Sherlock skimmed the jacket and bomb vest he had just ripped off John across the floor, getting it as far away from the two of them as possible. It would have been nice to stand there and just breathe for a moment, but even with Moriarty gone the danger wasn't past yet; Sherlock's eyes were bright orange.

"Sherlock," John said and reached his hand out in Sherlock's direction, both his voice and the gesture weaker than he would have liked.

Still, it was like he had flipped a switch in Sherlock. Just a moment ago he had looked like he was about to take off after Moriarty, but as soon as John spoke, Sherlock turned back to him and began running his hands along John's arms, his chest, his stomach, searching for injuries. "What is it, John? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm fi – Oh, Christ," John said, his words cutting off as his leg gave out on him. Sherlock helped guide John down to a squatting position up against the wall, and then he moved his focus to John's thigh.

"Did they do something to your leg?" Sherlock demanded his eyes flickering red and orange and yellow.

"Just my limp acting up again. I haven't been hurt," John said calmly and firmly, careful with his wording to keep the focus on himself and not on Moriarty or any of his people. John knew Sherlock wouldn't hurt him, but he did worry what Sherlock might do to anyone else while he wasn't entirely in his right mind. It seemed ridiculous now, Moriarty threating to burn the heart out of Sherlock when Sherlock was so clearly flame incarnate.

Sherlock nodded in acknowledgment of John's words, but now that he'd gotten the idea in his head there seemed to be nothing for it but for him to personally verify John's well-being. John was just about to put his foot down as to which areas of his body Sherlock was allowed to inspect for injury and which he was not, when the door opened.

They both froze. For a heart-stopping moment, John was sure it was Moriarty, who had made a mad-cap dash around the building so he could come back in from a different entrance for some reason that undoubtedly made sense to him. Then John saw the umbrella.

"Mycroft," Sherlock said, standing up. "What are you doing here?"

"Really Sherlock, I know you don't think you were being subtle about the little games you were playing," Mycroft said, stuffing so much disdain into the word 'games' that John felt a moment of complete agreement with Mycroft. It didn't feel as strange as he thought it would. "I had planned on keeping any of my involvement in the background, but when John went missing from the CCTV feeds, I thought a personal touch might be needed. I'm still fixing the damages from the last time you went on a rampage."

Sherlock scoffed. "That was centuries ago."

"Precisely," Mycroft quipped back and, almost paradoxically, Sherlock relaxed a bit. But then, bickering was Sherlock and Mycroft's normal form of communication; the familiarity of it probably leant much stronger feelings of comfort and safety than any canned reassuring words that Mycroft could offer.

"Fine. As you can see, John has been recovered, London is intact, and I have no plans to destroy it in the near future. That's your due diligence done, so you can piss off now." John was fairly certain that that in Sherlock language that was dangerously close to an attempt to thank Mycroft for his concern and reassure him they were okay, and by Mycroft small fleeting smile John could tell Mycroft thought so too.

"Doctor Watson does seem to have this situation well in hand," Mycroft agreed pleasantly. "However, I think I'll stick around" – this time when the door opened it really was Moriarty swanning back in – "to handle that one."

"Sorry, boys! I'm soooooo changeable!" Moriarty sing-songed before coming to an abrupt halt. "Oh Sherlock. You called in big brother to help you? Now I really am disappointed."

"He's not here to help me," Sherlock said, sounding affronted at the very idea. "He's here to make sure I don't kill you. He still believes in 'mercy' and not just getting rid of useless things."

Mycroft sighed heavily, giving the distinct impression that the two brothers had had this conversation many times before. "The point is not to preserve useless things, but that you can't possibly know who or what might come in handy later. And mercy has served me very well in the past – served both of us, in fact."

Sherlock made a dismissive noise in response, but it was nearly drowned out by Moriarty's laugh. "You are going to show me mercy? I'm afraid you boys don't understand how this works."

"No," Mycroft corrected, "that would be you. Now, be quiet James Moriarty."

