John was running.

John was running.

He was exhausted, going on his third day without sleep, but how was one supposed to sleep when there were bombs and snipers and a big neon target on one's back?

He was exhausted; between work and Sherlock's cases he'd been going nonstop for three days, but it wasn't like he could let a murderer go free because he needed to nap, could he?

Who could have realised that the discovery of a small mirror inset into a ceramic frame would cause this kind of chaos? No one knew why Moriarty had become obsessed with it, but he had, and was making their lives miserable.

He should have realised by now that when Sherlock got his teeth into something, nothing got in its way. But knowing something, and being used to it, were two entirely different things.

The flat was gone, levelled along with the rest of Baker Street since they hadn't responded to Moriarty's demand to turn over that damned artefact. Thirty-nine dead, Mrs Hudson included. NSY was in shambles after word had got out Moriarty was offering money and prestige to anyone willing to kill a cop. And somehow he got to Mycroft. Sherlock hadn't even been able to figure out what type of poison was used or how it had been administered.

The flat was a complete tip. Seriously, if John had to expend any more energy in trying to convince Sherlock to do his fair share of the cleaning and washing up he was going to snap. He knew the cases were important, but could the man not put a dish in the sink at least?

But Mary, god, Mary. They hadn't been quick enough to save her; the damn sniper had picked her off right in front of them and when John got his hands on Moriarty he was going to kill him. Sherlock was going to not only figure out why the so-called Charlottenburg artefact was so bloody important but also track that lunatic down and make him pay for what he'd done.

But Sherlock was above all that. All that mattered to him was the work. Of course, cleaning didn't matter when he was in the throes of solving a case! Food didn't even matter then. One of these days he was going to pass out and where would that get him? For a smart man, Sherlock was bloody stupid sometimes.

He darted out into traffic, trying to lose his tail, trying to stay alive long enough to get the damned artefact to Sherlock for a proper analysis, when...

He darted out into traffic, trying not to get hit, trying not to fall too far behind Sherlock who was, as usual, barely paying attention to anything around him, when...

A car came out of nowhere, Moriarty behind the wheel, and John knew it would hit him and then all would be lost.

A car came out of nowhere, the driver texting instead of looking at the road, and John knew it was going to hit him.

He flew through the air and landed with a sickening crunch on the pavement. The artefact, the stupid ugly mirror that was the reason everything had gone to hell, shattered under his weight, its glittery pieces slicing into his hand as he tried to push himself to his feet.

He flew through the air and landed with a sickening crunch on the pavement. Horns blared all around him and there was the sound of screeching tires as he tried to push himself to his feet.

Then Moriarty was walking up, gun in hand, firing shot after shot. As John fell he was dimly aware of a warm, tingling feeling from the shards as they dug into his hands.

Then Sherlock was running back, mobile in hand, calling for an ambulance. As John's arm collapsed under him he was dimly aware of another car approaching and that it wouldn't be able to stop in time.

Then there was darkness.

Then there was darkness.

And then he woke up.

The first thing John was aware of, before he even opened his eyes, was that he was in a hospital - not a private clinic or a cot hidden away from prying eyes where he could be getting treatment on the sly, the sounds were all wrong for that - a regular, ordinary, honest to god hospital. He had to get out of here before Moriarty found him. Who knew what that crazy bugger would do if he discovered John? There was so much potential for disaster, too many people put in harm's way just by his being here.

He had to flee before that could happen. He needed to sneak out and find Sherlock; he could do that. He could. Except he felt like he'd been run over by a tank. Twice. Which made sense since he knew he'd been hit by a car, but he also remembered gunshots and while his ribs felt broken and his head was killing him and there were bandages on his right hand and arm, there wasn't anything that remotely felt like bullet wounds or the surgery that would have been needed to remove them.

