Edit (Feb. 17, 2013): Extended/added some parts. Had some downtime and cheering-on from a friend.

The deer outpaces him with ease, but John isn't interested in running it down with pure speed. He's more concerned with which way his quarry bolts. It's easy to herd the animal with his intimate knowledge of the rolling moors and wooded hollows that surround the tiny cottage he calls home; every stone, tree, and way is as familiar to him as his SIG had been three years ago. Whether he's darting between trees and careening downhill or skimming the treetops and spooking the quarry with strafing runs learned from the local magpies, John is utterly at home and in control of his hunt.

It hasn't always been an issue—if things had started happening any earlier than they did, John would probably be locked up in one of the bottom levels of Baskerville. Fortunately, he's two months past sixteen when the first signs that something's different start showing up, and then eighteen when things really go tits-up.

It certainly doesn't reflect well on his Mum. His Da is completely human, not a drop of... otherness in him. John suspects that it happened during the trip to Qatar his parents took the winter before his birth. He's seen the photos, noticed the unusual golden colouring of the tour guide's hair and eyes. He was short and powerful, handsome in a leonine sort of way that John has no doubt would be irresistible if focussed on one target. John's hair is that same sort of gold, even if he's got his Mum's cobalt eyes, but since his Da is blond as well, no questions have ever been asked. John only cottons on when strange things start happening after his sixteenth birthday.

The deer squalls, caught in the snare John had strung between two oak trees just a few hours earlier. He hates this part, but it's necessary if he's to feed himself without having to deal with the stares, whispers, and questions that inevitably come when he goes into town. The deer's thrashing ceases with a single stroke of a well-honed, clip-point blade; John says a soft 'thank you, I'm sorry' before untying the snare and leaping into the boughs of the nearer oak to begin the process of tying the animal up. Working with sure, methodical strokes, it's only an hour or so before the deer is neatly packed away in John's bags for transport home. Slinging the pack over his shoulders so the bags hang at his sides, John changes, falls to all fours, and takes off at a ground-eating lope for his tanning shed and smokehouse to the south.

As he unpacks his catch, tucks the meat into the freezer, and begins to scrape the inside of the hide clean, John wonders what Sherlock would have had to say about all of it.

'How... primitive, John.'

'Surely you could just go to Tesco and buy a perfectly serviceable steak, John.'

'This is the twenty-first century, John, now stop carrying on like a Neanderthal and come tell me what you think about this corpse found on the bank of the Thames with all ten fingers chopped off and stuffed in its mouth.'

Not that it matters any more, really. Sherlock is dead, the media refuses to let go of its antipathy for him despite the courts proving his innocence, Lestrade's been demoted, and that loose-lipped lump Mycroft handed John a cottage in the middle of nowhere in an attempt to apologise for getting his brother killed.

When Baker Street became too painful to bear, when the reporters stalking him started triggering attacks of paranoia and night terrors, when John's last thousand pounds were snatched away by the Commissioner's lawsuit, John simply left for the cottage and never looked back. Now he spends his days prowling the land around the little house, finding some modicum of peace in being able to let down his guard and simply be himself for once. If that means losing himself for days on end in routines and behaviours that most would describe as primitive or animalistic, well, that's just what he is. Being human has too many painful memories tied up in it to be worth the effort anymore.

One early autumn morning during his first year of secondary school, John awakens to find that someone has turned up the volume on the world. It isn't an absurd change—he can't hear bird's wings through a closed window or whispered conversations a block away—but his aural acuity is noticeably improved, not to mention expanded. The dog whistle Harry uses to call their basset hound, Howard, is the bane of his existence. He adjusts readily enough, though, and decides to keep his sudden case of supernaturally sharp hearing to himself.

About six months later, smells blossom. Individual people and animals suddenly have noticeably strong, unique scents. John begins to note patterns. Families share certain scent markers. Biological relatives share certain other markers. Different sicknesses have distinct smells. Perfumes go from irritating to migraine-inducing. Food. Oh god, food. Food is unbelievable and sometimes completely overwhelming (Mum's experimentation with Thai soup drives John from the house on a regular basis). When they visit London to see Da's brother, John learns that there are very rare people whose scents are utterly magnetic. Most women smell alluring, but an older lady with perfectly-coiffed auburn hair walks by while he and the family are on Trafalgar Square and John thinks of a blade of fine china with a core of steel dipped in pure gold. Later, in a little bookstore not too far away, there's a pale, wiry boy that smells like moonlight, danger, and black opal. John doesn't tell anyone about his intense sense of smell; he wants those scents to be his and his alone.