Later, John wouldn't be able to pinpoint exactly it was about that moment that gave it away: Mycroft's words, his stance, his tone, or even the way he was holding his umbrella – slightly aloft, with a firm grip around the middle. Whatever it was, for just a second John saw double. There was Mycroft, of course, with his ever-present umbrella held almost like a weapon, but overlaying that was the slightly vague image of an old man with long hair, a beard, flowing robes, and a gnarled wooden staff. "Gandalf?"

What should have been a quiet whisper to himself was picked up and amplified in the unnatural silence that followed Mycroft's words, making it loud enough for everyone to hear. Not that it should have mattered anyway, just a nonsense word uttered by a man clearly in shock – it had to be shock. But then Mycroft turned to John with the most genuinely pleasant and genial expression John had ever seen on his face. "Hello Bilbo. So good to see you again."

John's brain broke.

Or at least that's what it felt like as half-remembered vivid dreams and thousands of other moments in-between came rushing to the front of John's mind: the memories of a lifetime, Bilbo's lifetime. Christ, John thought, as soon as he was capable of doing so again, Sherlock was right; I was having an identity crisis.

Which made it supremely ironic when Sherlock leapt between John and Mycroft and snarled, "His name is John, not Bilbo." John suppressed the urge to giggle – it would only come out hysterical anyway. It wasn't just that Sherlock was protesting when he had seen this coming all along, it was that Sherlock was Sherlock. He looked like he could have just stepped out of any one of Bilbo's memories with only a quick stop for a change of clothes. Of course, Sherlock probably didn't remember that any more than John had remembered being Bilbo. And John had no idea how he was even going to begin to explain it.

"Calm down, Sherlock." Or he could just leave the explaining to Mycroft. He'd probably be better at it than John anyway. "I'm hardly going to try to steal treasure from the same dragon twice; you know how much I detest repeating myself."

Wait, what? Who said anything about dragons? The only real dragon John or Bilbo had ever heard of was… Oh.

"You were Smaug," John said to Sherlock, unsure if the words were supposed to be a statement or a question. On the one hand, the whole idea was completely ridiculous, but on the other, it really would explain some things. A lot of things.

"I am Smaug. Do try to keep up," Sherlock snapped, his body lined with tension. The tone was a little unfair John thought. It wasn't as though Sherlock had been being obvious about being a dragon. To the contrary, John was fairly certain Sherlock had been deliberately trying to hide the truth of his alter ego from him… Oh. (Really, wasn't there a limit to how many epiphanies a man was allowed to have in one night?)

"You idiot," said John, his voice somewhere between amused, fond, and exasperated. "If finding a literal bloody head in the fridge wasn't enough to scare me off, it's pretty safe to say nothing will."

"I wasn't worried about that," Sherlock said, belied by the way his posture relaxed. "If nothing else, you have to stay for fear I would destroy half of London if you moved out of Baker Street. "That was an indisputably terrifying statement, and by all rights, John should be heading to the hills to let Gandalf deal with this insane, possessive, wrathful dragon. John grinned.

"Isn't that sweet," Moriarty mocked – somehow John had managed to forget about the mad bomber in the room with them. (Apparently there was a limit to the number of epiphanies a man could have in one night, at least without compromising his ability to pay basic attention to his surroundings.) "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to interrupt, because I DON'T LIKE BEING IGNORED! Always need to be the center of attention. But can you blame me? I am, after all, me."

"He's stronger than you expected," Sherlock said to Mycroft, sounding a little too gleeful for John's taste.

"Stronger than I hoped, certainly, but not stronger than I expected," Mycroft corrected. He hadn't even finished the sentence when about a dozen or so red laser sights appeared, focused on Moriarty. His face became a rictus of wrath and rage, but even he wasn't crazy enough to try anything in the sights of that many snipers. ""I'm smart enough to bring back up when I need it."

"Fine," Sherlock huffed. "But if he escapes-"

"Then I shall bear full responsibility for any damage you cause," said Mycroft. "Now, there's a car waiting out front to take the two of you back to Baker Street. Straight back to Baker Street, Smaug; I don't trust you running around London until after you've had a chance to go back to your lair and settle a bit."