John took a deep breath and concentrated, focusing his efforts on everything that he could hear around him. He was in a private room, which was odd considering how crowded hospitals were thanks to Moriarty's current reign of terror. He could hear someone pacing in the hall outside his door. It was Sherlock, he'd know those footsteps anywhere. This was not good. Sherlock shouldn't be here. It was too open, too public. What the hell was he thinking? John was about to try to catch Sherlock's attention when he realised that Sherlock was talking on the phone.

"The doctors assure me he should be waking up shortly. Yes, while I appreciate- No, Mycroft, I don't-"

John's eyes flew open in shock. Mycroft? Mycroft was dead! Dead and gone in a painfully, poisoned to death, no way back kind of dead. Had Sherlock lost his mind? John needed to get himself and Sherlock out of here and to someplace safe. Quickly, John took stock of his surroundings. Typical private hospital room, so there was little to go on there. His things were bagged and sitting on the small side table. Sherlock's coat and scarf were over the back of the chair next to his bed. But, wait, they had been destroyed when Baker Street blew up. Sure, it was possible Sherlock might have gone out and gotten another similar coat, he was vain enough to always want to look good, but John knew for a fact that scarf had been a special order gift and was not replaceable.

How could that be? What the hell was going on?

His chart wasn't anywhere noticeable, but a quick examination of his injuries was alarming. Abrasions and contusions as well as numerous bruises. All plausible results of being struck by a car. He had broken ribs, he was familiar enough with how those felt, and the accompanying bruising implied CPR had been performed for a short time. His right hand was bandaged so he couldn't make a proper examination, but there appeared to be stitches from a deep laceration on his palm. Easier to ascertain, due to the headache, blurred vision, nausea and light sensitivity, was the fact he also suffered from a concussion.

No bullet wounds.

He distinctly remembered being shot. Several times. Moriarty had used a handgun; John had been too disoriented and injured to discern the make, but it lacked the kick of anything bigger than the standard SIG Sauer. Where were the bullet wounds? He had to get out of here and figure out what the hell was going on.

There must have been some noise he made or perhaps Sherlock had only stepped out for a moment, but before John had managed to do more than detach the monitor and swing his legs over the side of the bed Sherlock was in the room, shouting at him. "What do you think you are doing?"

"We can't stay here," John insisted, as he put a hand to his head and tried to fight back against the dizziness caused by being upright. "It's not safe."

"Because of that pathetically simple blackmailing case Mycroft foisted upon us?" Sherlock made a dismissive flick of his hand. "I was only humouring him, I've always found it helpful to accrue debts from my brother; you never know when they will come in handy."

"Blackmailing case?"

"Yes, yes, I know, Mycroft in his great and typical ineptitude presented it to us as a murder case and while it is true that the three so-called victims died, in fact it was a complex... Why are you staring at me like that? Do you have brain damage? The doctors assured me you were not seriously injured and that there would be no lasting effects, despite your momentary. Death. Yes. Well. Glad to see that you've. You're... Yes." Sherlock lapsed into an uneasy silence, pursed his lips and then clasped his hands behind his back and cleared his throat.

Strangely unwilling to admit to his confusion over recent events, John instead said, "I'm not that easy to get rid of."

"Thankfully not." Sherlock reached out and grabbed John's shoulder, gripping it tightly. "When that car. When I saw. What I mean to say is sometimes I forget how tenuous-"

"It's all right, Sherlock," John interrupted, since Sherlock was starting to look if he might be in the first stages of some sort of apoplexy due to the emotions he was attempting to deal with. "I'll be good as new in no time. If fact, if you can get me my chart I can give you a timetable as to when I can get out of here."

Of course it wasn't that easy. Once the staff discovered he'd regained consciousness there were tests to be run and vitals to be taken and enough poking and prodding that John was exhausted and despairing of the idea of ever moving again. He had managed to get a quick glance at his chart, though, and what he had seen confirmed that something seriously odd was going on.

It was more than the lack of gunshot wounds from earlier today. He had scars from injuries he had no recollection of, and x-rays showed healed fractures of bones he had never broken. Some things were the same: the appendix scar, the damage from the bullet that had ended his military career, the records of the stitches and tetanus shot after cutting his arm on that fence during the Smitherson case. It was as if he had lived the life he remembered up until a certain point and then gone sideways.

