

“I won’t be much help with that, I’m not terribly mobile.” the gentleman commented looking at his cane then his leg, “But, I can cover you.”

He then reversed his cane and used the crooked handle to flip the gun-like implement that had been dropped by his recent choking victim up and into his hands. After a quick inspection he aimed the weapon at a nearby tree and fired. An energy bolt fried the tree branch he’d been aiming at.

He grinned, “Straight shot, no recoil; I’ll tell you if you need to hit the dirt.”

John revised his initial estimate of the gentleman’s active combat experience and started dragging his first opponent toward the hole.

It didn’t take long to move the unconscious bodies and toss them in. In the process John had discovered that the original two had been felled by a strategically placed Taser shot. John again revised his estimate of his new acquaintance. The man was either incredibly lucky or a crack shot to get one Taser lead in to each opponent while they were touching.

Once John had the hole closed the gentleman relaxed and leaned on his cane, holding the weapon pointing at the ground in his off hand.

“I’m Keene Marlow.”

That caused Londinium to respond with a feeling John had come to interpret as the mental equivalent of a snort of derision. So, the name was alias.

John hesitated slightly before responding, “I’m referred to as the Speaker for London.”

He could tell that Londinium was highly amused by his trading a nom de guerre for the other man’s pseudonym. She then sent him a series of quick pictures. There was a man in a flag like suit, a mangled car, a coffin, and a hospital bed followed by Winston Churchill and a bank vault door. John recognized the suit from some World War II photographs he’d cleared out of a closet after his mum had died. If Londinium was right, then John was looking at the guy who once had been known as Union Jack. John could only conclude that the Government had presumably declared him dead and given him a new identity to keep him safe.

“Ah, that explains the costume. I don’t recall hearing about someone with your skill set; you don’t happen to be working for the government?”

“Nope,” John popped the terminal p as it was not something he normally did in speaking. “Not my remit,” he added popping the t for good measure.

Marlow pursed his lips, “I need to call this in. Do you have any idea what’s going on other than a random hole in reality complete with a reconnaissance team of aliens?”

Londinium chimed in with an image of Mycroft’s assistant on her phone. So, John thought, Mr. Marlow was most likely affiliated in some manner with MI 13. This would be a good opportunity to pass on some of the information he had directly.

“I don’t know much,” John started in and then continued with a quick overview of the convergence phenomena, his interaction with the holes in the last few hours and his suspicions that these incursions were meant to be used in a flanking maneuver or an attack from the rear.

“So,” John concluded, “I suspect we are building up to some sort of hole big enough to charge an invading army through.”

Marlow grabbed his mobile out of a pocket and started dialing. He glanced up at John just before he was going to hit dial and froze.

“sh*t!”

John turned to look. There in the sky, too high up for Londinium to readily sense, were a bunch of convergence holes. John didn’t need to count. He knew there were eight of them. To make matters worse they were slowly and inexorably moving closer together. At this rate, John estimated, they’d merge in 15 to 20 minutes.

Not even bothering to say goodbye John took off in the direction of the holes trusting that Londinium would let him know where they would impact when they got closer to the ground. Behind him he faintly heard Marlow start talking on his mobile to someone. John looked around for a quicker method of transportation. Traffic was coming to a halt as people gawked. Taxies were out then he reasoned, he’d have to use the Tube then.

The Tube would be tricky. John calculated that he had only a limited amount of time before the system was shut down to allow the stations to be used as shelters. Given where the holes looked to be lining up John estimated and Londinium concurred that the full convergence would manifest somewhere around Greenwich. John thought for a moment, the Jubilee line would get him closer if it was still running. He headed for the nearest station. In the worst-case scenario, if the trains were stopped John figured he could hop off and access the emergency exits to get back to the surface.

Londinium helpfully jiggered the barriers so he didn’t even need to tap his card before the gates opened. She also slowed a train minutely so that it arrived at the platform just when he did. A little over five minutes later, just short of Southwark, the car started slowing. John started maneuvering so he could potentially get out one of the exits. Luckily, he didn’t have to as the train pulled into the station just as the system shutdown announcement started.

Getting back topside John realized that his initial time estimate to full convergence had been wrong. The holes were almost on top of each other now and there was a bloody big something that was barely visible through the overlap. To make matters worse the weather had gone crazy and Londinium was telling him that there was a battle underway at the Royal Naval Observatory. There was no way in heck John knew he could get there in time on foot and opening a sling ring portal in this unstable mess would be tantamount to suicide. Londinium flashed him images of Thor, the two young scientists and a bunch of other people. Some appeared to be in armor, others were police, a couple of them had familiar looking spandex like costumes, while a few just appeared to be normal folk armed with improvised weapons. According to Londinium they were all working together to protect her from the invaders.

As John jogged toward the conflict he could see the whatever-it-was in the hole looked like a giant flying metallic wedge. No, as it got clearer it seemed to be a monstrous space ship. There were a squad of RAF fighter jets trying to harass it but they ended up having to veer off to avoid what looked like laser fire. That didn’t even mention the nasty looking, blood-red fog billowing in and out of the overlapping holes. Clearly this was going to be a disaster of epic proportions.

But wait. John stopped to get a better look. It seemed that the convergence had peaked and the holes were separating again. In fact, if he was correct one of the separating holes was moving such that it might just end up in front of that space ship. If it did, the ship was so massive there would be no way for it to turn aside before plowing right on through. John had no idea if what he was going to try would work but he reached out with his magic and tugged on the side of the hole to see if he could move it faster. Surprisingly it didn’t take much to encourage the hole to slip sideways right in front of the oncoming ship.

Everything seemed to happen at once. The nasty looking red fog suddenly dissipated. As John watched one of the fighter jets dodged a missile-like projectile unfortunately ending up flying through one of the now separated convergence holes. John couldn’t do anything about that. He was too busy holding the hole he had grabbed steady so that the large ship impacted it dead on. It did so. When it was almost through there was a brilliant flash of lightning from the ground to the sky followed by a deafening thunderclap and the hole John was working with suddenly snapped shut. By the time John could see again the cut off tail end of the ship had fallen into the Thames. At the same time the remainder of the holes were shrinking rapidly and moving up into the sky. The weather was clearing and people standing on the street, sensing that the worst was over, started cheering.

John knew better. No, the inevitable result of battle of this size was going to be injuries. If it wasn’t directly from fighting there would be plenty of collateral damage from debris, falling buildings, heart attacks and the like. The local hospitals were going to need all the help they could get. John took off again at a jog heading for the river and St. Barts. He’d be able to snag a set of scrubs from the morgue and stash his current outfit somewhere out of the way. He knew that Stamford and Molly as well as a good number of the trauma team would vouch for him and be happy for the assistance. He’d just need to remember to text Mycroft and have him work whatever governmental magic to make sure his medical license was valid by the time someone got around to check. It was time to go and be useful in his non-mystical capacity.

Chapter 6: Mirror, Mirror

Chapter Text

It was a couple of months after what the tabloids had labeled The Battle of Greenwich when John first noticed the anomalies. At first it was little things; an extra jumper he hadn’t bought appearing in his wardrobe, his RAMC mug having a white background not a cream one, less contact with Mycroft; although the last one could have been explained as a side effect of the cleanup efforts from the battle. Then there were larger indications: a building that had minimal damage one day being a full-blown construction site the next, road closures and traffic diversions now being labeled as road repair as opposed to reconstruction, and even more telling there was a distinct lack of hysterical speculation about the entire set of events from the tabloid press. To make matters worse his limp was back intermittently and anywhere outside the London Sanctum itself Londinium’s presence was quiet in his mind. It almost seemed to John that he was constantly slipping in and out of a version of reality where things were almost, but not entirely, the same. That thought prompted major research binge and ultimately a call to Stephen.

"Interesting,” Stephen said after John had set out his observations and his tentative conclusions based on his research. “I’ve never heard of the mirror dimension being only partially invoked but it fits what you’ve been observing.”

John replied, “I do have one last hypothesis but it’s really speculative.”

“Shoot.”

“What if someone was attempting to trap me in their version of the mirror dimension using something like maze magic?”

“But there’s no physical construct,” Stephen objected. “All the maze magic I know about requires a physical maze of some sort. The amount of power required to do something like what you are postulating would take a rather large maze. A new one would show up in the media one way or another and if a pre-existing maze became magically active someone would have sensed the power draw from the local ley lines at a minimum. According the records the last time a maze went active it was Chartres France. That time the cause was all the religious pilgrims walking the labyrinth praying and it finally gained enough power. Apparently, everyone sensitive within about 1,000 miles or so of the place knew when it came online and there were ripple effects worldwide.”

“There is a reference in one of the older books here,” John countered, “magic that ensnares the unwary in dreams as if they were lost in a labyrinth. The language is archaic but the descriptions of examples fit. Also there’s no mention about needing a physical construct”

“Nothing about how to break out of it?”

“Just one sentence about rescue by a beloved followed by some word that is obscured by a rather large smudge.” John sighed, “Nothing else seems even close to in the sources I have here.”

“I’ll see if Wong or his assistants can find anything in the library here or at Kamar Taj.” Stephen paused for a moment then added, “Are you sure that this is aimed at you?”

“Rule of three,” John replied. “Even if it’s not aimed at me, I’m caught up in it so it’s up to me to do something.”

Stephen made a rude noise, “It’s a bitch being a responsible guardian of reality isn’t it.”

" You wouldn’t have offered me the position if I wasn’t.”

“Too true. So, I assume you have a plan?”

“Well…” John hesitated, “not a plan per se.”

“So you’re just going to make it up as you go?” John could hear the teasing in Stephen’s voice.

“No, it’s more on the lines of giving whomever enough rope and seeing if I can tie them up in it rather than vice versa,” John admitted. “I’m assuming they don’t know much, if anything about my position and capacities. If they do, then I’m probably buggered six ways from Sunday and you’ll need to come and save my sorry ass.”

“Anything particular that I should be looking for that would indicate you needed saving?”

“Hell if I know.” John replied. “I’m going to disguise my sling rings and create a physical anchor to Londinium. There are instructions for doing both here. I’m putting the anchor on my dog tags and I’ll be wearing them constantly from now on. Hopefully that will be enough.”

“I’d like to be able to give you some better guidance but just like the convergence I don’t have a hard enough starting event to conduct a decent search of potential realities,” Stephen apologized.

“Understood. Everything seems to have limitations of one sort of another. I mean even the super soldiers can be permanently maimed or even killed. Mr. Marlow nee Falsworth that I ran into during the Greenwich fiasco being a case in point.”

“Well, good luck with this. I’ll let you know if we come up with anything else that might be helpful on our end,” Stephen assured him then rang off.

Now a plan is all fine and good but John knew that plans rarely, if ever, survived the first encounter with enemy forces. So, in addition to wearing the disguised sling rings and his anchored dog tags at all times John stepped up his time table relocating the doorway to the sanctum and putting the house up for sale. It took him less than a month and surprisingly there were no more anomalies during that time. John didn’t think his unknown opponent had given up. No, more likely the original set of strangeness had been merely a probing of his defenses. A test to determine just how difficult it was going to be to slowly drag him into some sort of mirror dimension or labyrinth-like dream state.

Hopefully his opponent had no clue, other than the mere association with the house, of John’s powers and abilities. It was lucky that most of his overtly arcane actions had been inside the sanctum itself. His actions during the battle also had hopefully escaped notice due to the sheer amount of power floating around due to the convergence. Any minor use of power inside the house would have been also muted as the house was shielded due to a simple artifact of construction methods used in many of the older London properties. Masonic glyphs carved into walls and foundations did wonders magically speaking. John figured that any move would come when he completely vacated the premises. That would be logical because constantly running in and out of a shielded building could very well disrupt whatever magic was being used. All of which meant that to catch his opponent John needed to go back to being a normal denizen of greater London and living in an unshielded building like a great majority of the populace.

The drawback of being plane old John Watson, MD meant that once after he arranged for the house to be sold his apparent “job” for the charity was done. That in turn meant living on his savings, his army pension and, thank you Mycroft for the initial fudging of the certifications, finding work as a physician. Luckily, St. Barts was always in dire need of qualified people who could take locum shifts on short notice in the A&E. His army credentials along with recent history in both New York and in the Battle of Greenwich aftermath almost guaranteed that they snapped him up, especially after he indicated he didn’t have any real preference regarding shifts so long as he could get a decent bit of sleep between same.

It also meant getting a flat share. Once again, John’s penchant for being in the right place at the right time kicked in. A couple of the A&E nurses, Ms. Morstan and Ms. Trevor, had been looking for a two-bedroom flat but had only managed to find one with three bedrooms that was just out of their initial price range. They had taken it anyway but were finding the rent somewhat difficult to manage. They were seriously discussing looking for a cheaper place when John just happened to walk in on the financial discussion in the staff room. It was only a matter of minutes and the deal was struck. John moved in the next day.

Less than a week later the anomalies started up again. The changes seemed to be subtler this time. John noticed it first in the tabloid coverage. There was less and less about the exploits alleged private lives of the more prominent members of the superhero community as the days went on. That lack of coverage carried over into the mainstream press, the television news and eventually into normal everyday conversations to the point that one wouldn’t think superheroes even existed anymore. Each shift in information seemed to coincide with John being scheduled for spate of locum shifts that would have left most medical professionals exhausted to almost the point of incoherence. However, most medical professionals hadn’t served in a war zone. John thrived in such an environment although he was careful to make it look like he was as tired as all the rest of his colleagues from dealing with the unexpected influx of ailments from the minor to the catastrophic.

Things settled down a bit over the next month with everything seeming normal. If John hadn’t been watching closely he might have missed that many the buildings which had been damaged in the Battle of Greenwich were now “closed for seismic retrofitting” or “undergoing renovation.” Only a few had been demolished but even those were, according to the signage on the properties, replacements with newer construction rather than demolition due to being unsafe. He also noticed that Ms. Trevor seemed to be less and less evident in the flat allegedly due to conflicting schedules. By the end of the month Ms. Trevor had seemingly moved out, transferred to another Hospital on the other side of the city. Despite losing the other tenant he and Ms. Morstan still managed it financially when they really shouldn’t have been able to do so. By the end of another month John realized that contacts from both Mycroft and Londinium had trailed off to nothing.

Another month went by and life went on. Ms. Morstan, Mary, received a promotion and John decided to take her out to celebrate. They had agreed to meet at the Landmark hotel. It was supposed to be a nice celebratory dinner but for the annoying waiter with the pseudo-French accent and genuine French attitude. As he’d turned to politely tell the waiter off for being an obnoxious prick John got the shock of his life. The waiter was Sherlock.

Not knowing quite what to think or whether this was real or a construct of his enemy John decided to go with his gut reaction. He got mad and threw a punch. Things changed rapidly from that point on. He managed to get them thrown out of the restaurant, a café, and a kebob shop and bloodied Sherlock’s nose. By the time he and Mary got back to the flat, John was reeling from the sudden onslaught of changes. It seemed that the flat now only had one bedroom, he was in a committed relationship with Mary, and somewhere in the midst of everything that had happened that evening he’d become engaged to her.

The next morning was even more confusing. He shaved off his mustache, which he hadn’t had the night before, because everyone hated it then went to work at a local clinic instead of St. Barts. Mary, it seemed was also working at the clinic. John just went along with it, noting the changes and occasionally touching his dog tags when he had a private moment. By the end of the shift he knew what he had to do. He needed to go and see if Sherlock was real or merely a figment of this particular mirror verse.