That sounded lovely to John. They could order some Chinese, then John would get a solid 12 to 14 hours sleep, and cap the whole thing off with some mindless hours watching crap telly. Sherlock, however, seemed perfectly content to stand there staring at Moriarty indefinitely. John suspected that Sherlock was just waiting for Moriarty to escape Mycroft's clutches, so Sherlock could wreak the destruction he'd promised. If it had looked like Moriarty escaping was something that was going to happen within the next ten minutes or so, John would be tempted to just wait and let Sherlock have at it. Sherlock seemed calm enough now – his eyes were back to their normal blue-gray with just a few specks of orange – that it would have been a quick death, and there was a far bit of difference between showing mercy to a pathetic creature like Gollum and someone like Moriarty. But in the meantime Moriarty's expression had transitioned from anger to affected boredom, which John knew meant he was trying to make it look like he actually had a plan and wasn't going through some mad mental scramble to figure out what to do next. At least, that's what that meant in mad genius; John assumed brilliant homicidal maniac was close enough to translate.

"Okay. Well then, thank you Mycroft for your help," John said, trying to push things along so Sherlock and he could leave.

"You are quite welcome, Doctor Watson – Bilbo. We'll have to catch up sometime."

"You'll know where to find me. Somehow," John said, valiantly ignoring the way Sherlock was almost growling. Christ, he was flatmates with a dragon. That was going to take some getting used to.

After giving Mycroft a last farewell, John turned and left the room. The trick was to not check if Sherlock was following, otherwise Sherlock would know John was going to wait for him, rather than just strongly suspecting it. Sure enough, by the time John exited the pool room, Sherlock was right there, sweeping out the door behind him.

"You have questions," Sherlock said and John smiled at the memory.

"Gandalf seems different." Of all the multitude of thoughts running through his head, John had no idea why that one had popped out first, but it was as good a place to start as any. Better even, because it could let him work his way up to the part where he was now a piece of a dragon's treasure hoard (yeah, he'd caught on to that, thanks).

"He finds his present appearance suits his needs better than the one you were familiar with," Sherlock said.

"That too, but I was more referring to his, you know, personality."

"Oh, that," Sherlock said. "As it turns out, people actually can change, if it's over the course of millennia. It's something of a shame because he's been frightfully dull ever since Nimue trapped him in that cave."

The name Nimue twigged something in John's brain almost immediately, but it took a solid minute for him to figure out why it sounded familiar. "Sherlock, are you telling me that Mycroft was Gandalf and Merlin?"

"No, he is Gandalf and Merlin," Sherlock corrected, "as well as the vast majority of the other 'good' wizards and a few of the evil ones as well. Some cultures are significantly more intelligent than others."

John giggled. While he had a hard time picturing anyone mistaking Gandalf for anything but a good person, Mycroft he could easily see being mistaken for evil; at some point Gandalf's flair for theatrics had apparently gone from occasional and impressive to unending and creepy. John's giggles set Sherlock to snickering, which made John's laughter worse, which made Sherlock's worse, and so on, until they were just lucky they both didn't collapse onto the floor. It honestly wasn't that funny, but after the past couple of days, they probably had the right to be a bit hysterical.

By the time they had both calmed down, they'd reached the front of the building where one of Mycroft's ubiquitous black cars was waiting. John opened the door to climb in when another thought occurred to him. "If Mycroft is Merlin, does that you're one of those two dragons the kept knocking that guy's castle down with their fighting?"

"It's hardly my fault King Vortigern insisted on building on unstable ground," Sherlock objected disdainfully.

John blinked. He had been joking mostly, since he'd thought that story was just that, a story. But then, he'd thought the same thing about Merlin not five minutes ago, so he supposed that was just what he got for underestimating the Holmeses, especially now that he knew they were also Smaug and Gandalf.

"So what other interesting things have the two of you been up to while I was gone?" John asked.

Sherlock gave John a long intense look. From anyone else it would have been disconcerting, but from Sherlock it was business as usual. Finally, Sherlock rested back into his seat with that smug satisfied air he got when he had confirmed he was right about something. "Absolutely nothing."

AN: Here ends "From the Ashes a Fire Shall Be Woken." Next part i "Many Intersecting Planes" is "Once Upon a Time in London (and Middle Earth)" (Story ID: 10295185)