He was staring at his hands, trying to play everything he knew out in his mind when he noticed his wedding ring was missing. Not missing, actually, more than missing. There was no sign he'd ever even worn the ring. No change in skin tone, no mark on the finger, no scraping of the knuckle due to its removal, nothing that would indicate he'd ever regularly worn a wedding ring, let alone had one on earlier that day.

He wasn't addled, he refused to believe that about himself. However, his memory did not match with the facts of the world around him. Which meant, what exactly? It was more than just the concussion messing with him, too many facts that no longer fit. Differences in his chart. Mycroft was alive. John had never married. Did that mean Mary was alive too? So, he had somehow had crossed into a... what would the correct term be? Alternate universe? Alternative timeline? How? More importantly, how could he get back? Would it even be possible? And, considering how badly things were faring where he came from, did he truly want to?

The key had to be that ruddy artefact Moriarty had been so determined to get his hands on. Somehow Moriarty must have known it was, what? Magical? Alien? Special. Moriarty must have known it was special and planned on using it himself, but then John's falling on it and breaking it must have caused it to activate... Which was all well and good as far as epiphanies went, but knowing that helped him how?

At that moment, Sherlock returned, carrying the teas John had sent him for to get him out from being underfoot while the doctors did their examinations. "Did you get yourself something to eat as well?" he asked, glad for something to focus on other than his own situation.

"I purchased a sandwich in the cafe as ordered," Sherlock replied. His dry, bored tone would have concealed his concern from anyone other than John.

John purposely teased Sherlock by making a grabbing motion for the tea in an attempt to put him at ease, at least a little bit. "Purchased does not specify consumed, Sherlock."

"True," Sherlock acknowledged with a nod, placing both cups on the small side table and pushing it within John's reach. "But in this case I saw no reason not to fully follow your orders, considering not doing so would only result in raising your ire and I have no desire to cause you further injury as a result of your incessant and inexplicable worry over my health."

"And you were hungry." John smiled as he took a quick sip of the sweet, milky tea. Sherlock had prepared it just as he liked it.

"And I was hungry." Sherlock threw himself down into the visitor's chair with a dramatic huff. "What did the doctors say?"

"The usual. I'll need to take it easy for a few weeks. Knee's twisted, there wasn't any cartilage damage but I should still keep off it as much as possible for the first day or two. I'll have to be careful not to get the stitches wet. Oh, and the bandages are to be changed daily. Luckily I can do that myself." He made a dismissive gesture with his uninjured hand. "Nothing we haven't heard before."

"What was the consensus regarding your head injury and... your ribs?" Sherlock was avoiding making eye contact during the question, choosing to stare into his tea instead, a sure sign of his discomfort at the gravity of John's current injuries.

"The resuscitation was a bit rough, yeah, and I certainly got my bell rung, but it's nothing with permanent consequences. From now on I'll just have to keep a better eye on the traffic when I cross the street, right?" It wasn't the most subtle manner of fishing for information that John had ever attempted, but by keeping his tone light he hoped it came off as teasing instead of questioning.

"We both will." Sherlock shook his head, probably lost in the memory of John's accident (assuming it was an accident in this world; it seemed like it was) and didn't say anything else, taking a long sip of his tea instead.

"I'll have to spend the night, there's no getting around that, I'm afraid. It'll probably be late morning before they're willing to sign off on my release. You don't have to stay. I'm sure there are cases you should be working on or experiments you'd rather be doing."

"No, I," Sherlock began, but he was interrupted by a brisk knock on the door.

"John? Sherlock?" Lestrade poked his head in, a look of relief washing over his face when he saw the two of them. "I just heard. Anything involving the two of you is always sent straight to my desk, but this time around his nibs," he gestured with his chin to Sherlock, "didn't put up the usual fuss at the scene so there wasn't any paperwork as a result and no one thought to notify me about what had happened. You all right?"