That was how John found himself in the early evening pausing in front of Speedy’s on Baker Street. He really didn’t have a plan and he needed one badly. There were several possibilities he needed to consider. If Sherlock was fully part of the real world, any mention of the alternative dimension timeline that was forming around him would result in Sherlock’s deductive talents becoming fully focused on John. That would be a bit not good. If Sherlock didn’t conclude he was delusional or drugged then the use of his oft repeated maxim when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, would in all likelihood result in the exposure of his arcane training not just to Sherlock but also to Mycroft as well. If Sherlock was solely an artifact of the mirror dimension then in all likelihood he’d attempt to convince John that this alternative was in fact the real one. Any indication that he didn’t fully believe in the current alternative state of affairs would result in Sherlock’s deductions, probably with the same result. John didn’t even want to start considering the potentialities if everyone around him, Sherlock included, happened to be partially in and partially out of the trap. John decided to go on and beard Sherlock in his den so to speak. He hoped that he knew Sherlock well enough to tell if he was a construct or the real person. If it was the latter, John vowed, he’d attempt break out of the mirror verse immediately one way or another.

With that decision made John started moving toward the door to 221 only to be bumped rather rudely by a man hurrying down the pavement. When John turned to comment he felt someone grab him along with the prick of a needle in his neck and everything went black.

Chapter 7: Memory vs. Reality

Chapter Text

The soft rhythmic beeping and smell of disinfectant gave it away, Hospital. John realized that this was not the first time he’d made that particular deduction. This time was different from the past iterations. He felt both less and more physically present if that was possible. No, as he examined the sensations he realized it was more a detached feeling. It felt almost like the first step in the technique for astral projection that he’d learned in Kamar-Taj. John tried to move his body, nothing happened. He tried to increase his heart rate. The steady beeping didn’t change. He broadened his mental awareness. Well at least that worked. Mentally he found himself in a construct that resembled a fog bank confirming at least one of his suppositions. He was definitely in the first stage of astral projection.

So now what? John was pretty sure he could reenter his body rather easily. The question, however, was whether he should or not. If he was in a coma then going back would just cause him to pass out. Unfortunately, going on to full blown projection wasn’t a viable option either. John had never managed to get beyond the fog bank stage without help in training.

John paused to think. What exactly did he know about this state of being? The general idea for astral projection was to divorce oneself from the material and embrace the metaphysical. From there one could move on to see and, if you expended enough power, interact to a degree, with the outside world. To make things more confusing you could also view not only places at a distance but also other realms and even, according to Stephen, the very structure underlying the multiverse. John hadn’t ever ranged that far in training though he had caught a glimpse of Asgard when Wong had taken him to view some of the protective gates that kept various metaphysical nasties from overrunning Earth.

This state must have a purpose other than just as a transition. One of the very first things he’d learned was that everything in a sorcerer’s training had multiple uses even if it wasn’t intuitively obvious at the time. Logically then, the training wouldn’t have emphasized getting comfortable and spending time in this particular condition if it was merely a pass-through. Suddenly John realized that this was the optimum place of detachment; a place of reflection and pure thought. It would be a great opportunity for him to get a good handle on exactly what he knew and didn’t know about the mirror-verse in which his adversary had been attempting to trap him.

John knew that the trap had started to close when he moved out of the sanctum house. But where had the move into the mirror-verse been fully activated? John thought for a bit then realized that it was right around Sherlock’s miraculous resurrection. John’s emotional reaction to the events would have been too good an opportunity for his adversary to pass up. Given how quickly things had changed after Sherlock’s appearance whom-ever-it-was had escalated things taking the chance that John would be upset enough not to notice. John mused a bit on this. He was pretty sure Sherlock had been real and not a mirror-verse construct. You live and run around London solving crimes with someone and there are a host of little mannerisms that just cannot be faked. Everything from the way Sherlock had surprised him in the restaurant, to his explanations, to his reaction to being punched led John to believe that it truly was Sherlock.

If Sherlock was real then what about Mary? Mary was a co-worker but from an outsider’s point of view it might not have seemed so. They’d ended up on the same shift rotation at work and had been practically living in each other’s pockets for a month or so due to the heavy workload. The more John thought about it the more it must have looked like a budding workplace romance, especially after Ms. Trevor had moved out. For that matter had Ms. Trevor even moved or was she too a construct? That however, John decided, was irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Back to Mary then. A bit more thought and John concluded that Mary was real at least up until the Landmark. So somewhere between the Landmark and the Café he’d acquired a full-blown mustache. That must have been when the where the mirror-verse influence really took off John reasoned. Therefore, anything he remembered after that point was clearly suspect.

John turned to his memories. He had quite a few. It seemed like there was at least two years’ worth although he was relatively certain that not that much time had actually passed. They seemed like normal memories but John was suspicious. The whole Mary as fiancé was clearly false. Thus, getting married, Mary shooting Sherlock to hide her secret past, and Rosie were likewise highly suspect. Surprisingly, however, there were pieces of those memories that seemed brighter, more real, than others. Being drugged and stuck under a Guy Faulks bonfire, a bomb in a tube car, bits of his stag do with Sherlock, that waltz Sherlock had played during the wedding reception, those bits seemed to be sharper than the rest. There were cases of course, even one at the wedding. For many of those John could almost hear Sherlock’s voice explaining his reasoning and deductions.

John realized that the older memories seemed to have more distinction between the clearer ones and those that were dubious. It appeared that the closer he got to the present the more confusing and imprecise things got. Sherlock shooting a tabloid publisher then being exiled and called back at the last minute due to James bloody Moriarty hijacking the BBC; preposterous. Sherlock explaining some case from the 1890’s where a lady had shot herself in the head but apparently survived as an elaborate revenge plot with overtones of the ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ where the identity was taken up by multiple people, now that one felt genuine. Tracking Mary all over the world and having her ultimately take a bullet for Sherlock just seemed too much like a bad suspense or espionage novel. Sherlock going on a drugs binge to catch a philanthropist who was actually a serial killer also seemed overly contrived but Mrs. Hudson owning a bright red Aston Martin and being able to drive like James Bond felt absolutely genuine.

By the time John got around to examining his most recent memories he found he could no longer get even a partial sense of what could be authentic and what was questionable. The whole bit about a nutty as a fruitcake younger sibling, who the hell names their kid Eurus for heaven’s sake, locked away for the sake of the family and the nation, appeared seriously dodgy at best. Despite his best efforts John couldn’t figure out if there was any real-life method for Mycroft, Sherlock and himself all getting out of 221B without a scratch when it blew up. Even jumping out the window and rolling, parachute landing style, surely should have caused some bruising. That didn’t even count the fact that all of the debris from the explosion just happened to miraculously have missed them. Despite the absurdity of the entire situation with the younger sister there were still things that John wondered about given their clarity. Being unable to take a full breath as cold water filled the well he was chained in was one of those.

Just as John had decided to make a closer examination of the clearer memories he was interrupted by a very familiar voice echoing through the grey astral fog.

“I must apologize John,” Stephen Strange’s voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. “I did not realize that you were in such a predicament. When you disappeared, I couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not. Your lack of reappearance in a timely fashion led me to start looking but by that point in time your protectors had managed to obscure your trail to the point that even magic was only indicating that you were alive and somewhere in the vicinity of London.”

Protectors? John wondered then realized that in all probability that meant Mycroft had been throwing his not inconsiderable governmental weight around either on his own or at Sherlock’s request.

Stephen continued on, “I ended up coming over to see if proximity would refine the location. Imagine my surprise when it was my former profession that finally led me to your whereabouts.”

There was a pause then Stephen’s voice seemed to recede a bit, “Speaking of protectors…”

John realized then that he needed to do something or he would lose touch with Stephen. He tried with all his might to follow the fading voice. With a surge of effort and a mental twist John suddenly found himself floating above his hospital bed. Yes! Basic astral projection. John would be invisible and inaudible but at least he could now see and hear what was going on in the room.

The first thing he focused on was Stephen, dressed casually but with a clearly borrowed lab coat, standing at a computer terminal reading what was most likely his digitized medical records. It was a little strange, John thought, seeing Stephen without the cloak of levitation. Then he realized that the red silk shirt Stephen was wearing had a familiar woven pattern to it. It looked highly similar to what John remembered about the mystic symbols woven into the cloak. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to attempt to consider whether artifact level magical clothing had shapeshifting abilities before the door to the room opened and Sherlock swept in, Belstaff swirling.

When he had first met Stephen Strange, John had noticed a strong resemblance to Sherlock. Now, seeing them both in the same room, John realized that the similarities were extremely uncanny. Stephen was a little taller, by just less than an inch or so and broader through the shoulders. Sherlock’s hair was darker and had more curl. He was also thinner and his eyes were greyer than Stephen’s clear hazel. In fact, the more John looked the more he realized that the two of them could have been fraternal twins separated at birth. The similarity suddenly became less as Sherlock focused and looked Stephen up and down in his familiar scanning pattern.

“Recent travel, doctor, former surgeon, unable to continue profession due to injury, friend of Dr. Patel, American,” Sherlock murmured to himself then added louder “Dr. Stephen Strange.”

“Impressive,” Stephen said flatly not looking up from the computer file he was reading.

Sherlock snorted derisively, “Not really. Your hands, shoes and borrowed lab coat would have told me that much. In addition, I knew Dr. Patel was calling in a favor for a consult. Patel trained in the U.S. at the same hospital and in the same field. That doesn’t even mention the fact that you were required to sign in to get through the security onto this floor.”

Stephen punched a few keys on the computer and glanced up briefly, “And here I thought you had just googled your doppelganger.” He went back to reading.

“There is a certain resemblance,” Sherlock agreed. “Enough of one that I ended up not being able to stay very long in Tibet.”

“And it’s probably why someone took a pot shot at me the last time I was in Sokovia.”

John was a little surprised when Sherlock didn’t make a comment on that little jab. All in all, Sherlock had been relatively nice and quasi-respectful. It was sort of unnerving. John had seen Sherlock put on a ‘normal person being polite’ act before and this wasn’t it. If John had to guess this was a Sherlock respecting a similar intellect in a different field combined with a Sherlock who definitely wanted something and didn’t want to spoil his chances for getting it by being obnoxious.

Instead of replying Sherlock merely moved a bit further into the room toward the bed. As he moved closer John could see that he looked tired, worried, and on edge. Judging from the way his garments shifted John concluded that Sherlock was carrying a firearm in his coat pocket. Even more interesting was that when he stopped, John could see that Sherlock had placed himself in the optimum position to defend John in the bed from Stephen where he was standing at the computer.

Once again John was surprised at Sherlock’s patience. He just stood quietly watching Stephen read. He was still enough that John might have thought Sherlock was engaging in one of his mind palace forays but for the tenseness of his body and the way his eyes were focused on Stephen.

Sure enough, the moment Stephen seemed to pause in his reading Sherlock asked, “Well?”

“The original drugging, concussion and smoke inhalation were resolving nicely when he was dosed with the unknown substance and presumably exposed to the pneumonia. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious neurological damage and there is no indication of adverse drug reactions from there on.”

“Obvious,” Sherlock’s tone was now verging on derisive.

Stephen ignored the outburst and continued, “All of which leaves the presumption that what we are looking at is a side effect of the unknown substance.”

Sherlock looked like he was holding in a snarky remark by gritting his teeth but before he could say anything Stephen kept going, “The forensic chemistry on this is really quite good given the sample size and how quickly it degraded. I’m surprised that they managed to get as much information as they did. The blood work is just as outstanding.”

For some reason John couldn’t see those remarks seemed to derail Sherlock’s imminent explosion. In fact, Sherlock had seemed to slip back into analytic mode and was closely watching Stephen.

“You’ve seen something similar,” he stated rather than asked.

“The chemical structure of the initial sample is similar to some plant based psychotropic hallucinogens used by certain Amazonian tribes to induce vision quests. It’s been modified and purified. It seems to be metabolized at a rapid rate yet retains its hallucinogenic effects for far longer than the original.”

“Weaponized,” Sherlock interjected.

Stephen raised an eyebrow, “Indeed.”

“The structure, how it degrades…”

“Highly specific delivery method,” Stephen agreed.

“If I’d had a bigger sample I might have been able to determine…”

“It would have needed to be a sufficiently advanced….”

“Probably with a…”

“And a…”

John was amazed watching the two of them. They weren’t even bothering to finish sentences, deducing each other’s meaning seemingly out of thin air. The back and forth went on. John quickly lost the thread of the discussion so he decided to take a good look at the room instead. But for the hospital bed, the medical equipment and the linoleum flooring the room looked somewhat like a high-end hotel room with an inordinate amount of wood fronted cabinetry. Given the fact that the computer pulled out of a cubby on a swinging arm and the heart monitor was sitting in front of an open cabinet door, John was willing to bet that from the various cabinets, drawers, and armoire like furniture this room could go from its current configuration all the way to ICU with only a few additional pieces of equipment. Taking a look at the sliding panels in the head-board, John realized, that the number of additional pieces needed would be even less than he had originally estimated. This was definitely not NIH standard. Thank you very much Mycroft, John thought.

“…which means Government,” Sherlock concluded bringing John’s attention back to the discussion.

“or serious money,” Stephen agreed.

Sherlock looked like he’d bit a lemon then said, “While that is interesting it doesn’t help the present situation. The unknown substance has cleared his system so why won’t John wake up?”

Now it was Stephen’s turn to look like he’d bit a lemon.

“We don’t know as much about comatose states as we should,” Stephen admitted. “The research is spotty and highly anecdotal.” He paused then sighed, “If I had to guess…”

“You, like I, don’t guess,” Sherlock stated flatly.

Stephen cracked a half smile, “I suspect that given the hallucinogenic nature of the unmodified base antagonist, I suspect John is simply not convinced that it is safe to wake up.”

“Why not? John is the most courageous person I know. Why would he be afraid to wake up?”

“We are talking subconscious here,” Stephen replied. “Regardless of how courageous a person is in a conscious state the subconscious when presented with its worst nightmare doesn’t have the ability to tell when the nightmare has ended.”

“So how to convince him?” Sherlock said half to himself. “Somehow, we need to link the subconscious to his more rational mind.”

Stephen smiled.

Sherlock stared at him momentarily, “Which is why you are telling me all this here, rather than in the conference room down the hall that Dr. Patel uses!”

“Yup.”

Stephen popped his p’s, John noted, just like Sherlock did on occasion.

“So, what should I do to help?”

Stephen shrugged, “The anecdotal evidence suggests it’s different for each person. I’ve seen everything from a favorite smell to a familiar voice telling a particular story to some sort of personal object break someone out of what is colloquially called ‘locked in syndrome’ which is what we seem to be dealing with here.

“Hmmph,” Sherlock was pursing his lips, clearly thinking hard.

Stephen logged off the computer and replaced it in its cubby. Stephen looked up and then directly at John’s astral form, meeting his eyes. It was clear to John that Stephen knew or saw him floating above the bed.

“I need to go and consult with Dr. Patel. I suspect that John will not stay in this state too much longer,” Stephen’s statement had the faint overtones of an order.

With that Stephen exited the room leaving Sherlock still standing there thinking.

John was a bit surprised that Sherlock came out of his 'thinking mode' with a soft “ha” relatively shortly after Stephen had cleared the room. He moved over to the bed at the same time unbuttoning the collar of his now not so tight purple silk shirt. It only took a moment for Sherlock to reach for something around his neck and pull what looked like, no John knew what it was the minute the items cleared Sherlock’s head, John’s dog tags. In addition, John noted, his illusioned sling rings were also still on the chain. Sherlock undid the clasp and then reached and placed the chain around John’s neck.