John couldn't help his goofy smile upon seeing Lestrade standing there, snarky and worried and, most importantly, alive. "I'm fine, Greg. A little worse for wear, but I'll live."

"Thank god," Lestrade muttered, and some of the tension slipped out of his posture as, at John's motion to enter, he stepped into the room and ran a critical eye over them both. "As bad as the two of you are for my blood pressure, dealing with Sherlock on his own?" He ran a hand through his hair and huffed. "No. I am not going back to that. Sorry, John, but you've not got my permission to die and leave him to work my crime scenes alone. I just won't stand for it."

"Duly noted," John replied dryly. "And let me say how touched I am by your concern."

"I was not that bad," Sherlock grumbled into his tea.

"Yeah, you were." Lestrade patted Sherlock on the shoulder, but then left his hand there in the light, supporting manner they both knew Sherlock secretly appreciated.

"Still are, sometimes," John said, not even trying to hide the smile on his face. "And don't give me that look, Mr 'I know what I'm doing is terribly dangerous, but it's for an experiment', because I know you too well."

Sherlock pursed his lips as if he were about to protest further, but snorted and chose not to, most likely knowing it would be for naught. Instead, he pulled out his mobile and began determinedly poking about on it.

Lestrade gave Sherlock a fond look, shaking his head before looking over to John. "Can I do anything for you, John? Fetch you something from Baker Street, make some calls, that sort of thing?"

Pushing aside his relief at the throw-away mention of Baker Street - it must still be standing in this world, thank god - John pointed to Sherlock and said, "Can you take this one home for me?"

"John!" Sherlock began, his head whipping up and a look of righteous indignation on his face.

"Hospital visitor chairs are horrid. There's no need for you to spend the night here in one when there's a perfect good sofa back at Baker Street for you to swan about on." John held up his hand before Sherlock could say anything else. "You'll be bored out of your mind if you stay and I won't get any sleep with you fidgeting about. It's hard enough to get any rest here, what with the nurses coming in to take vitals and whatnot. You'd be doing me a favour." It was a bald-faced lie. John could sleep anywhere and under any circumstance, it was a skill learned in academia and honed in war, but if Sherlock was aware of the mistruth, he showed no sign. "Please. And bringing a change of clothes in the morning would be appreciated, I've no desire to wear these scrubs any longer than I have to." Said scrubs were a lovely shade of green that ensured any patient wearing them looked sicker and paler than they actually were. John's hatred of them didn't even have to be exaggerated.

Sherlock looked at John for a moment, really looked in that overly critical way of his where John felt he was being peeled apart piece by piece, but he must not have deduced anything too unexpected because he stood and tossed his nearly empty tea into the bin in one smooth motion. "I am not going to sleep tonight."

"I know."

"And I will be back early tomorrow morning."

"I know."

"I want you to make sure that you have easy access to this at all times," Sherlock said as he began digging into the bag of John's things. He eventually unearthed a mobile; John assumed it was his own (or, more precisely, his counterpart in this world's mobile) even if it wasn't familiar and held out his uninjured hand in preparation for Sherlock to drop it into it. Instead of a casual toss or hurried pass, Sherlock pressed the phone into John's hand and then wrapped both his hands around it. "At all times," he repeated. "I checked earlier, it's undamaged from the accident. If you require anything, no matter the hour, you will ring me." It was a statement. There was no room left for refusal.

John nodded. "Of course."

"I will see you in the morning then." Sherlock nodded, half to himself and half to John, before swishing around and striding out of the room, shouting, "Come on, Lestrade," over his shoulder.

John caught Lestrade's eye and offered a heartfelt, "thank you," which was immediately brushed off, just as John had suspected it would be.

"Glad to see you're all right, John, relatively speaking. And don't worry, I'll see him home safe."

"I never had any doubt."