John immediately felt a pull back to his body. He started to follow it.

Sherlock had, in the meantime, dropped the bed side rail and sat down heavily in the visitor’s chair which had been strategically placed next to the bed. Sherlock laid his head on the bed next to John’s hip and reached out to grab his hand.

John, half in and half out of his body, made his decision. He surged into his body and with all his might willed his hand to grab and hold Sherlock’s.

Chapter 8: Recovery

Chapter Text

It had been something of a running joke in Kamar-Taj that despite all the quasi-psychoanalysis, self-reflection, and meditation which were part and parcel of sorcerer training, John Watson would learn more from his cup of tea afterwards than from the original exercise. This time, John thought to himself, it wasn’t even his own cup of tea that sparked enlightenment as he placed the steaming mug in a bare spot on the coffee table strewn with files. John sat down in his chair. As he had expected, it was only a moment later that Sherlock’s hand snaked out seemingly of its own accord, snagging the mug and bringing it to his lips.

John smiled.

The last six months had been interesting to say the least. John had been well aware from the first time he truly woke from the coma that, unlike television, the road to full recovery was going to be long and tedious. What he hadn’t expected, however, was Sherlock’s behavior. From the very first time when he had grabbed onto Sherlock’s hand to present, he had been there supporting John every step of the way. Of course, over that same time he’d also alienated three doctors and run off two physical therapists with his caustic remarks and abrasive manner. John knew, however, that without Sherlock’s advocating, prodding and seemingly encyclopedic knowledge on a disparate number of subjects he wouldn’t be as far along as he was in his recovery. Sherlock always could read him like a book. He would deduce when something was physically too much or too soon as well as when more action or even an entirely different approach was necessary. In addition, he seemed to have an almost psychic ability to tell when encouragement as opposed to distraction was necessary; or even when just a simple ‘suck it up and get on with it John’ type statement would work better. He wasn’t terribly obvious about it. Not everyone would understand that the time he deduced the physical therapist’s private life and habits was an effort to get the man to focus on his job, that the grizley case story was distraction, or that the scratchy violin playing was encouragement to do better. John did and appreciated his support all the more.

John also found it interesting that during the entire period, Sherlock had not once complained of boredom. He had also not undertaken any major investigations of any sort. He’d steadfastly declined the private clients and only occasionally consulted for the Yard. He very rarely went to a crime scene and then never stayed very long. Instead, he seemed to be content to plow through the yard’s extensive collection of cold case files. So far, he’d managed to close out 27, suggest new angles and avenues for investigation in 35 others, and identify 3 cases where the crime in question hadn’t actually been committed at all. He also, in an uncharacteristic fit of cooperation with his brother, deigned to engage in what John suspected was extremely high level and secret analysis work. Sherlock tended to refer to these as “looking into minor problems for Mycroft.” Given the level of grumbling and introspection that those “minor problems” produced, John had decided that he really didn’t want to know what constituted a “major problem” on either Sherlock or Mycroft’s part.

Sherlock put down the now empty tea mug with a thump and shuffled the papers he’d been looking at for most of the afternoon and early evening. After a minute or so he piled them all together and slipped them into a folder. Then he leaned back in his chair, hands steepled in front of his face. His eyes focused on John for just a moment then he half-closed them with his gaze seemingly pointed somewhere above the fireplace.

Mind palace. John recognized the pose and the abstracted gaze. Yet even that was different now. Before when Sherlock went into serious thinking mode loud noises and simple touch would not have roused him from his contemplation. Now it seemed that Sherlock kept a little bit of himself aware of the here and now. Whatever that part was would prompt him to become fully alert when certain parameters were met. John was still trying to determine just exactly what Sherlock would now react to in this state. Certain things like loud sharp percussive noises and anyone who wasn’t John moving outside of his line of sight were sure fire triggers. Normal street noises or Mrs. Hudson on the stairs wouldn’t provoke a response but the sound of the front door opening would. From his inexact observations John had concluded that the ‘hiatus,’ as Sherlock had dubbed it, had not been entirely uneventful. If John had to guess this new awareness was, at least in part, Sherlock’s version of PTSD symptoms.

Watching his flat mate exercise his not inconsiderable intellect made John wonder how long exactly it would be before Sherlock started asking questions that John wasn’t quite prepared to answer. Unexpectedly, neither Sherlock nor Mycroft had questioned his claim of retrograde amnesia for the roughly 20 hours between Sherlock’s dramatic reappearance and when he’d been drugged and placed under the bonfire. Of course, no one expected that he would retain memories from his roughly 3 months of coma in hospital. It was also surprising that the Holmes’ brothers, Sherlock especially, had not deduced that there were the gaps in his knowledge between the Battle of Greenwich aftermath and Sherlock’s return. He had to credit Londinium’s help in keeping straight what had happened in the real world with the mirror-verse trap memories. It also didn’t hurt that he could truthfully say that any particular incident he’d ‘missed’ just hadn’t really registered due to the workload at the time.

John had also managed to pass off many of his mirror-verse memories as bizarre artifacts of his coma-like state. When he’d told Sherlock the details of a couple of his memories, phrasing them as ‘quasi-dreams’ Sherlock actually was able to pinpoint real world events, conversations, and other incidents that had somehow been incorporated into the ‘dream.’ Explained that way it all made logical sense. The cases John ‘remembered’ were actually Sherlock telling him about some of the cold case files Lestrade had given him while John was in hospital. The whole drowning in a well sequence was the bout with high fever and pneumonia where he’d needed to be restrained so they could treat him. Mrs. Hudson actually did own an Aston Martin but it was blue, not red, and she could indeed drive in a fashion that would give most movie stunt drivers a serious bout of envy. She apparently had driven Sherlock to the hospital once when John had taken a turn for the worse. His description of the ride, when he repeated it for John later, was a tale in and of itself even if he had been in the passenger seat at the time rather than stuffed in the boot. What was even stranger, as far as John was concerned, was that Sherlock and Mycroft did have a sister whose name was really Euris and who was indeed incarcerated in a psychiatric facility. Said facility, however, was actually in Surry and not on an island off the coast of Scotland that bore a striking resemblance to Azkaban in the Harry Potter movies.

All in all, a good portion of the ‘dreams’ seemed to have some basis in something that had been said or happened while he was stuck in the coma. The mirror-verse trap had simply incorporated the bits and pieces into a pseudo-memory. In fact, the only incident that seemed to have been made up out of whole cloth, so to speak, were the bits about Mary. John had no clue as to what exactly had caused him to imagine her as an assassin or as someone whom he’d ask to marry him for that matter. The fact that Mary had visited him in hospital as well as helped move his stuff back to Baker Street made him very hesitant to bring those particular mirror-verse memories up in conversation. It was just a little too strange and would possibly raise too many questions even couched in the context of a coma dream.

One of John’s biggest concerns early on had been the possibility that Mycroft had brought in one of his MI-13 telepaths to attempt to dig an image of the person who drugged him out of his brain. That fear, however, had been relieved by Sherlock during one of their original conversations about the ‘dreams.’ Sherlock had remarked in a rather offhand manner, after explaining where a particular piece of John’s ‘dream-memory’ had originated, that it would be much easier if they could have one of Mycroft’s people rummage around in John’s head and just sort out what was what. Upon John’s objection that without an overwhelming need and informed consent such an invasion would be an unethical breach of privacy, Sherlock sheepishly admitted that one of Mycroft’s people actually had tried to pull John out of the coma only to discover that he was one of the .01% of people who had natural shields against psychic mental effects. From Londinium’s highly amused reaction to that particular revelation, John intuited that his bond with the city had protected him from the worst that prying telepathic minds could produce.

To make matters more complex John had no real idea what exactly he could or would say when, not if, Sherlock started picking up on things he’d specifically left out of his reports of his exploits over the three years when Sherlock had been officially dead. The only thing worse would be if John had to do something overtly magical directly in front of him. Although, as John continued to consider the problem, the latter case might not be as bad as the former. Sherlock was relatively conversant with the so called ‘super powers’ and seemed to accept them as things that followed rules even if science didn’t have an explanation quite yet. In fact, John suspected that Sherlock had a mental index of known powers with some sort of taxonomical classification system. Sherlock could very easily classify John’s omissions as a lack of trust but a blatant enough magical display might just sidestep that whole issue in lieu of the puzzle about the extent and nature of John’s powers.

Just as John came to that conclusion Sherlock made a huffing sound. John immediately was able to classify the noise. It wasn’t the hmm of the end of a successful deduction. It wasn’t the ‘Oh, I’ve been stupid’ scoff. No this was the ‘I’ve gone as far as I can with this information’ huff. Sure enough, Sherlock opened his eyes, sat up in his chair and grabbed a pad of paper. He scribbled for a bit then tore off the top paper. He gathered up the file, added his written note and dumped the whole thing into the file box under the table. Clearly the score was now 35 cases with new lines for investigation.

“So, closed or more investigation needed?” John decided to test his hypothesis.

“Both,” Sherlock replied picking up his mug and looking surprised that it was empty.

John took that as his cue to get up and make some more tea however Sherlock shook his head and set down the mug. John subsided back into his chair.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised given the state of the file but why they didn’t take a closer look at the ex-brother in law originally is inept even with the Yard’s low standards.”

“Oh?”

“At this point in time,” Sherlock continued, “they won’t even be able to arrest him unless he was stupid enough to keep the leftover blue paint.”

“Credit card receipts?”

“Probably not. He was clever enough to hide his relationship with his ex-wife’s sister so I doubt he would have used a card to purchase paint.”

Londinium mentally showed John an image of a paint brush.

“Well,” John said conversationally, “if he was the do-it-yourself type he may have kept whatever he used to apply the paint. You know, attempting to clean the paint brush rather than just tossing it out. Getting those things fully clean of the previous paint residue is well-neigh impossible.”

Sherlock thought for a moment then fished the file back out from the box under the table. After flipping through it, clearly looking for something specific, he added a line to his original note and kept the file on the table.

“Consider it further investigation needed,” he proclaimed.

John started. He hadn’t thought he’d been that obvious.

“Clearly you’ve been counting,” Sherlock continued, “the box was slightly rearranged.”

“So how many would you count as solved enough to get a conviction?”

“23 with another 4 that have a high degree of probability.”

Well that tallied with John’s solved case count

“Any estimates about the 35 others?” John was curious if Sherlock had bothered to speculate on any of those cases beyond the basic ‘go look for this evidence’ notation.

“If they find the evidence that I’m postulating exists, 19 of the 38.”

John was confused, “You counting some of Mycroft’s in that bunch?”

“Nope.” Sherlock popped the terminal p, paused then added as an afterthought, “They still have to locate the evidence that indicates there was no crime after all for three of them.”

Ah, John thought. There’s the discrepancy.

Sherlock seemed to be on the verge of saying something else when suddenly his mobile, which was sitting on the table next to the file, went off. He looked at it and then, to John’s surprise, answered it,“I suppose you are going to tell me it wasn’t red.”

Judging by the look surprise on Sherlock’s face, John determined that whatever he had thought Lestrade was calling about was not the purpose of the call at all.

Sherlock was now listening intently and pursing his lips.

“Locked from the inside and nothing on the surveillance camera feed?”

Sherlock nodded, humming at the reply.

“I’ll come and take a look then,” he responded and rang off.

As John had expected Sherlock bounded up from his chair and disappeared into his room to change into something a little less casual. It was only a short while until he was back out again heading for the door presumably to grab his coat and be off. He didn’t make it to the door. Instead he stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the sitting room and turned to look at John, co*cking his head. John was used to what he had long ago mentally labeled the ‘Sherlock Scan.’ He just sat still and let Sherlock see whatever Sherlock saw. There was nothing to do at this point but wait for the inevitable chain of deductions.

“You know anything much about DNA sequencing?” Sherlock asked after he’d looked John up and down.

“That it exists and its rather useful in tying perpetrators to crime scenes among other things.”

“You interested in a tour of one of the newest labs in London?”

John was not quite sure where this was going but replied, “Yes?”

He had been getting a little stir crazy trying not to do too much too fast and a lab tour, presumably involving information on DNA sequencing techniques, didn’t seem like it would be too taxing even if it was at ten o’clock at night. John had taken a longish nap after his physiotherapy appointment earlier that afternoon and wasn’t tired in the slightest.

Sherlock grinned at him and commented, “There’s also a dead body in a locked room.”

John had to grin back as he levered himself out of his chair, “Oh God Yes!”

Chapter 9: DNA and Dust (or lack thereof)

Chapter Text

By the time John made it downstairs a taxi was just pulling up. Sherlock’s ability to get a cab anytime, anywhere in greater London wasn’t magic; John had checked. Londinium’s amusem*nt whenever Sherlock did so, made John suspect that she had something to do with it. Regardless of how often he looked, however, he could never find any direct evidence of her meddling.

John muttered under his breath, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” as he climbed into the cab after Sherlock.

It was both reassuring and a bit surreal to be in a taxi on the way to a crime scene. As usual Sherlock stuck his long nose into his mobile for most of the ride, presumably doing research. He surfaced just as John could see flashing lights up the road.

“Stop at the corner,” Sherlock ordered the cabbie. “You won’t be able to get much closer anyway without getting tied up in the police activity.”

That was another change John had noticed. Sherlock was a bit politer, at least to people who were only providing a service. Thus, the delivery person would be spared extraneous deductions but woe betide to a medical professional who wanted ‘just one more test’ on John, especially if Sherlock had determined that it wasn’t necessary and wouldn’t provide any new information.

Sherlock waited until John had paid the cabbie before remarking, “A circumnavigation of the block appears to be in order.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Security enhancements,” Sherlock replied as he trotted toward the mouth of an alleyway. “BioPeek Labs has just recently acquired an overflow DNA testing contract for the Yard. That requires enhanced security.”

John looked around at the buildings on either side of the alley, “They own or rent the whole block?”

“Nope,” Sherlock replied, “Their premises start here.”

He tapped on the alley wall and John could see the seam where two buildings abutted against each other. He looked up and noted an obvious camera under the eaves. Sherlock, in the meantime had proceeded down the wall to what looked like an emergency exit door with a small awning over it. Some cigarette butts were scattered on the ground.

Sherlock crouched, looked at them and then remarked, “Only 3 individuals, one is either the security guard or the janitor.”

“How can you tell that?”

“It rained this afternoon and was foggy earlier but those,” he pointed at several cigarette butts, “are only a few hours old. They are not wet. BioPeek is not big enough yet to run more than one shift and only security or janitorial staff would be taking a smoke break after business hours.”

Sherlock continued down the alley to the next street. John noticed another camera over the loading dock at the end of the alley as well as one over an emergency door on the main street. They rounded the next corner just in time to see the forensics van pull up next to a panda car parked in front of what clearly was the building’s entrance. There were a set of cameras, one pointing each direction down the street, plainly mounted over the door.

John didn’t know much about security cameras but the ones he’d seen so far didn’t look terribly complex or even new. In fact, the one closest to him had clearly been there for some time as it had streaks of what looked like bird droppings down its sides.

Sherlock noticed his glance up at the camera and remarked, “Distraction. I suspect that they are functional but they are static. The real cameras with enhancements are hidden in the decorative moldings. That half sphere that looks like part of the cornice up under the eves? State of the art 360° camera, probably with zoom capacity; depending on the model it might even have infrared.”

John located the item Sherlock had indicated. The half-sphere indeed had a slight reflection unlike the surrounding decorative stonework. Londinium helpfully gave him an image of a workman on a basket lift installing wiring and a camera housing.

Sherlock, in the time John had taken to look at the camera, had strode up to the door and was impatiently waiting for uniformed officer in the lobby to admit him. John trotted up just as the officer sauntered over to open the door.

The crime scene was in a lab down a hall behind the security desk. The lab itself was used for the NSY contract work as plainly indicated by the label on the glass door. It had what looked to John like a very high-tech card reader. He’d be willing to bet that it logged the time and which card was used whenever the door was unlocked. A rather obvious security camera was aimed at the door from the ceiling. Sherlock just glanced at it, presumably to get a rough estimation of the amount of the lab it could view. Just then Lestrade, who was inside the room, looked up and saw them. He opened the lab door, no key-card needed in this direction John noted; probably fire regulations or some such other safety measure.

The lab wasn’t a very large room. There were a couple of glass fronted refrigerators, each with its own keypad locking mechanism. From the displays John could tell they were meant to keep DNA samples at a precise temperature until they could be sequenced by the large machine that took up the entire back wall. The deceased, judging by the location of the rolling chair, had been sitting at a small desk adjacent to the larger of the two refrigerators and was now face down on the floor.

Lestrade was quick to inform them that the deceased was one Jeffery Monmouth the Chief Operating Officer of BioPeek Labs. He had checked in with the security guard at the front desk at about a bit after 5:30 and entered the lab with his card at 5:49 per the card reader log. According to the guard, Mr. Monmouth had been working at the desk which was not directly visible from the doorway and the hall camera for most of the evening. The guard had indicated that he’d only occasionally seen him moving about in the lab but couldn’t give a distinct time. The guard had first spotted something amiss on the security camera at about 9:22. Thinking that Mr. Monmouth might have become sick, he let himself into the lab only to find the dead body. He immediately phoned the police.

John was a bit confused. Why with all the card readers, cameras and the like, why had Lestrade called Sherlock?

Lestrade noticed his confusion, “It looks like something buggered the security cameras,” he said. “They show images on the front desk monitors where the security guard was but when he tries to access the recordings nothing turns up. We are waiting on BioPeek’s IT guy or the CEO to get into the computer room but I’m not hopeful. All we’ve got so far is the card reader logs. Those were accessible and printed out just fine. We’ve not found anything that could have been used as a weapon yet and we’ve searched everything except the computer room.”

Sherlock made a non-committal ‘humph’ and started to look around the room. John went to the body. The cause of death was obvious, blunt force trauma to the back of the head. There wasn’t any blood but there was evidence of a major blow to the back of the cranium. John couldn’t tell just by looking but it was most likely something rounded like a pipe as opposed to something with a sharp edge which would have broken the skin. Molly might be able to get an impression when she did the autopsy. John looked around to see if he could spot anything that might have been used to cause the damage. Nothing stuck out at him so he looked at Sherlock who was very slowly turning in the middle of the room.

“Too new, too clean,” Sherlock muttered to himself.

He didn’t sound terribly upset, more intrigued as he moved to peer behind one of the refrigerators. A quick look behind the other fridge and the sequencer was followed by another ‘humph.’ A look at the door hinges and under the desk completed Sherlock’s initial circuit of the room. It was clear to John that he wasn’t finding much of anything.

“Dust is eloquent and there isn’t any to speak of here,” Sherlock muttered as he looked at John expectantly.

John knew his cue. “Blunt object, rounded edge, would have taken a lot of force but didn’t kill him instantly. The blow knocked him out of the chair but he probably regained partial consciousness and rolled to his current position before expiring. He’s been dead about 2 to 3 hours give or take.”

Sherlock looked pleased at John’s concise assessment as he knelt to take a closer look at the body.

“No obvious debris from the weapon in the wound,” John noted.

“The autopsy may reveal something,” Sherlock added as he got to his feet again.

John stood too and followed Sherlock over to the desk. There were two sheets of paper and a pen on the desk along with a pile of what looked like printouts. The top paper had a number of blank 3 by 12 cell tables with an occasional handwritten “x” in one square. There were also a number of thick lines drawn from side to side separating the tables into 4 distinct areas. A couple 4-digit numbers were jotted along the side of the page. The second piece of paper was half under the first. It looked almost identical except the number of tables in each of the 4 areas was different and there were no handwritten marks or numbers. The printouts seemed to be a list ID numbers, dates and a second sequence of numbers that looked to John’s eyes like the ones used in the Yard’s case and evidence numbering system.

“1946, 1948, 1950, 2001,” Sherlock read the numbers aloud then looked again at the papers and said, “No.”

John attempted to see what Sherlock had noticed then it suddenly dawned on him.

“19:46, 19:48, 19:50 and 20:01. He was noting down times.”

Sherlock smiled the smile he used whenever John had managed to keep up with his deductive reasoning.

“And locations in the refrigerators,” Sherlock added grabbing the sheet and beckoning to Lestrade. “Find out which cases relate to these samples,” Sherlock indicated the check boxes on the grid and pointed to the corresponding racks of labeled tubes in the cooler. “The samples will be spoiled or adulterated but it should provide a motive.”

“So, Mr. Monmouth was messing with the samples?” Lestrade asked. “They’d lose the Yard’s contract for sure. In all probability they would lose their other contracts as well. It’s a trust issue.”

Sherlock was making his ‘you are clearly an idiot’ face at this question but didn’t have a chance to respond because Sally Donavan opened the lab door with a borrowed key card and said, “IT guy’s here along with the CEO. They opened the server room then almost ended up in a fight. When I figured out what they were arguing over I had them separated and they are now giving initial statements in the lobby.”

“What? Why?” Lestrade started out the door with Sherlock on his heels.

Sally explained, “Near as I can tell from all the technobabble they were spouting is that the reason why we couldn’t get the camera footage is because someone unplugged the computer that was supposed to be storing it.”

“Don’t people have battery backups for those sorts of things?” John asked from his position at the end of the line as they trooped down the hall toward an open doorway near its end.

“Yeah, but apparently someone also switched out the battery thingy for a half dead one that was meant to be binned.”

“Who besides the CEO and the IT guy have keys?” Lestrade asked.

By that time John had arrived and peering around the door could see into the small cold room that contained racks of electronics with wires and cables. There was a shelf-like desk with a monitor and a small computer tower. Under the desk were two square boxes plugged into the wall. One of the boxes had power cords plugged into it while the other had a yellow sticky note attached to its top that read ‘dead’ in block letters.

“Mr. Monmonth allegedly had a set,” Donavan replied. “I suppose they are still in his trouser pocket since we didn’t find them and everything else around here is either key pad or card operated.”

Sherlock had already entered and was quickly examining the room’s contents. John saw him snag something that had been caught at the bottom of one of the equipment racks and then turn to look, but not touch, the boxes under the desk.

“Anything?” Lestrade asked noting Sherlock’s interest under the desk.

“It’s been wiped down,” Sherlock noted, “I can smell the chemicals from the cheap cleaning wipes. The smell is rather distinctive and it lingers.”

Sherlock whirled and started out of the room causing Lestrade and Donavan to scuttle out of his way as he strode back into the hall. He stopped momentarily then focused on a door right at the end of the hall. He turned the knob and opened what clearly was a janitor’s closet. There were shelves full of paper products and cleaning supplies, a wet mop propped up in a wheeled bucket, and a long-handled dust mop. It also had a sink complete with hose attachments to fill the mop bucket as well as a drain basin to empty said bucket.

Sherlock nodded then started in, “The janitor has a key to the server room as evidenced by the pieces of the dust mop caught in the edges of the racks. You don’t use water to clean in a room full of electronics. The wipes on that shelf will match the residue on the UPS cases. The janitor should have some connection to at least one case where there are samples in for testing. If he was really clever it won’t even be one of the cases connected to the adulterated samples. Any botched samples would invalidate the entire batch.” Sherlock paused for a moment then added, “You might want to find the handle for the mop bucket. It’s your murder weapon.”

“I bet he also has a key card for the lab,” Sally stated. “But wouldn’t it have…” she stopped and thought for a moment then resumed, “Monmouth must have let him in. That’s why it didn’t show up on the printout.”

“Well,” said Lestrade, “that’s enough to go on. Sally, get the janitor’s name and address and we’ll bring him in for questioning.” He turned to Sherlock, “Thanks, I know it didn’t turn out to be a hard one but you’ve got us a solid suspect that we can nab before he can pull a runner. I’ll let you know what happens as usual?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock without argument much to John’s surprise. He whirled, coat flaring dramatically and strode off toward the front door with a “coming John?”

John caught up to Sherlock at the end of the block. Instead of hailing a cab Sherlock merely looked over at him and grinned. John knew that grin well. Sherlock was still on the case and he had a lead.

“So, where are we headed?” he asked.

“The Pig and Whistle, our janitor’s local. There was a beer coaster on the shelf in the closet.”

An hour or so later Lestrade had his man under arrest, 90% of the pub’s ‘top shelf’ liquor was on the floor and Sherlock had a bump on his head where had hadn’t been able to dodge a telekinetically tossed bottle. The pub owner had been a bit irate until Sherlock had deduced just how many of the now broken bottles had actually contained generic substitutes instead of the pricy brands indicated on the labels.

“So,” John said as they settled into their respective chairs at Baker Street, “I understand the pub but why did you think he would go there?”

Sherlock grinned, “Once I saw the janitor’s closet and deduced the timing it all fell into place.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you thought he’d go to the pub.”

“Monmouth entered the lab at 17:49 according to the keycard reader printout. The lab had been cleaned before he arrived as evidenced by the faint smell of cleaning solution and the list of the cleaning rotation posted on the wall of the janitor’s closet. Since there was no record of the janitor on the card reader he must have been let in by the workers as they left around 17:00 and was done before 17:30 when Monmouth came in. The Janitor continued his rounds but didn’t notice that Mr. Monmouth was in the lab as he was cleaning the back offices and the server room, unplugging the computer and switching out the UPS battery packs to disable the recording system. He then took a break at about 19:45 and smoked two cigarettes out back which conveniently happens to be located directly on the other side of the wall where the lab refrigerators sit. The refrigerators are visible on the camera from the door which, of course, is why he needed to disable the recording. He did his little telekinetic tampering with the samples then reentered the building only to note that Mr. Monmouth had been in the lab the whole time and had watched the whole thing. He panicked for a bit but realized that he’d left the handle for the mop bucket sitting in the lab because it had broken off when he was cleaning in there. He finished the last bit of his cleaning elsewhere in the building then went clocked out as usual but went around back, smoked a third cigarette and telekinetically bashed Mr. Monmouth over the head with the broken mop bucket handle. The broken mop handle was then hidden under the refrigerator. Our culprit went off to the pub as usual certain he’d only given his employer just enough of headache so his observations would be suspect. At best Mr. Monmouth would doubt what he saw, at worst it would be put down as someone out to mess up whatever NSY cases related to the tampered with samples.”

“It still might have worked,” John noted, “but for the fact that Mr. Monmouth had been jotting down the location and times when he saw the samples move. If he’d thought to hide his power and not panicked again when you started asking him questions about what he may have seen at work we’d be attempting to find some random telekinetic with a tie to one of the cases.” John had to smile a bit, “You know for someone with such fine control to dump stuff into test tubes, it’s amazing that his aim was so bad when he started flinging all the bottles around.”

The janitor had actually been quite accurate with his telekinetic tossing. John, however, had been better. A magical nudge here and there, no sling ring required, allowed him to divert most of the bottles slightly and keep them from causing serious injury. Sherlock had only been bumped because he’d literally ducked into the path of a bottle that John had redirected from smashing into the bartender’s face. At that point John had decided to stop the flying glassware entirely with a strategically placed punch.

Sherlock nodded in agreement then asked, “How did you know that disrupting his concentration would stop the mayhem?”

“I didn’t, but I figured it was worth a shot. The next step would have been to knock him completely out.”

“Ah,” was all Sherlock said.

They sat and finished their tea in a companionable silence. All in all, John thought, it hadn’t been a bad first case out. Maybe even blog worthy if he could come up with a suitable title.

Chapter 10: Hypothesis and Analysis

Chapter Text

After that first case, which John titled ‘Cleaning Things Up’ on his blog, life got back to normal. Well as normal, John thought, as life ever got when you were living with and at least attempting to keep secrets from Sherlock Holmes.

Some secrets were relatively easy to keep. The katas he used to keep in shape mentally, physically, and magically were easily passed off as a tai chi like martial art he’d picked up when he was in the east. Stephen’s updated ‘uniform’ was explained as a Karate Gi equivalent. Sherlock hadn’t batted an eye when he started exercising in the back garden. He’d merely watched John off and on and then commented that when John felt up to it he’d like to have a sparring session. Bits of random arcane knowledge were also easily attributed to things he’d run into either from his time abroad or as a result of research done to expedite the sale of the charity’s London property.

Sherlock had, of course, deduced that John had developed his own group of relatively skittish informants which compared favorably with Sherlock’s own homeless network. Sherlock appeared to consider John’s group as an adjunct to his pre-existing network, albeit one that would only talk to John. John had been de-facto adopted by the homeless network when he’d arrived back in London and Sherlock seemed to think that eventually John’s informants would consent to talk to him eventually as well.

Slipping off when Sherlock was otherwise engaged wasn’t really an option, however, mentioning checking in with his ‘network’ was instantly an acceptable excuse. This allowed John to access the sanctum for a bit or to investigate arcane happenings when necessary. At such times he was also very careful to avoid Mycroft’s surveillance measures. Since most of John’s informants were either too low powered, unstable, or otherwise not inclined to work for MI-13, meant that Mycroft was not terribly interested in them. This had been confirmed one time just prior to Sherlock’s return when Mycroft quasi-kidnapped him for lunch. Mycroft had asked in passing if there was anyone John know whom he would recommend as appropriate for governmental employment and politely took ‘no’ as an answer. Given the look on Mycroft’s face when he did so indicated to John that his response was merely a confirmation of Mycroft’s own assessment. Still, it was better for all involved for John to at least attempt to keep ‘his psychics’ off the radar of the British Government.

What was harder to conceal were the insights that Londinium sometimes gave him when they were on a case. The Bishopgate jewelry heist had been one of those. There was no way in heck John could have explained how he knew that the dressing table actually had a hidden mechanism to allow the jewelry case portion to be rotated and replaced with an exact replica, sans the jewelry. Londinium had helpfully shown John an image of the mechanism, which had been a design feature in this particular piece of furniture dating from the 1800’s. Unfortunately, there was no way to easily trigger the mechanism by accidentally leaning on it, bumping it or something similar. The best John could do in that situation was to comment on the age of the dressing table and make a joke about how he’d found Victorian era furniture was hard to move because you never knew if that odd ornamental bit which wiggled was just old and in danger of breaking off or the start of some obscure sequence to open a secret drawer. Luckily that comment was enough to get Sherlock to look closely at the table itself and once he did, finding the hidden mechanism was only a matter of time.

After that first case, John had quickly determined that he didn’t really need to go back to locum work even if he was physically able to do so. Once the blog was active again the private, read paying, cases flooded in. John quickly found himself as full time assistant and chronicler. They ended up developing an official fee schedule to help weed out the truly trivial. They even hired a part time book keeper and renting 221c from Ms. Hudson as a laboratory cum office. From time to time they consulted for the Yard, usually for a minimal consultant fee. In fact, the only real issue regarding not working, as far as John was concerned, was keeping his medical license active. He found a solution by working physician at one of the homeless shelters a couple days a week. It not only solved that issue but it made keeping in touch with the homeless network easier expedited his ability to investigate things arcane all on his own.