Lestrade touched two fingers to his forelock in farewell and then hurried to catch up with Sherlock, who was making some sort of commotion in the hall. John couldn't make out the words, but there was a back-and-forth between Lestrade and Sherlock for a moment and then their voices faded as they made their way down the corridor.

The mobile wasn't anything special, a slightly fancier version of the one he was used to, the upgrade he'd been considering getting for a while now but hadn't found the time. Luckily the passcode was the same one he'd used since he'd given up trying to keep Sherlock out of any of his electronics, because trying to explain why he couldn't unlock it would have not been easy.

The first thing he noticed was that today's date was the same. That was something vaguely comforting at least. It meant he hadn't jumped in time or anything completely ridiculous like that. No. No time travel, he had merely crossed into an alternate universe. How that was the better option, he didn't know, but it was, wasn't it? Somewhat?

He went through the mobile slowly, carefully. A good number of the contacts were the same, although he didn't recognise a few and there were some notably missing. Harry had a new number, for example, and there was contact information for Sally of all people, but not for Mary. The photos were nearly entirely different, mostly shots of cases he never worked on and places he'd apparently been with Sherlock that he had no memory of. Again, nothing whatsoever involving Mary.

Maybe his blog would have something?

Opening it up, he froze at the long list of unfamiliar cases he saw there. Nothing about the wedding, which was expected considering his revelation about the lack of a ring, but the sheer number of cases he'd written up was mindboggling. He'd documented three or four cases or so a month every month for... years.

There was no break in their cases.

No sign that Sherlock had ever jumped.

That he had ever died.

John had to take a deep breath as he considered the ramifications of that.

If Sherlock hadn't died then John would never have moved out of Baker Street. There would have been no reason to have sought out a new job because it offered more hours and without Sherlock to chase after he had too much time on his hands. The result? He'd never have had the occasion to meet Mary.

He leaned back against the pillow. Never going through the pain of losing Sherlock, of watching the best friend he'd ever had jump to his death right in front of him and not be able to do a thing to stop it? On the one hand that sounded like heaven. But all that pain had resulted in him meeting Mary and finding the kind of love he'd never imagined possible. A wife. A-

No, he cut off that line of thought before it could start because he couldn't stop to think about that now. He wouldn't.

Focus on the issue at hand, he told himself. It was reasonable to assume that the artefact was responsible for bringing him to this world, either due to the act of its breaking or its shards cutting him or some combination of those two things and it was possible that his significant injuries if not outright death had something to do with it as well. It probably had been death, or damned close anyway; he remembered the shooting and the pain of the bullets. That many shots? At that range? Yeah, death was the likely result.

Had the shards travelled with him to this world? The injury to his hand certainly had and the notes in his file mentioned the removal of debris from the wound. Would he need the shards to travel back or would he need the artefact intact? Did the artefact exist in this world? It should; the majority of things appeared to be the same.

On that note, why had he been shuttled over to this world, he wondered. Why this one in particular? Did it have something to do with the similarity of the injuries? After all, the John Watson here had been hit by a car just as he had been, although, from Sherlock's reaction, the injury sustained from the impact itself had been more significant. There was also the CPR to consider. Had this world's John died due to his injuries or had he caused that by coming here? Both were equally unpleasant ideas. There also was the issue of what had happened to his own body back home. Had he switched places with this John or was the body he had left behind now an empty husk or missing or...

His head was swimming with 'what ifs' and 'but how did that work' and questions about just what the hell he was going to do now, none of which was going to get him anywhere. He needed to focus. Right. He'd need time to figure all this out, which meant not having anyone notice anything different about him and when it came to Sherlock... Well, that was going to be damned impossible. So, first things first. What were the differences between the two John Watsons?

A quick spot-check of the news prior to the whole "Richard Brook" fiasco showed that the majority of it was basically the same, but by then the battery on his mobile was dying and he was having more and more trouble focusing on the text and he just couldn't concentrate any longer so he closed his eyes and decided to try to sleep. Maybe he'd wake up tomorrow to find this had all been some bizarre dream and he was back in the world he was used to; even if it had been rather a disaster when he left, it was home.