******

It was some eight months later that John started looking back at the cases and counting just how many of them contained what he considered ‘powered’ elements like the first one with the telekinesis. John didn’t really know what triggered his curiosity. It could have been the increased visibility of what the tabloids liked to call superpowered individuals, both ‘heroes’ and ‘villains,’ along with the inevitable clashes between same. It could have been the fact that he was well aware that while the ‘Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’^tm were grabbing headlines worldwide, there was a lot of stuff being quietly and professionally handled by MI-13 behind the scenes. Regardless of the trigger, the data seemed to show that a good portion of the 8’s or better, using Sherlock’s scale of interesting, seemed to involve such powers in one fashion or another.

“We seem to be getting involved in more cases involving superpowers lately,” he remarked to Sherlock one evening as they were watching a news report on the Avenger’s latest triumph.

“It would not be surprising to me if we are,” Sherlock replied absently still focused on the news report.

“I really don’t think I have enough of a sample to determine if it’s a trend or just skewed data that will even out eventually,” John noted.

Sherlock looked at him, “I suspect that it is more a result of the type of cases I find interesting. We tend to investigate the bizarre and seemingly inexplicable ones both in our private clients and for the Yard. These are the cases where it is not easy to tell if something is merely clever or if it happens to involve precognition, pyrokinetic abilities or some other so-called superpower. Eliminating the impossible will always leave, regardless of improbability, the truth; be it mundane, happenstance or some other reason.”

“But when only .001% of the population is estimated to even have such powers, that means there would be only 670 people in the entire country, give or take, with power. We’ve had 10 cases in the last eight months which technically involved ‘superpowers.’ Even accounting for your selection criteria, the odds of us running into that many people are still a bit high.”

“Wrong!” Sherlock drawled with a slight grin on his face.

“Wrong what?” John snapped back at him. “I counted!”

“Wrong percentage.”

“Oh?”

“While Professor Xavier’s work on the so called ‘X’ gene is the seminal authority I suspect his hypothesis is a bit simplistic to explain the entire spectrum of powers.”

“Really? I suppose you have a better one?” John asked, curious.

“Not one that would be easily provable,” Sherlock admitted.

“O.K., let’s hear it.”

“You know I don’t theorize ahead of facts, John.”

“Come on, it’s not like I’m going to publish it on the blog. Besides you said it’s a hypothesis, those are meant to be proposed then proved or disproved by research. How do you even know what to look for if you don’t state the proposition up front?”

Sherlock steepled his fingers under his chin, “I have not given it much thought since I originally formulated it, given the extreme difficulty of proof in the matter.”

Given the look on Sherlock’s face, John settled in. Whatever Sherlock had come up with was sure to be interesting. Given his track record it was also liable to be, if not completely correct, at least more correct than what was currently considered fact.

“Professor Xavier’s research hypothesizes that there is a gene or gene sequence mutation in some humans which, when present, creates superpowers. Given the variability in the genome of superpowered individuals he hasn’t been able to separate the so called ‘X gene’ from the secondary mutations that are the result of the expression of superpowers.”

“So, the changes in skeletal and muscular density found in people with super-strength actually go down to the genetic level?” John asked.

“Exactly,” Sherlock replied, “and they vary from individual to individual depending upon what other powers they happen to have.”

“I seem to remember that Xavier also indicated that the super-soldier serum from World War II and things like Dr. Banner’s lab accident either created an artificial ‘X gene’ mutation or something with a similar effect. I suppose you could compare them to, for lack of a better term, ‘natural’ expression of the genetic trait involved in the secondary mutation,” John thought for a moment, “But if those secondary mutations are similarly all over the board you’d need to not only sequence a good number of superpowered individuals but also categorize their powers to even attempt to find the underlying gene.”

“I suspect that the Xavier Institute is already working on that. The results will clearly be interesting if they actually find some common mutation in all the powered individuals,” Sherlock’s tone implied that he found some sort of flaw in that line of research.

“But…” John prompted.

“In humans, most of the variation in genetic expression comes in a range. Even something as relatively simple as eye or hair color results in a diversity of results. When you get to something as complex as intelligence you inherently have a natural range, Mycroft and myself for example in comparison to Anderson. However, the end result where someone falls in the range is also altered by training.

“Probably more akin to athletic ability,” John mused. “Just because someone has extreme athletic gifts doesn’t necessarily make them good at rugby or tennis unless they work at it. Someone with a decent amount of athleticism could also excel but it might take them longer to train things up so to speak.”

Sherlock continued, “I would hypothesize that Xavier’s ‘X gene’ is actually something present to a greater or lesser extent in everyone. The only difference is the amount present and the extent to which it has been activated.”

“So, to use your hypothesis, Dr. Banner would have a large amount of this hypothetical ‘X-factor’ and the lab accident that created the Hulk supercharged it?”

“Yep,” Sherlock popped the terminal p.

“But how does that explain the number of superpower involved cases?”

“If this ‘X-factor’, as you called it, is present in everyone to a greater or lesser degree and can be influenced by practice there clearly are people who have taken it upon themselves to train their power. We are starting to see more of such people because until recently they didn’t attribute any so called ‘talent’ they had to anything specific, passing it off as luck or some such. Now that superpowers are known to be possible they are more likely to investigate and see if whatever anomaly they possess is indeed a power.”

John thought about this for a moment in terms of Sorcery. The basic techniques taught in Kamar-Taj were accessible by most anyone because they relied on devices and incantations to pull energy across the boundaries between dimensions. Eventually one could learn to channel and/or pull such energies without the devices. The training, of course, came easier to some than others. In addition, some people were good at one type of manipulation while abysmal at others. John’s intermittent at best aim with sling-ring portals as a case in point. If Sherlock was correct then the aptitude for Sorcery was a manifestation of the same thing that created superpowers.

John realized he’d been silent for a bit too long and hurriedly added, “Well that tallies with what a couple of psychics have told me. I’ve heard a number of them assert that any mystic power must be used or it is lost.”

“Indeed. Of course, attempting to prove the hypothesis without a huge sampling of individuals ranging from the completely mundane to the insanely powerful would be futile. That doesn’t even consider the possibility suggested by the anecdotal evidence that there is more than one way to acquire superpowers.”

John snorted, “Looking for a needle in a haystack doesn’t even begin to cover the complexity and costs involved.”

“Add in the fact that every government since World War II has been attempting to develop some sort of ‘super-soldier’ drug with the number of known successes in the single digits and its clear that the answer is not going to be as simple as a single gene or even a gene complex that turns on and off,” Sherlock added only to be interrupted by an incoming text message.

He read it and grinned, “Speaking of the bizarre, Lestrade has a modern body apparently interred in an apparently unopened ancient burial site. Interested?”

“Yes!” John replied.

Life was good.

******

Of course, as soon as life seemed relatively stable that was when everything went crazy again. John would have suspected another attempt to lock him in a mirror dimension except that it was so sudden and drastic there was no way in heck he would have missed the physical sensations that resulted from crossing into that realm. No, flying aircraft carriers crashing into the Potomac River and flattening the headquarters of SHIELD, were all too real. What also was real was the absolute deluge of formerly secret documents dumped onto the internet indicating that the nemesis of the long thought vanquished HYDRA was still present. Of course such a multi-headed conspiracy had survived and thrived as a 6^th column inside a variety of places, most notably SHIELD itself.

Sherlock ended up pressed into service with John as his aide-de-camp to help Mycroft determine the extent to which the Secret Intelligence Services were compromised. Despite Sherlock’s grumbling about ‘indentured servitude’ and ‘blackmailing elder siblings’ it didn’t take too long to determine that MI-13 had not been infiltrated. Sherlock opined that its relatively recent reconstitution from scratch and the presence of a high-powered telepath in its upper echelon made planting a mole therein a difficult proposition at best.

MI-6 was determined to have little infiltration and then only at the lowest levels. This was because they had a relatively young Quartermaster from whom no data that in any way touched the internet was safe. Once the existence of HYDRA had been confirmed he and his team had run additional security screenings on every MI-6 employee using not only the existing protocols but also allegedly a number of grey and black hat hacking and data mining techniques.

MI-5 was the most infested but it still only had mid to low level plants, mostly in the agent ranks. Between Sherlock and Mycroft these were identified. Of course, once the initial screening was complete each agency checked the others work. That netted a few more names, mostly in the ranks of subsidiary personnel and contractors. All in all, it seemed that HYDRA had not been too worried about the British, preferring to focus on the Americans.

“At least something good had come out of the fall of the British Empire,” Sherlock had snarked when they had realized this.

Once the initial ‘housecleaning’ was complete John expected that he and Sherlock would be released back to their normal consulting business. That didn’t happen as quickly as he expected. It seemed that all the analysists for the various intelligence services, themselves included, were to be let loose on the internet information dump to glean whatever they could from the mountain of data.

Sherlock had quickly determined that much of the documentation was not new information per-se but instead provided linkage between allegedly unrelated events. John, however, was confused. Why, he wondered, had the SIS not discovered at least some of the connections given the caliber of the people working on various issues. Surely someone would have noted the existence of concurrence between seemingly unrelated events even if the causality was not initially suspected.

Sherlock, when John asked, asserted that the reason no one had seen the full scope and thus deduced HYDRA’s involvement was that the services were in effect trying to assemble an unknown number of jigsaw puzzles simultaneously with a large number of pieces missing from each. That didn’t even factor in the intergovernmental ‘turf wars’ which hid some of the pieces from other agencies. Now, he noted, the document dump had provided a good portion of the missing pieces. Figuring out what pieces went where was still going to be highly tedious and, in Sherlock’s opinion, not terribly interesting.

Sherlock had managed to extract the two of them from the intelligence analysis operation, despite Mycroft’s efforts to keep him involved, when the other shoe dropped. The MI-6 Quartermaster, colloquially known as Q, had decided to run some deep scans and anti-encryption software of his own devising on the document database as a whole. What he uncovered was concerning to say the least.

The so called ‘Project Insight’ had been billed to various governments and the World Security Counsel as an early warning system to identify and surveil potential terrorist threats and super-powered villains before they could cause too much havoc. The document dump had revealed that it was also a sophisticated targeting system for such threats. Now, the newly unencrypted information revealed that HYDRA had plans to use the latter part of the program to eliminate anyone and everyone whom might pose a threat to them. What Q had found was a basically a list along with some analysis regarding those individuals whom HYDRA considered threats to one degree or another. It even had a hierarchal classification system complete with criteria for each category.

Grade A threats were people like the Avengers, Professor Xavier, and a number of world leaders along with others who had significant influence in one sphere or another. These threats were considered dangerous enough for rapid elimination. Grade B threats seemed to be people who could cause HYDRA problems but could be neutralized. Grade C threats were people whom HYDRA seemed to think might either be ‘converted to the cause’ or at a minimum convinced to remain neutral. There was even some analysis regarding various people who had not yet been officially assigned to a threat category. Mycroft’s cover as a ‘mere bureaucrat’ had held and earned him mention as a Grade C threat. Sherlock, however, was considered as a potential addition to the Grade B list. Surprisingly, John had been tentatively identified as a potential Grade A threat.

John discovered the latter information by the simple expedient of walking in on an argument between Mycroft and Sherlock. John had long ago learned that the louder and snarkier the argument between the brothers the less important the underlying issue would be. This particular argument was quite serious indeed because it had degenerated into monosyllabic non-sequiturs accompanied by minute facial expressions and body language. They were so involved in the argument they hadn’t even registered his presence. John banged one of the Tesco bags of groceries he was carrying on the door jamb as he entered the sitting room. Both brothers turned immediately to look at him. Mycroft’s expression was highly analytical, as if John were a new and interesting specie of bug. Sherlock was harder to read but John thought he saw a flash concern, maybe even fear, in his expression.

“What?” he asked in response to the stares.

“John,” Mycroft asked, “would you happen to know why HYDRA would consider you a potential Class A threat when Sherlock is identified as only a potential Class B?”

Thinking fast John shrugged and continued onto the kitchen with the groceries. Of course, both Mycroft and Sherlock trailed along behind.

“I didn’t think I was on the HYDRA threat list” he said to stall.

“Nope,” as usual Sherlock popped the terminal P. “Q found more encrypted files with bits and pieces of profiles, miscellaneous personal evaluations and a bunch of half-finished assessments.”

"Yours along with Sherlock’s were more complete than most of the others,” Mycroft added.

John processed this information. “Might not be me directly,” he remarked conversationally as he started to unload the groceries. “Might be more a who I know type thing.”

Sherlock hmphed in apparent agreement, “Stephen Strange is on the Class A list.”

“I doubt that would be enough, brother mine,” Mycroft commented without taking his eyes off John.

“Well, I do also have the private phone numbers and e-mail for at least 3 of the Avengers.”

“What?” Sherlock said at exactly the same time Mycroft intoned “Really?”

John kept his attention on putting away the groceries and continued, “Uh-huh. In New York after the invasion Dr. Banner was seriously helpful in jury rigging a good portion of the medical diagnostic equipment we set up in the hospital parking lot for the triage unit. I kept in touch when I was in Nepal and have picked his brains a few times since.”

John glanced at the brothers as he shoved items into the refrigerator. Sherlock was looking a bit amused now while Mycroft had reverted to his usual stoic demeanor.

“Early on in the clean-up I went out a few times with Captain Rogers to provide medical support as his team was rescuing people from partially collapsed structures,” he added. “We all ended up with each other’s phone numbers because Stark did something to keep our communications out of both the emergency frequencies and off the overloaded cellular system.”

John paused as a though struck him, “Since Mr. Stark did the programming he definitely has my mobile number even if I don’t have his.”

Finished, John closed the refrigerator door and turned to face them.

“Of course, Ms. Romanoff was rather impressed by my strategic use of a backhoe during the invasion itself.”

“And she gave you her phone number in the middle of a battle?” Mycroft asked with a note of incredulity.

John smirked, “No, not then. We ran into each other when she came to retrieve Dr. Banner from the hospital one day. We discussed a variety of weaponry and its effectiveness on the Chitahuri armor while he finished up what he was doing. We exchanged numbers then. She dropped by the Hospital after the Battle of Greenwich with enough tea, coffee, and pastries to caffeinate and provide a sugar high to the entire A&E staff. We didn’t talk much. She just said she was partially balancing her ledger from New York and disappeared again.”

“Interesting,” said Mycroft.

Sherlock didn’t say anything and John couldn’t quite interpret the look that flickered across his face. It might have been surprise but John wasn’t sure.

“You will, of course, let me know if she shows up again?” Mycroft continued.

“Given your surveillance capacity you’ll probably know before I do,” John quipped.

Sherlock snorted, “Given Ms. Romanoff’s purported skills I suspect that she could evade even the best of Mycroft’s minions.”

Mycroft shot his brother a sour look but refrained from commenting.

“I will,” John agreed in the interest of getting Mycroft out of the flat before another round of sniping between the brothers commenced.

Mycroft looked directly at Sherlock then raising an eyebrow and co*cking his head.

“Yes,” Sherlock replied then added clearly for John’s benefit, “If we figure out anything else that might justify that potential threat assessment we’ll let you know.”

Mycroft dropped his chin in acknowledgement, turned on his heel and headed for the flat door collecting his ever-present umbrella from the sitting room on the way.

Chapter 11: The New Normal

Chapter Text

John was a bit surprised that after six months of working for the Government that he and Sherlock still had a consulting business to return to. One of his many tasks during that period had been sorting through the messages, letters and e-mails that had not been put off by the automatic ‘We are not taking any new cases at this time’ messages that he’d instructed their part time office help/book keeper to send out. Most of the persistent inquiries ended up referred either to the police or to certain people that Sherlock deemed ‘not entirely idiots.’ The remainder were politely told to bugger off and a select few were subject to a scathing Sherlockian reply. Despite his fears however, paying cases seemed to magically start appearing again as soon as he put up a new blog entry announcing that they were back to taking new clients.

Life in 221b didn’t quite settle back into its former pattern. One reason was that they still were retained as governmental consultants. That meant that Mycroft, or more often one of his minions, would drop off a flash drive every so often for Sherlock to peruse and see if there was any additional information to be gleaned. Sherlock did the bulk of the work but John would also take a look and ask questions which, more likely than not, would set Sherlock off on another tack entirely. Despite that, it usually didn’t take them long to peruse the information provided and formulate a reply, most often in the form of suggestions for additional avenues of investigation. Given that these consulting jobs inevitably arrived just as Sherlock was getting bored John figured Mycroft was actively timing them. Just how he was doing so was unclear. The flat was not bugged. Not only had they searched it thoroughly but also Sherlock had traded some of his time to the MI-6 Quartermaster in exchange for a rather nifty gadget that detected electronic eves dropping devices. John eventually put it down to good old-fashioned human intelligence; an astute analyst putting two and two together from the CCTV street surveillance and their protective detail.

Another reason life didn’t quite bump along as it had was after the revelation that John had almost been on HYDRA’s “to be eliminated” list, Sherlock had been acting strange; well, stranger than normal. From the start of their association, John had noticed that Sherlock was more tactile with John than with anyone else. During John’s recovery from the coma there had been an additional amount of closeness necessarily required as Sherlock had stepped up to provide much of the physical assistance he had needed. That closeness had morphed into something like a language of touch between the two of them. A brush of a hand here, squeeze of an arm there, a bump of the hip when walking was a way of checking in physically and assessing the other’s mental state. After the revelation about HYDRA Sherlock seemed to drastically increase the amount of these tactile check ins. In addition, the duration and type of touch seemed to shift from a momentary reassurance into something a bit more lingering.

This shift was a bit concerning. With anyone else except Sherlock, John would have assumed the behavior indicated a desire for more intimacy. He’d assumed long ago that Sherlock was completely asexual. Now with this new development he wasn’t so sure. Maybe he was demi-sexual. It would fit the increasing touch intimacy along with the bouts of intently studying John when he thought John wasn’t looking. It would also fit Londinium’s showing him an image of Sherlock with a wistful look on his face that seemed to have at least a tinge of desire in it. After receiving that particular image on a couple of occasions, John decided that he would experiment a bit and actively reciprocate Sherlock’s behavior. However, he also vowed to himself that he wouldn’t escalate without some sort of direct indication that Sherlock was completely on board with the idea.

The net result over the next couple of months was highly illuminating as far as John was concerned. Given how quickly Sherlock adapted to the increasing physical closeness John concluded that at the absolute minimum the man had been touch starved for most of his adult life. He also discovered that Sherlock would not only eat but also sleep on a more reasonable schedule, even while working a case, if John simply touched him while he did so. Outside the flat they behaved as much as they had previously; a bump of the hand here, a brush of shoulders there accompanied by a grin or shared look. According to Greg Lestrade every time they engaged in a one of their bits of non-verbal communication on a crime scene the ‘Are they shagging and if so when did it start’ betting pool at the yard ended up with another infusion of cash. It was currently large enough that all the betting pool participants, both current and past, had agreed that any proceeds would be split with half going to the winner and the other half to the yard’s benevolent fund.

All in all, John was quite happy with the situation as is it was developing and not even the Avenger’s caused disaster in Sokovia was enough to dampen his mood for long. Everything seemed to be going along swimmingly until Stephen rang him up one day while he was at the homeless shelter’s small clinic.

“Have you been keeping up with the Powered Individuals Treaty negotiations?” Stephen started in as usual without any chit chat or other social niceties.

“Only peripherally. Why?”

“I acquired a copy of the latest draft. It looks like most anyone with a so called ‘power’ will be subject to the provisions.”

John waived at the receptionist and mimed that the call would take a bit so she should hold off on his next patient.

“Including us?” John asked in a low voice as he shut the exam room door behind himself.

“Not specifically, it mostly talks about innate power rather than learned techniques.”

“Why do I hear an incipient ‘but’ in your voice?”

“Well it defines ‘power’ rather broadly. Stark has a press release out that he considers the treaty to be applicable to himself as well as to other highly trained people with specialized skill sets.”

“Like Barton and Romanoff?” John asked.

“He didn’t name names but yes,” Stephen concurred and continued, “The structure is pretty simple. Anyone with the power to cause destruction like Sokovia is going to either need to be part of an officially recognized organization under the treaty or to sign and place themselves directly under U.N control.”

" Not everyone is on board with this I imagine.”

Stephen snorted, “Rogers doesn’t see the need for oversight, especially considering the SHIELD debacle, and has publicly clashed with Stark over the issue. Given his history and recent statements I suspect he’ll refuse to sign.

“Lovely,” John pinched the bridge of his nose, “So what’s the plan for us?”

“We stay under the radar until we can’t anymore. At that point we become an officially accountable organization under the treaty and offer up a few persons, myself included as figureheads. Then we lawyer up to keep the rank and file mostly unknown.”

“I’m assuming that as a Sanctum head I’ll be one of those figureheads.”

“I hope it will not come to that,” Stephen admitted. “If we can manage to contain our activities to the planes and avoid trashing cities like Lagos or the random small country we can probably avoid much of the notoriety.”

“That still puts a target on you once word gets out that you are the ‘Sorcerer Supreme’”

“It’s already out there if you know what you are looking for. Hell, the HYDRA documents practically outed me with their ‘hit list’ so my days of anonymity are numbered if not gone completely. Besides, I might as well have put up a metaphysical neon sign over my head due to the clash with Doramamu for anyone with the proper senses to see it.” Stephen’s voice sounded annoyed. “I’ve already had a few people tell me that I ‘radiate’ at least half a mile in any direction. What I really need is some sort of forgetfulness spell that would make folks discount the connection,” he mused. “Maybe the library has something like that.”

“Well, once you’ve exhausted the Kamr Taj and New York libraries you are welcome to whatever I have here,” John offered. “There’s a lot of strange stuff in the London Sanctum.”

“I’ll probably take you up on …,” there was some sort of crash that echoed down the line. “I have to go,” Stephen said shortly and rung off.

From that point on John started to follow the negotiations on what was quickly becoming known in the popular press as the Sokovia Accords. Sherlock, of course, noticed his interest but didn’t comment on it until the final negotiations in Vienna were bombed right as the Accords were about to be signed.

“It will,” Sherlock remarked as they watched the footage of the carnage on the television, “be interesting to see who they attempt to frame for this.”

“Frame?” John asked.

“It is a power play meant to get the public firmly on the side of the Accords. Anyone who doesn’t go along and sign the accords after this event will be ostracized and labeled rogues.”

“That means they would most likely have to go underground to avoid persecution.”

“Indeed. I also expect that some of our more enterprising lawbreakers will attempt to shift the blame to such individuals to cover up their own activities.”

“Oh wonderful. Another round of cases where everyone assumes the superpower did it and doesn’t bother to look for physical evidence to the contrary.”

Sherlock’s voice dripped sarcasm, “One can hope that some of the esteemed members of the yard learned a bit from the last time.”

“I’m not going to hold my breath,” John smiled.

Of course, Sherlock had been correct. Not more than two days later the press was blaming the Winter Soldier for the attack. There were even some grainy security footage showing the Soldier in the vicinity of the Vienna International Center during the time the bomb had allegedly been planted.

Sherlock had taken one look at the publicly released footage and scoffed.

“That’s not the Winter Soldier,” he said authoritatively.

“Really?”

“Look at the way he moves. The Soldier’s mechanical arm is quite a bit heavier than flesh so he has to compensate in the set of his shoulders and his back. Whoever did this was good with disguise but they didn’t account for the weight.”

Now that Sherlock had pointed it out, John could see the difference.

“It also doesn’t fit his normal modus operandum,” Sherlock continued.

“Oh?”

“It is obvious that the references to ‘The Asset’ in the HYDRA files were to the Winter Soldier. Much to the chagrin of his handlers they could never really get The Asset to engage in large scale destruction where there would be massive civilian casualties. He would always find a way to take out the minimum number of people possible to achieve the stated objective. They finally just gave up and started using him primarily as an assassin of protected targets. This kind of carnage just doesn’t match his profile.”

“Should we tell someone?” John asked.

“Mycroft already knows,” Sherlock asserted. “He would have seen the same thing I did in the footage. Couple that with his extensive knowledge of the intelligence information on the Soldier the conclusion is inevitable.”

“Well I hope they don’t end up cornering him. With his skill set he could cause a lot of damage.”

“Even if they did manage to catch him I doubt they’d be able to hold him for long without some extra-ordinary precautions,” Sherlock mused.

“Imagine the carnage he would cause breaking out,” John added.

That conversation, John would later recall, proved to be prophetic when the Winter Soldier was cornered in Bucharest by a German GSG9 unit on loan to the Romanian government. He was eventually captured with the help of a new superhero, Black Panther, and sent to Berlin where there were facilities which allegedly were equipped to hold him. Given the fact that he broke out less than 24 hours later pretty much proved that the Joint Counter Terrorist Center really wasn’t a good location to hold superpowered individuals.

At this point it was clear that the Sokovia accords had caused a major rift between the most visible of the superheroes. Stark and his Iron Man suit was clearly on one side of the issue and Captain America on the other. It all came to a head a couple of days after the Winter Soldier’s breakout with a major superhero fight at the Leipzig-Halle Airport southwest of Berlin. Luckily the airport had been evacuated prior to the fight so while the property damage was extensive there was no loss of civilian life.

Surprisingly after the showdown at the airport things seemed to calm down and get back to normal, or what could pass as the new normal in a world rife with superpowered individuals. Most of the so-called superheroes either signed the Sokovia Accords on their own behalf or became officially part of an organization that adhered to the Accords. The Avengers was the most well-known of these organizations but many countries who had official entities employing powered individuals such as MI-13 also quietly signed on. Wakanda was a bit of an anomaly in that regard. The Black Panther entity was clearly in the superhero category. However since he was, in actuality, their King they claimed diplomatic immunity as a ‘head of state’ on his behalf and refused to sign. There was some grumbling about that. But given the Panther’s known abilities and Wakanda’s superior technology, no-one really wanted to push the issue too strongly.

Contrary to Sherlock’s prediction the next few months did not bring a huge increase in crime being blamed on superpowers. It seemed that NSY had learned its lesson from the initial spate of crimes that were blamed on superpowers and proceeded to rely on the evidence rather than mere speculation by a witness that whatever they said they saw was a manifestation of power as opposed to something mundane. It also didn’t hurt that MI-13 now had a set of liaison officers who worked with the police. That particular innovation had been the brainchild and a rather early action of the new head of MI-13, one Peter Wisdom.

Mr. Wisdom had been appointed just before the Vienna bombing and was credited with obtaining a Sokovia Accords certification for MI-13 in an expedited fashion. John figured that the whole appointment thing had been engineered to not only keep Mycroft and his influence in the shadows but also to allow him to avoid the dreaded ‘legwork’ involved in actually running an intelligence agency. Not that Mr. Wisdom was not eminently qualified to head up MI-13. Public reports indicated that he’d been quietly working for the Government in an organizational capacity for quite some time. In addition, according to John’s psychic network, he was some sort of telekinetic who threw power bolts or maybe knives that flamed with arcane energy. Londinium seemed to think it was the latter but hadn’t experienced his powers directly and thus couldn’t get a good read on them. Regardless of his powers he proved to be a capable administrator and an acceptable public face as the head of MI-13.

As near as John could tell the liaison program had been one of Mr. Wisdom’s earliest decisions even though it took a few months to find the appropriate people to fill the positions. The liaisons, at least the ones John knew or had heard about, were usually moderately psychic with some sort of divination abilities, most often precognition or retrocognition. The liaison directly assigned to the Yard, for example, had a bit of psychometry paired with clairvoyance which meant that she only had to touch something to tell if had been moved with a superpower or had just been affected by something normal such as a freak gust of wind.

John had been apprehensive the first time Lela, the Yard’s MI-13 liaison, and Sherlock had ended up at the same crime scene. After a few snarky backhanded comments between the two, which reminded John of two cats trying unsuccessfully to ignore each other while occupying the same general vicinity, they seemed to suddenly come to some sort of agreement over who had what territory so to speak. After that first instance in fact, Sherlock was likely to insist that Lestrade call her in if he deduced that a power might be in play. Similarly Lela, when she determined that something was primarily mundane in origin but not blatantly obvious, had been known to turn to the DI involved and politely suggest that he or she give Sherlock a call.

Once again, life seemed to be poised to settle into a predictable pattern for John.

Chapter 12: A Change in Relations

Chapter Text

Predictable pattern; what predictable pattern? In reality, the only things predictable about John’s life was his living arrangement with Sherlock and cases. It was therefore unsurprising that one of the later caused a great upheaval in the status of the former.

It wasn’t even one of NSY’s cases to start with. A private client, a rather large charitable fund, had hired them to determine if some particular discrepancies in fund expenditures were merely the result of mismanagement or some sort of embezzlement or fraud. It became an NSY case when someone attempted to murder the only member of staff, outside the chief financial officer, who knew that they’d been hired to look into things. Robyn Herosan, the staff, member, would have expired but for the fact that John and Sherlock had been scheduled to meet her and just had happened to arrive before she could bleed out on the floor of her office. John managed to get her stabilized and into an ambulance while Sherlock had brought Lestrade up to speed after he’d arrived at the scene. An hour or so later, after perusing the records that Ms. Herosan had dug up for them, Sherlock deduced the embezzler.

It turned out to be none other than the financial officer’s on-again off-again boyfriend, one Paul Foran, who had been embezzling funds in small amounts; disguising the thefts as the purchase of office supplies. He’d managed it by hacking into his love interest’s computer whenever he could lay his hands on it. Although, as Sherlock noted, it wasn’t really hacking when the password for same was clearly written on a post it note stuck to the inside of the desk drawer. Since Lestrade was still on site, he trailed along in their wake to question Foran just in case he happened to turn out to also be the attempted murderer.

It had been a good thing that Lestrade had tagged along to confront Foran. He had indeed been Ms. Herosan’s attacker. Unfortunately, he had, completely by chance seen Sherlock and John meeting with Ms. Herosan earlier in the week and had put two and two together. Realizing that his source of extra income was in serious jeopardy Paul had stolen his boyfriend’s keys and was attempting to plant a virus which would wipe out the entire office computer system. He’d entered the office just before they had been scheduled to meet Ms. Herosan. Even then he might have avoided a confrontation but for the fact that he was attempting to plant the virus using Ms. Herosan’s desktop computer in an attempt to frame her. Thus, when Ms. Herosan had walked in he had panicked, stabbed her with the ornate letter opener that had been laying on the desk and left her to die. Of course, when Sherlock, John and Lestrade turned up at the Chief Financial Officer’s flat Foran, who had been raiding his lover’s stash of emergency cash, had taken a runner out the back door. The resulting chase took them near the Battersea Bridge.