When John awoke Sherlock was there sitting perched on the visitor's chair, his hands steepled in front of his face and fingers tapping against his lips. "I did warn you," he commented the moment he noticed John's eyes on him.

"I didn't really expect anything else." A little shifting eased the ache of his ribs, but overall he loathed the thought of moving ever again. Injuries were always so much worse the second day as the bruising had a chance to make itself known. "Did you get any rest?"

Sherlock waved away the question as immaterial; he never had been overly concerned about his own health, to John's constant consternation. "The doctors are apparently unwilling to release you before they perform more tests. Something about cognitive functioning and red cell counts."

"That's fairly standard. They need to," John began to explain before breaking off and frowning at Sherlock. "You talked to my doctors?"

"Of course."

"But doctor-patient confidentiality... Right, never mind, what was I thinking?" Really he should know better by now, this was Sherlock after all; he wasn't going to let a little thing like the law get between him and the information he wanted. "So," he began instead, "tell me about the case. You said it wasn't murder? It was just blackmail or something?"

John had no knowledge of the case Sherlock and this world's John had been working on before he arrived, but Sherlock had made vague mention of it before and, as always with Sherlock, the chance to show off was irresistible. Sherlock launched into a detailed explanation of the various clues and suppositions that Mycroft had missed or, at least, misrepresented when he'd presented the case to them and the incorrect analyses that had therefore resulted.

The story lasted throughout John's breakfast (truly terrible tea, something presenting as scrambled eggs and a piece of surprisingly decent wheat toast), paused when the nurse arrived to draw blood and take some basic vitals and continued once John returned from his MRI and CAT scan. It was an interesting enough case, but due to the political nature of the victims and the blackmail, it wasn't one John would consider writing up so he didn't have to worry about concentrating on the minutia he would have needed to document it later.

Although he wasn't giving it his full attention, or at least as much attention he might under other circumstances, it was a bit of brilliant deducing by Sherlock and John didn't have to fake the appreciable noises of interest and impressed exclamations that he made when Sherlock paused for effect throughout the telling of his story.

The discharging process was both excruciating and boring, an odd combination even on his best days. He didn't want to muddle his brain with drugs; he needed to stay sharp or he might do something or saying something that his counterpart in this world wouldn't (do something more atypical, god knows Sherlock could and probably would pick up on a thousand little tics and unconscious tells, but there was nothing he could really do about that) so he only accepted the paracetamol instead of anything stronger.

It was early afternoon by the time they arrived back at Baker Street and John was exhausted. He limped up the stairs and slowly sank onto the sofa rather than attempting to continue on to his room. Sherlock had been carrying John's things, and, without a word, dropped them on the coffee table before stalking into the kitchen. From the clanking that followed John assumed there was an attempt at tea going on.

John took the opportunity to dig through his possessions from the hospital. He'd asked one of the nurses if the shards, which he'd claimed were the broken pieces of a good luck charm, had been saved and she'd assured him that they'd been put in plastic bags and put aside for safe keeping, although she'd warned him they hadn't been cleaned terribly well. The fact that they might have some blood on them didn't bother him, he was just glad to have some sort of tangible proof of the artefact and the insanity that had become his life. Lives. Whatever.

And there they were. He'd taken two shards with him when he travelled to this world. It was only because he knew what it had looked like originally that he could see that the small one was a piece of the top corner of the mirror, a square inch of the mirror's glass with bit of the ceramic border still attached that jutted out to form a sharp point; it was probably responsible for the deep laceration he'd had to have stitched up. The larger piece was maybe twice that size, the mirror clouded and stained with a spider-webbing of cracks running through the centre of it. Its edges were sharp, but more rounded, less damaging, and therefore were probably what had caused the superficial cuts to his palm. Judging from his memories of what the artefact had looked like originally, it appeared that a little over half of it hadn't made the trip. He wasn't sure what that meant in the greater scheme of things, if it meant anything at all.