John was in the lead for once when Foran cut across the street and headed out onto the Bridge. He ran right into an area where the pavement and railing were barricaded off for repairs. John was preparing to tackle Foran when the man suddenly stopped, grabbed a piece of barricade and swung it straight at John’s head. John side stepped but he was not quite quick enough and the wooden plank hit him directly on the scar tissue of his bad shoulder. That in and of itself wouldn’t have been too bad but the resulting pain caused John to stagger, trip over a traffic cone, then fall over the temporary parapet, off the bridge and into the river.

John wasn’t terribly clear on what exactly had happened after the back of his knees hit the temporary railing. He vaguely remembered hitting the water and Londinium pushing emotions at him in an attempt to keep him conscious. He also sensed her doing something with the river to push him up and to make the current push him toward the shore. John managed to perform a vague side stroke, despite the pain in his shoulder. He made it to the shore embankment only to find he didn’t have the strength to pull himself out of the water. He could see flashing lights on the bridge and hearing someone calling his name further down the shoreline. Barely managing to hold onto the side of the embankment John had attempted to call out for help. It came out more like a half cough and a croak but somehow, some way, Sherlock heard him. He suddenly was there, hauling John out of the water stripping him out of his waterlogged shirt and jacket and wrapping him up in the Belstaff.

When they finally made it home to 221b after several hours in the A&E John was still feeling a bit befuddled. Sherlock had, once again, completely surprised him. Somehow, John was unsure on the exact details, Sherlock had managed to talk his way into riding with him in the Ambulance as well as into the A&E treatment bay without either threatening or offending anyone. He then wrangled not only a pair of clean scrubs for John but also a number of warmed blankets. He’d waited patiently for John to be seen, jabbed and given instructions not uttering a single word about the efficiency or lack thereof of the A&E staff. What was even more surprising was that upon his discharge they were met at the door by one of Mycroft’s ubiquitous black cars that whisked them back to Baker Street without even a token comment about nosey brothers from Sherlock.

Once they got in the door the surprises didn’t stop. Sherlock hustled John into the bathroom, stripped him and got him into a warm shower. John was a bit shocked when mere moments later, Sherlock joined him, and then proceeded to wash him from head to toe. He even forestalled John’s incipient protest of this treatment with a simple reminder that the muscle relaxants and painkillers he’d been given for his shoulder had the tendency to make people dizzy. In relatively short order John found himself clean, dry, clothed in his pajamas and a t-shirt, and ensconced in Sherlock’s bed. It was only after a pajama clad Sherlock turned off the light and slipped into the bed behind him that John’s higher mental functions seemed to come back on line.

“Uh, Sherlock?”

“Shared body heat and my bed will be better for your shoulder,” Sherlock replied shortly.

It was at this point John became aware that Sherlock appeared to be trembling or shivering slightly.

“You OK?” John asked starting to turn over to look only to be stopped by Sherlock moving closer to his back.

There was a distinct pause then Sherlock finally muttered, “This really isn’t my area.”

John again started to shift around only to be held firmly in place by Sherlock’s arm and a “Stay still John.”

“You mind telling me what this is all about?” John asked as he continued to feel the tension in Sherlock’s body.

Finally, after another long pause, Sherlock started to speak.

“John, while you are not the most scintillating intellect I find that as a conductor of light you are unparalleled. You are accommodating of my numerous undesirable traits and provide a useful interface between myself and the rest of the world. I find that I am loathe to lose you to anything.”

That, John thought, was a very Sherlockian complement.

“When you were in that coma,” Sherlock continued, “I at least had a task I could focus on. I was quite occupied with attempting to find out not only what you had been given but also how they had managed to get through my brother’s security precautions. It was similar when you were recovering. I had a self-assigned job to ensure your return to full functioning. Tonight however, there was nothing but the fear that I would never see you again. When I spotted you clinging onto the embankment wall I resolved that I would tell you…”

He trailed off for a moment then continued, “I need to tell you that you have become essential to my continued existence. If Foran had managed to get you killed he would not have lived very long.”

John caught the unspoken ‘and neither would I’ at the end of that sentence.

This time John managed to turn around only to find that he could not see Sherlock’s face in the darkness. He reached out his arm intending to grab Sherlock’s shoulder but misjudged and ended up with his hand on side of Sherlock’s face. John realized that the skin of his cheek was damp under his hand. Was Sherlock crying?

“Uh,” was all John managed to get out before Sherlock spoke again in a somewhat strangled voice.

“While I’m aware that you are decidedly ‘not gay’ I have decided that I will be satisfied with whatever portion of your life you choose to share with me.”

John’s brain went into overdrive. How to tell Sherlock what he felt without having him jump to a wrong conclusion? No, he needed to get Sherlock to deduce things if this was going to have any chance at all. Without Sherlock making his own observations and following a chain of reasoning John was setting both of them up for a whole lot of misunderstanding. Suddenly John realized how to start.

“Uh, Sherlock,” John started in, “You always tell me that it is a mistake to come to a conclusion without all the data and I think you may be missing an essential piece of data.”

John could feel Sherlock’s face furrow in confusion under his hand.

John forged ahead, “There’s quite a bit of territory between ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ and while I’m ‘not gay’ I’m also technically ‘not straight’ as well.”

Sherlock took a breath as if to say something but John put his finger on Sherlock’s lips, hopefully forestalling any outbursts.

“I did a lot of, well I guess you could call it soul searching, while you were gone. It took a little while but I ended up determining my random hook ups with guys over the years weren’t just a fluke or a matter of convenience.”

John sighed, “I guess I’m just as guilty as you are about jumping to conclusions. After you came back and after all the help you gave me with my recovery I decided that it didn’t really matter what my feelings were because I didn’t think you were much interested in any of that at all. I mean, I was seeing your care and concern but not observing what was behind it.”

John could feel Sherlock’s gaze focused on him in the darkness.

“What I guess I’m trying to say is that I’m yours for whatever, however much or as little, as you want in whatever capacity for however long as you want.”

Sherlock grabbed John’s hand and moved it away from his mount. He then took a shuddering breath and murmured a quiet, “It’s always something,” before moving closer and planting a kiss on John’s partly open mouth. Things degenerated, or progressed, rather quickly after that.

John was never thereafter quite sure how to classify the sequence of events. They hadn’t done much more than kiss that first night. Sherlock had not wanted to chance injuring John’s shoulder any more than it had been abused already. John had wanted to make sure that Sherlock was completely on board with whatever it was they ultimately decided and not under the sway of the emotion caused by John’s untimely dip in the Thames. Thus, that first night they had come to a mutual agreement to take things slowly.

Slowly, of course, proved to be only about a week or so. John ended up sleeping in Sherlock’s bed at Sherlock’s insistence while his shoulder healed. More often than not Sherlock would crawl in with him sometime in the middle of the night. Waking up in the same bed, either in the middle of the night or in the morning inevitably led to a snogging session. It didn’t take long for said snogging sessions to turn into mutual hand jobs and then to full blown lovemaking. Once that had occurred it was only a matter of days before all John’s clothing and other things had been relocated into Sherlock’s room.

Even though they weren’t terribly circ*mspect about the change in their relationship it took a bit for the rest of the world to catch on. Sherlock quite frequently noted that, ‘people see but they rarely observe’ and John had to agree. Mrs. Hudson figured it out relatively quickly of course. There’s only so much rhythmic thumping occurring from the upstairs flat before she put two and two together. In fact, it was the morning after they had tried penetrative sex for the first time that she accosted John in the hall and gave him a double handful of adhesive backed felted circles which normally go on the bottom of furniture legs. At his confused look she rather pointedly told him to attach them to the back side of Sherlock’s headboard to ‘save the poor walls.’ John turned bright pink at that but promptly turned around, went up the stairs and applied same as requested.

Lestrade figured it out when he saw them holding hands on the way out of a crime scene. He didn’t say anything at the time but when they came to give their statements the next day he inquired as to the date they’d started because as keeper of the betting pool he needed to determine the winner. Mycroft’s people, since they no longer had bugs in the flat, were a bit slower. They clearly were tipped of when the betting pool prize was awarded but it still took them another week before they managed to actually catch Sherlock and John kissing with the CCTV. John suspected the delay had been caused by Londinium messing with the cameras again even though she emphatically denied it. Despite all this, the paparazzi seemed to be completely clueless. Thank heavens for small favors.

John wasn’t quite sure how, but Stephen managed to deduce the change over the phone. He had called to let John know that they were approaching another of those probability knots where the future could go any which way. The glimpses which Stephen said were leaking from the Eye of Agamotto were rather alarming, lots of conflict and superpowered battles along with all the attendant collateral damage that entailed. He let John know that Wakanda seemed to be a pivot point as was New York but beyond that everything was too much in flux to get a glimpse of any particular event or even a timeline other than ‘soonish.’

What Stephen was seeing was alarming enough though that he was setting up a line of succession for the Sorcerer Supreme position. Wong was first in line followed by Tina Minoru, the head of the Hong Kong Sanctum. John, as head of the London Sanctum, was the third. Londinium was not terribly pleased by this but seemed to understand. John just left it alone thinking that the odds were slim that he’d ever be called upon to head up earth’s mystical protections.

All of these changes left John with somewhat of a predicament, how to tell Sherlock about magic and his title as ‘Master of London.’ He knew he needed to do so, he just didn’t know if it would be better for Sherlock to be told or to have him deduce it.

Chapter 13: Oh Snap

Chapter Text

Over the next couple of months John still hadn’t managed to tell Sherlock about his mystical powers. In part this was due to the fact that not much in life had changed by adding a sexual component to his relationship with Sherlock. Other than the sharing a bed, the sex, and the cuddling things were not much different. They still went on cases, Sherlock still got lost in his mind palace, and John still made tea. John felt he was getting used to things with little fuss muss and bother. Of course, that’s just when Stephen’s dimly foreseen calamities began to intrude again.

New York, of course it was New York. A strange ringed shaped space ship had suddenly appeared over the city, and the news media went crazy. There had been a superpowered fight in the streets involving some bipedal aliens and then the ship had left. Wong had called John shortly thereafter to tell him Stephen had been abducted by the occupants of the ship but that Iron Man and Spider Man had been involved in the fight and had not been captured. Since both of them were now also missing Wong presumed they had somehow managed to stow away on the ship in an attempt to rescue Stephen. It didn’t stop there. John had woken up the next morning to the news that there had been another superpowered fight in and around the Edenborough train station. None of the news reports were assigning blame and eye witness accounts were sketchy. No one seemed to know just who was involved except that there had been a number of red colored energy blasts. John suspected that if MI-13 wasn’t involved already they would be shortly.

Luckily, John didn’t have time to worry much about either of those incidents. Lestrade had called with a rather gruesome set of murders. There were 3 bodies at three separate crime scenes. Each of the bodies had wounds which appeared to be from large talons. To make matters even more perplexing the victims were just far enough apart in both physical location and approximate time of death to make getting from one location to the other difficult if not impossible for a single perpetrator. Surprisingly to John, Londinium was no help at all. The culprit, whomever or whatever it was, seemed to be someone that she couldn’t sense very well. The CCTV footage was similarly unhelpful as there were only vaguely blurry images, as if looking through thick fog, from near each of the crime scenes. This in and of itself was highly suspect since there had been no significant fog present the night of the murders. Since John knew that some of the mental powers had the ability to shield themselves from mundane surveillance, he mentioned as much to Lestrade. Lestrade had come to the same conclusion himself and had already reported it in only to be informed that Lela, the MI-13 liaison, was currently unavailable.

The next couple of days were intense. Sherlock and Molly were puzzled by the wounds. The cause of death in each case had been blood loss caused by one of the claw slashes. Neither of them suspected an animal as the slash appeared to have been strategically placed for maximum lethality. In fact, it looked like the victims had been surprised by the initial blow as there were minimal defensive wounds on the bodies. The crime scene forensics had not been much help either. There had been no DNA or blood except that belonging to the victims.

“You would think with that amount of blood and the position of wound,” Sherlock had grumbled, “the perpetrator would have acquired some on their person from the arterial spray but there is no evidence of blood within a block of each scene.”

“No footprints, no drips, no nothing.” Molly had added.

“Even incompetent forensics would have found some trace if it existed,” Sherlock agreed.

That exchange triggered something in John’s memory. There were things from the outer darkness that absorbed bodily fluids as their sustenance. Tales of creatures like Succubae or the hungry ghosts of Indian mythology did indeed have some minimal basis in truth.

“Hey,” he asked them, “Was there actually enough blood at the crime scene? I mean it was all over everywhere but was that all of it? Would we even be able to tell if some was missing?”

That caused both Molly and Sherlock to pause. Before either of them could answer, Sherlock’s mobile rang. He actually answered with an annoyed ‘What?’ so John knew it must be Lestrade.

After listening for a minute or so Sherlock replied, “We are on our way,” and rang off.

He then turned to Molly and said, “It might prove helpful if you could estimate the blood volume for each victim, the amount of blood loss and compare it with each scene.”

She nodded in agreement.

Sherlock threw on his coat saying, “Come on John! Lestrade’s team found a connection between the victims. They are bringing a person of interest into the Yard for questioning.”

The questioning ended up not happening. John and Sherlock arrived at one end of the hall leading to the interrogation rooms when the suspect was being brought in at the other end. The suspect, a small nondescript man who looked like a shopkeeper, took one look at Sherlock and John and started giggling. They hauled him into one of the rooms but he didn’t stop his hysterical laughter. They eventually had to sedate him and haul him off to hospital.

Sherlock had spouted off as much of the man’s history and profession as he could from the brief look he’d managed in the hall. It all tallied with the information Lestrade’s team had gathered. Mr. Moen was a small-time antique dealer with a specialty in rare books. Widower, lived alone in a flat above his shop. All of the victims had purchased something from his shop in the last few days before their deaths according to their credit card records.

There was already a team searching the shop so Lestrade invited Sherlock and John to join them on the off chance that Sherlock would spot something. By the time they arrived the officers were finishing up their initial search. The shopkeeper’s assistant was just asking a constable if they were going to be done soon as her shift ended in 20 minutes or so. If Mr. Moen was not back by that time she’d need to lock up.

Sherlock, of course, walked in took a quick survey of the room and then interrupted the assistant, “What was right there?” pointing at an area of floor between a bookcase and a curio display cabinet.

The assistant and the constable looked confused.

“What was sitting in that spot and when was it moved?” Sherlock sounded annoyed at having to repeat himself.

“Uhhh, some sort of awful Victorian umbrella stand,” She replied. “It was truly hideous. I mean who puts clawed feet on an umbrella stand anyway?”

“Clawed feet?” John just had to ask.

“Yeah, kinda like a ball and claw foot but without the ball. It sat on its talons.”

She grabbed a ball like paper weight that was sitting on a nearby table from the top with her fingers pointing down. She then removed the paper weight keeping her fingers still and put her fingertips on the table to demonstrate.

“And when was it moved?”

John could tell that Sherlock was on to something.

“I think Mr. Moen took it sometime last week. He said it wouldn’t sell so he might as well.”

Sherlock looked at Lestrade and simply said, “Talons.”

“Talons. Right,” He thought for a moment, “That’s enough to at least take a look at his flat. The entrance is…”

Lestrade was interrupted by the assistant, “Oh, there’s a stairway off the hall in back.”