"I was unable to ascertain the significance of those," Sherlock commented as he walked out of the kitchen carrying the fixings for tea as well as a plate of homemade biscuits that had probably been left by Mrs Hudson earlier in the day. He held the tea set with both arms outstretched so it was as far away from him as possible, as if he was personally affronted by its very existence. "Or how you came to have them clutched in your palm."

"Clutched?" John asked, looking down to examine the bandage on his right hand as he assumed Sherlock would expect after such a declaration. "These caused the lacerations?"

"Yes." Sherlock began pouring the tea, preparing John's as he usually took it but adding an obscene amount of sugar to his own, a sure sign of inadequate amounts of sleep on his part. Sherlock had eschewed any drug more serious than caffeine and nicotine patches for years, but he was not above simple sources of energy if the occasion called for it.

There was a moment's delay as John instinctively reached out to take the tea with his left hand, but then paused since he was still holding the bags with the shards in it. He switched and went to grab the mug with his right hand, but again paused, this time due to the bandages since they'd affect his grip and the last thing he wanted was to spill tea all over himself. "Sorry," he said, putting the remains of the artefact down on the table and finally claiming his tea from Sherlock. "Thank you."

Sherlock merely nodded in that 'I don't understand the emotion required for a proper response and do not wish to go through the effort of faking an appropriate one so I am dismissing it out of hand and moving on' way of his and pulled the desk chair over before sprawling on it and picking up his own tea.

"I've left word with your service that you're not to be called in for the next two weeks as per the discharge papers' recommendations."

His service? Right. If Sherlock hadn't died it was unlikely he'd felt the need to find fulltime employment so he was probably still filling in on an as-needed basis whenever his schedule was free. "You actually read those?" John asked, a little surprised. Sherlock was not typically interested in the wellbeing of people. "No one reads those."

"Then why do they continue to provide them?"

John shrugged. "Covering their arses, I guess."

A comfortable quiet settled between them as they drank their tea. John ate a few biscuits when Sherlock foisted them on him and eventually, after checking the dosage, downed the prescribed medications that the hospital had sent home with him.

After an unexpected nap, John awoke a few hours later to Sherlock having blanketed the table and most of the floor with various news clippings. "I got bored," Sherlock commented when John gave him a questioning look. "We've been so busy; I haven't had a chance to properly go through these in weeks."

Supposing he was lucky that Sherlock had refrained from coving the sofa and himself as well, John just said, "Right." However, considering the state of the floor and that John wasn't completely steady on his feet, it meant he wouldn't be going anywhere soon. "Fine. Although, considering that you've blocked me in, would you pass me my laptop so I can check my email?"

Looking a bit surprised that John wasn't saying anything more about the mess, Sherlock carefully stepped around the piles to hand it over before attacking yet another newspaper with a pair of scissors.

"I don't suppose there's any chance today's paper survived your onslaught intact," John began before breaking off with a sigh at Sherlock's grimace. "Never mind. I'll just look online."

"There was an interesting article in today's Star involving the actions of two circus performers, a banker and a shop girl that I clipped. Here, I can find it for you. It's..." Sherlock began poking about in the piles.

"No, no, that's all right," John said quickly, patting the laptop. "You keep on with what you're doing, There's plenty to keep myself busy on the internet."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow at that. John repeated what he'd just said in his head and then winced at what it might have implied, but he figured he was fresh out of the hospital and still recovering, and as a result he deserved some slack. Since Sherlock didn't comment on it, John just powered up the computer and got to work.

His internet skills had improved under Mary's tutelage. He had been lectured on the finer points of private browsing and preventing cookies and all sorts of things that had become second nature over the last year and then when everything went to hell and everyone died... Sherlock had been impressed when he'd first seen John's new skill set, but then said his lessons hadn't gone far enough and proceeded to teach him even more, probably illegal but definitely untrackable, techniques.

Stealth was important now. It wasn't just putting off the inevitable. Sure, he would try to keep Sherlock from learning he wasn't the John he had been before that car accident, considering he wasn't entirely sure what and how it happened explaining it would be nigh on impossible, but that wasn't the only thing he was worried about.

No, first and foremost would be Moriarty.

By all appearances Moriarty was dead in this world. But everyone had thought that to be the case back in the world John had come from, and hadn't that turned out to have been a horrible mistake? There was something John had heard on some American television show Mary had watched once: 'when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me'. He'd had enough of having his arse handed to him because he wasn't prepared. It wasn't going to happen to him in this world, not again.

From the articles and notes he could find, at least two of the cases this world's John and Sherlock had worked recently had tell-tale signs of being connected to Moriarty's network, although he could see nothing that indicated that any kind of connection had been previously made by anyone at the time. They must have noticed something about them though, since in one of the blog posts John had mentioned that Sherlock had been very happy that the many layers of the case had made it unusually difficult. There was also an editorial in the New York Times that commented on the complexity of the other case and how it was possible that Sherlock Holmes was the only man alive who could have solved it.

Two cases didn't prove anything though, so John delved further. He discovered that after an exhaustive inventory had been completed, the Bodleian had announced last year that several manuscripts that were supposed to be in their collection were missing. They weren't officially considered to be stolen or lost, just temporarily misplaced, probably due to a filing error, but John found the wording of the report suspicious. Last January the Natural History Museum in New York had suffered through a rash of pranksters pulling fire alarms. Evidence pointed to the perpetrators being nothing more than bored teenagers since nothing had been damaged or stolen. Nine months ago there had been a break in at the Redpath Museum in Montréal; the thieves had been caught before leaving the building. Oddly, all they had been attempting to steal were some fairly commonplace minerals and gems of no significant value whatsoever.

All in all, seventeen museums, libraries and archives had reported suspicious activity of one sort or another within the last three years. Most telling, to John anyway, was the fire at the Þjóðminjasafn Íslands, the National Museum of Iceland. It had been blamed on faulty wiring; luckily the fire department had responded immediately, resulting in only some minor smoke and water damage to an old storage area. Considering the storage room had been the last known home for the artefact that Moriarty had been obsessed with back in his world, John doubted the electrical surge was as simple an occurrence as the arson investigators were making it out to be.

Using standard search techniques, he was unable find anything about the current whereabouts of the artefact at all. He decided against trying to sneak past paywalls and into the deep web. His skills weren't bad, but even the most skilled hacker risked leaving a trace when doing that kind of thing and John wanted to avoid the chance that he might raise flags or draw attention to himself whenever possible and for as long as he could.

If only there had been a chance for Sherlock to examine the artefact in his world before it had been destroyed. They'd pored over the pictures, sure, but that was by no means the same thing and Sherlock hadn't been able to determine any hidden meaning or code hidden within the ceramics of it. They'd read everything the experts had published about it, but since these were the same people that had allowed the artefact to moulder in storage for years, mislabelled and ignored before being noticed by a junior curator who then tied it to a trove of items once owned by Prussia's Friedrich I, Sherlock hadn't put much stock in their competence, especially considering no one was able to provide a provenance for it, let alone explain how something supposedly from Charlottenburg Palace had ended up languishing in a museum in Iceland for decades, if not longer.

John scrubbed his hand over his face. Hours of research and what did he have? A few facts, a little supposition and a hell of a lot of guesswork. All of which got him nowhere. Not really. There was no concrete proof that Moriarty was alive, nothing that John could even pinpoint to his organization. He couldn't even be sure the artefact existed in this world, or if it did, that Moriarty was interested in it. Signs pointed to this being the case, but the hard evidence proving as much was lacking.

It was so frustrating. He missed having someone to talk to, to work things through with. He missed Mary. He missed her laugh. He missed her touch. He missed his old life before Moriarty had returned and everything went to hell. He missed his world. And he had no idea what he could do to get back to it.

If he could get back to it.

If he really wanted to.