Sherlock was already heading for the indicated back hall when Lestrade caught up to him.

“We need to do this by the book,” was all he said as he managed to get into the hall first with Sherlock right on his heels.

John and Donovan brought up the rear. The first door he opened was a set of stairs leading down. The second was the storage room while the third lead upward to a small landing. The door off the upper landing was luckily unlocked and let them into a small kitchen. From there they proceeded through to a living room. The room was relatively nicely furnished. A sofa, coffee table, and a chair sat positioned so that they could easily view a large armoire which John supposed had been converted to serve as a television cabinet judging by the wires and cables protruding from its back. A rather thick Persian designed rug completed the set up and made it a bit homier.

Lestrade headed for the coffee table which had some papers on it. Sherlock just glanced at the room and headed directly for the small foyer that seemed to contain the front door as it was the logical place for the umbrella stand, if the stand was to be used for its intended purpose. John was just about to follow him when something shiny on the floor just under the edge of the rug caught his eye. It looked like some sort of inlay on the wood floor and John on instinct extended his powers.

“Don’t move!” he barked in his best drill Sargent impersonation.

Lestrade froze next to the coffee table and Donovan stiffened behind him. Of course, Sherlock turned around with questions in his eyes but otherwise stayed where he was.

“OK,” John continued a bit less forcefully now that everyone had stopped moving, “Donovan, look around in the kitchen and see if you can find a wooden handled broom or mop or something. If not, go downstairs and get one.”

Donovan didn’t argue and he felt her move into the kitchen to do as he’d asked.

“Greg. Grab the coffee table and put it on top of the sofa but make absolutely sure you keep your feet completely on the rug when you do so.”

Greg moved to comply.

“Sherlock, stay put where you are.”

Donovan came up behind him, “This do?” she asked holding out a broom.

John glanced over, nodded, and turned his attention back to Greg who had just finished moving the coffee table.

“Greg, I want you to carefully walk toward me but when you get near the edge of the rug I want you to jump toward the kitchen door. Donovan move out of the way.”

Lestrade did as John asked.

“Broom.”

Sally handed him the broom. He reversed it and used the wood handle end to carefully lift up the edge of the rug and fold it back. The design he had sensed under the rug was etched into the floor, glowing faintly to his magical senses. John had no idea if it was physically glowing but that wasn’t his concern right now. He looked around and spotted what looked like a lamp cord plugged into the wall near Sherlock and presumably terminating in the design under the remainder of the rug. Wonderful.

“Sherlock, unplug that cord to your left please.”

Sherlock complied.

“Can I ask what the heck that is?” Greg asked from the kitchen doorway.

John thought fast, “It’s similar to something I saw in Tibet. They are designs carved into roofs and walls to protect buildings from lightning. I thought it was just local superstition until I had to treat someone for electrical burns caused by one that hadn’t been properly grounded.”

“So it’s a kind of a battery or a capacitor?” Donovan asked.

“I’m not exactly sure what it is or what its supposed to do but I don’t think you want anyone touching any of those lines just in case,” John replied.

“Especially since it was clearly plugged into the wall,” Sherlock was holding the cord which he had carefully pulled out from under the half-folded back rug. The cord terminated in a small metal plate which was exactly the width of one of the lines carved in the floor.

John winced, “That was dangerous Sherlock. I didn’t tell you to pull out the cord, just unplug it.”

“Since the rug insulated Gram from the design it’s only logical that the cord would provide adequate insulation as long as I didn’t touch any exposed metal or wires.”

John really couldn’t argue with that. It would have been his next step to see if the cord was permanently attached to the glyph or just a supplementary power source. The glyph itself, John could sense, was losing power slowly. Either it needed a constant influx or something was draining it.

“Oh, wonderful.” Lestrade muttered and pulled out his mobile. “Sherlock, put that down and come over here. I’ve got to take a picture and send this in to 13. They’re even worse than you are about someone messing up a crime scene.”

Sherlock complied carefully skirting the exposed lines.

“Did you spot the umbrella stand?” John asked.

“Nope.”

“I suppose he could have taken it down to the basem*nt instead,” John mused. “I mean if the clerk only saw him take it into the back hall she might have just assumed he was going to put it in his flat.”

“Well, go look in the basem*nt then,” Lestrade grumbled, “We have to secure this area until either Lela or someone else from 13 gets here. Donovan, go down and get a constable posted both at the front door and at the entrance to the back hall. I’ll stay put here for now.”

John and Sherlock followed Donovan downstairs.

When they reached the basem*nt door she commented, “Have fun in the basem*nt. Let me know if you find anything and don’t mess with the evidence!”

The last was directed at Sherlock who stopped, insulted.

John, hoping to forestall an argument, opened the basem*nt door, flipped the light switch and started down the stairs, “Coming?”

The basem*nt was, as one would expect in an antique shop, a large dim room containing a jumble of furniture, knickknacks and neatly stacked boxes. What wasn’t expected was the sudden bright flare of light coming from a doorway partly visible beyond the junk. Sherlock, of course, headed right for the flash picking his way through the detritus.

John wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting but a cleared room that looked like a Hollywood movie set for a magical workspace was not it. Tall freestanding candelabra, check; podium with a book on it, check; intricate circular diagram on the floor echoed in paint on the ceiling, check; something fog like coalescing in the middle of the diagram, sh*t!

John grabbed Sherlock by the back of his coat and pulled. They ended up colliding with each other but after a moment John managed to get Sherlock behind him in the doorway while keeping his attention on clearly was an active summoning circle.

John wasn’t sure just how much Sherlock was seeing but as he watched the fog seemed to gather itself and attempted to cross the lines of the diagram. There was a flash of light.

“Interesting,” Sherlock breathed behind him, “Murder by arcane creature. At least it’s a unique method.”

John could tell that the circle was losing power. Another hit or two and the magical protections would probably collapse.

“What do you want to bet that the thing upstairs was powering this set-up?” John remarked.

“Highly likely, considering there is another cord and plate setup on the edge of both the ceiling and floor designs.”

The fog-like creature hit the protective barrier again with another resulting flash of light. John felt rather than saw Sherlock move away into the junk room. Good. John could only hope that he was going to get help.

The fog creature gathered itself again and John knew this time it would get through. He created an arcane shield and sword and hoped to hell that the whatever it was could not simply bypass walls to get out into the world.

The light flared again and the creature coalesced, this time on the outside of the circle. It snarled and rushed John standing in the doorway. John had a distinct impression of long claws and sharp teeth before he was fighting. Using the glowing magical shield he blocked the claw swipe and stabbed the body with his mystic sword wishing that it was a bit longer.

John didn’t know why but when a master of the mystic arts actually had to summon and use weapons made out of pure power they tended to get something that was either culturally or personally appropriate. Sorcerers of Japanese descent, for example, often ended up with katana like weapons and buckler shields. Some people ended up with rapiers while others manifested bo-sticks or halberds. John for some strange reason had manifested a Roman Gladus and Scutum shield.

Well at least the Scutum was decent sized he thought as he bashed it into the whatever it was. It would help him hold the door until he could either get a good stab at it or maybe push it back enough so he could get it with a power bolt. Hell, if he could get it back a bit he could even try a sling-ring portal. Unfortunately, he had no clue if creatures from the outer dark would even be able to fall or be pushed into a portal. If push came to shove, literally, it would be worth a try he decided.

He took another stab at the creature and connected. It snarled backing off slightly and John could see something dripping from where he’d hit the thing. Good, at least his sword could injure it.

The creature moved in again and Sherlock was suddenly behind him.

“Vatican Cameos!”

John went down to one knee behind his Scutum. Where his head had been Sherlock thrust what looked like an iron fireplace poker directly into the things mouth. The monster screamed and brought both of its clawed hands up to attempt to pull the offending instrument out. That gave John an opening and he reared up stabbing the thing right through the center of its mass.

The monster exploded. Luckily, a good portion of it was a fine mist and most of the larger chunks were blocked by the Scutum. John waited a moment but the thing didn’t reform so he dismissed his weapon and shield then turned to look at Sherlock.

Sherlock was grinning at him, face spattered with monster mist, holding a fireplace shovel in his other hand. There was a pair of fireplace tongs on the floor in reserve at his feet.

John didn’t quite know what to say but luckily, he didn’t have to as Greg Lestrade and Sargent Donovan came running down the basem*nt stairs.

“John, Sherlock, What the f*ck!”

Sherlock turned around, straightened and took a deep breath. From the look on his face John knew that a rapid-fire series of deductions was about to be forthcoming. Luckily, Lestrade caught the look too and quickly scrabbled for his mobile to turn on its record function.

While Sherlock was engaged in his deductive monolog, John kept an eye on the summoning circle. While it didn’t look like it had power enough to invoke something else it never hurt to make sure. Sargent Donovan came up beside him to look into the room.

“Did you see any salt in the kitchen when you were looking for that broom?” he asked before she could say anything.

“Yes” her tone conveyed her confusion.

“Run and get it. Those two are going to be a bit,” he nodded at Sherlock who was waiving his hands about pointing at things and Lestrade who was trying to get a word in edgewise.

Surprisingly she didn’t ask why, just took off to get it.

It wasn’t long before she was handing John a box of salt. John didn’t say anything. He simply carefully poured the contents directly onto one of the diagram’s lines.

At the same time Sherlock was just concluding his exposition with, “…and that’s when John and I discovered that the legends about high iron content being a problem for supernatural creature were true and it exploded.”

John looked up to see Sally’s eyes widen in comprehension.

“Salt and cold iron,” she muttered. “Damn. What else is going to show up out of fairy tales and comic books?”

John didn’t have an answer for that so he just shrugged and handed her back the half-empty salt box.

Lestrade pocketed his mobile saying, “That should be enough to get started with. Why don’t you two go home and get cleaned up. I finally got through to MI-13 and they said that they were busy with something else but they’d try and get someone out to look sooner rather than later.”

Sally grumbled half to herself, “Yeah, we know the drill. Secure the scene, don’t mess with anything and we’ll deign to show up in two or three hours when we get around to it. Typical.”

John did not have anything much to say to that either so he settled for another shrug and followed Sherlock out of the basem*nt.

When they exited the antique shop onto the street John realized that they’d be walking back to Baker Street. There was no way even Sherlock’s mysterious cab whispering would convince one to stop given their gore bespattered state. Sherlock, of course, had already come to that conclusion and was striding off down the pavement leaving John to catch up.

John had expected a slew of questions when he caught up to Sherlock but they walked several blocks in silence before he spoke.

“Do I need to blackmail Mycroft into listing you on MI-13’s Sokovia Accord roster?”

“It’s a learned skill not a power so technically I’m not subject to the accords as written,” John answered.

“Mr. Stark being a signatory notwithstanding?”

“If everyone with an extraordinary skill set were subject to those accords then you’d be on that MI-13 roster already.”

“Knowing Mycroft there is a contingency for just that occurrence,” Sherlock grumbled.

John would have replied except that Londinium chose just that moment to give him an image of a lot of people running around in panic. John grabbed Sherlock’s arm and quickly scanned the area looking for the problem. He didn’t see anything but Londinium seemed to be getting more and more upset with each passing second. Running completely on instinct John tugged Sherlock close and wrapped him in his arms in an attempt to protect him from whatever danger Londinium was sensing.

The world lurched and Londinium, for the first time in her existence, screamed a single word with all her might.

Chapter 14: Epilogue

Chapter Text

It was the end of the work day and Mycroft Holmes, as was his habit, was looking at the massive database which was colloquially known as ‘The Lists.’ They had been started by the remnants of the World Bank and the United Nations after half the world had crumbled to dust, literally, to document all those who had seemingly perished in the event. It had quickly expanded to include so called collateral damage; people who had died due to the airplane crashes, car accidents and other catastrophic events that had occurred as a direct result of half the world’s population suddenly disappearing. As best as humanly possible the world governments had documented each instance where the dusting of someone had caused the death of one or more of the people who had escaped the initial cataclysm.

Now, some 5 and a half years on, ‘The Lists’ were still changing. Notations regarding who had returned from what the popular press was now referring to as ‘The Blip’ were still being updated. It wasn’t’ just removing the names of those who had returned but was also documentation of the collateral damage the sudden returning had caused. Unfortunately, the sheer magnitude of collateral casualties was just beginning to be fully documented. Some things were obvious, such as suddenly having two people on the same life support equipment in hospital or fatalities caused when a person appeared in the middle of traffic on the A2. Others, such as half the crew of a fishing trawler suddenly blipping back into existence in the midst of the North Atlantic with no boat in sight, were not quite so simple to determine. It was for the latter reason that Mycroft Holmes checked ‘The Lists’ for potential updates on two particular names every day. Even though he had people assigned to monitor such things, he checked himself; hoping against hope that someday, something would be different.

Mycroft Holmes was, in most things, a rationalist. He didn’t expect, at this late date, that his brother and his blogger would miraculously reappear somehow. Still, there were some serious discrepancies about the disappearance of Dr. John H. Watson and William Sherlock Scott Holmes which had never been explained to his satisfaction. An eyewitness to the event had noted that Dr. Watson had grabbed Mr. Holmes in a hug just an instant before everything occured. Then, instead of crumbling to gray dust like all the others on the street who had succumbed to the cosmic elimination, the two men had seemingly evaporated in a shower of gold-green sparks. In addition, one of the surviving MI-13 psychics, who had also happened to observed the event from a bit farther away, reported that someone or something had mentally screamed ‘NO’ just moments before the trauma of millions of people suddenly being obliterated hit. She said that it felt as if the land itself was shouting a denial at the universe.

Mycroft had even gone so far as to consult Dr. Stephen Strange, as ex-Sorcerer Supreme, to see if there was anything in his experience or records which could explain the anomalies. The only bit of information he had gleaned from that rather frustrating conversation was that John Watson had been a sorcerer and Master of the London Sanctum which might or might not have had something to do with the difference in his apparent obliteration. Strange had been rather surprised, however, that whatever had happened to John had also happened to Sherlock.

There was no change to ‘The Lists’ so Mycroft closed the database and shut down his computer. He stood in preparation for gathering his things and leaving only to become aware of raised voices. That was never a good sign. He quickly grabbed his overcoat and umbrella, the one containing the pistol not the one with the sword blade, and exited his office.

He ended up coming to a complete stop halfway down the hall toward the outer office when he heard a very familiar voice say, “Just because you happen to be in a hurry to meet your mistress for a quick rendezvous after telling your wife you are working late is no reason to deny us entrance. The information we have is VITAL to the British Government.”

The accent was somewhat strange but the voice, oh the voice, was dead on.

Another familiar voice with the same slightly off accent took up the cause in a placating tone, “Just call him, I can guarantee he’ll want to see us.”

Mycroft after alerting his security detail via his mobile continued down the hallway. He would deal whatever and whomever had decided to attempt such a prank in the severest manner possible. He reached the point where he could see into the outer office and came to another dead stop in complete and utter shock. There, arguing with the receptionist, were two familiar men. They were dressed in what could only be homespun tunics and trews. Their outfits were picture perfect medieval sartorial style right down to the long well-worn cloaks which looked a bit damp from the pervasive London fog. Despite the clothing he could see that the two men were clearly Dr. Watson and his brother. They were slightly older, a bit of grey in his brother’s hair gave that away, and a bit more weathered but it was clearly them. He squelched the grin that was attempting to inhabit his face and stepped into the room.

“Brother mine, Dr. Watson: Welcome back.”