The summer before he's expected to start thinking about A-levels and university, John is out with friends on a camping trip. John doesn't notice anything is out of the ordinary until he realises that the sun is well below the horizon and he can still see as if it's full daylight. Colours are absent, but everything is perfectly visible. John carries a torch during the night hike to avoid scrutiny. When he gets home, he locks himself in the bathroom and shines a penlight into his eyes; he's not surprised when his pupils reflect the light much like his dog's eyes do. Like his hearing and his sense of smell, he resolves to never tell anyone about this new development. God only knew what would happen if doctors or someone in the Government found out about his... powers, for lack of a better word.

Some human things are worth spending a few hours in the right shape for, though they're not anything John would ever have imagined himself considering, much less doing, before escaping to the cottage for good.

John has to use a nose clip and a mask in addition to the thick gloves while he pours naptha over the hide. As useful and beautiful as leather is, the tanning process is full of strong scents that overwhelm even normal people. John, being what he is, nearly passed out the first time he tried to tan hide without something to protect his sensitive nose. He's got it down to a science at this point ('Hardly a modern science, John'), though, and the leather is invaluable both as a source of income and as raw material for the packs, bags, belts, boots, gloves, holsters, straps, and various other items John uses around the house and his territory.

When the naptha has been sawdusted and rinsed away, John puts the cleaned hide into a ten-gallon bucket of lime, wood ashes, and water for soaking. It'll be a while before he can scrape away the hair, but that gives him time to prepare the meat for smoking. He always makes the mix of spices, salt, and sugar before each hunt; despite his devolution into a more primal sort of life, he refuses to give up proper food. He's pretty proud of the exotic flavour that the cardamom, cumin, and curry powder give the venison jerky once it's done curing.

He washes his hands thoroughly before he moves to the kitchen half of the work shed and removes the neatly butchered meat from the freezer. Sometimes he's struck by a memory of doing the same thing before working on bloodied young men back in Afghanistan; other times, he remembers all the after-case nights in spent scrubbing in the kitchen sink before stitching his reckless flatmate back together. He's well-practised in squashing those memories back into their boxes. His time as a surgeon for the RAMC is over; his time as Sherlock's doctor and blogger is over. Now is his time. Medicine and mystery don't come into it.

The morning after he arrives home from the Camping Trip of Night-Vision, he goes to the town library and starts searching for books about human senses. He learns about white reflection in the human eye and how it may indicate retinal cancer- he dismisses this as a possibility because his eyes reflect light in a spectrum of colours—and then learns that humans expressly do not have the layer of tissue that creates the iridescent reflection and enhances night vision. That throws him a little. When he learns that humans absolutely shouldn't be able to track day-old scents or hear dog whistles, he really starts to wonder. It's still not worth mentioning to his parents or a doctor—he's not sick or anything, at least not yet—but it does seem like something worth researching a little more. John goes back to find more books.

When John's done everything he can do fresh out of a hunt, he cleans up a bit, sheds the leather apron he wears while he works, and leaves the shed the same way he walked in—naked as the day he was born but for the sheathed Ka-bar hanging around his neck. Clothes are something he very happily does without, bulky and inconvenient as they are for someone like him. It isn't like there's anyone out here to see him, judge him, or minutely examine every square centimeter of him, either. He's not sure if Sherlock would consider the nudity an improvement or a deterioration of John's fashion sense, but John does his best to never, ever think about those sorts of 'what ifs'.

He stretches luxuriously in the fresh air, first on two feet and then on four, taking deep breaths and tasting the breeze. Autumn is on the air—the spicy scent of fallen leaves, the slightly buttery, plain smell of acorns, and the sweet scent of running tree sap are hallmarks of the season. He smiles when he hears the soft, hooting call of a hoopoe somewhere toward the house. Sherlock would probably be mortified to know that John had devoted some considerable Mind-Bungalow space to native British birdcalls.

The forays into medical texts start as self-motivated investigation, but soon John is checking out books on human biology, anatomy and physiology, human illnesses, first aid, and surgical techniques. His friends snicker and tease him at first when he starts keeping a first aid kit in his backpack. His Da is a little baffled but not opposed to it when John asks if he has a spare EpiPen that John could keep in his kit. When John's mate Frank gets stung by a wasp, however, John can smell something sharp and wrong almost immediately and bolts for his bag and kit. Later, the doctors tell Frank's parents that John's EpiPen and quick thinking literally saved Frank's life. They're not thrilled that John had the epinephrine injector, nor do they spare him a very stern lecture about being careful before using a 'pen on someone since there's a very real chance of inducing cardiac arrest if he's wrong about the anaphylaxis symptoms, but since John's a kid and his Da has a wasp allergy too, they're willing to overlook it just once.

The first thing Frank says when John goes to visit him in hospital is that John 'should be a bloody doctor if he was gonna keep carrying that sodding kit everywhere and reading those bloody huge books and saving people's lives like that'.

When he considers the edge that his acute senses give him in diagnosis (Frank's incident was a case in point—John had smelled the anaphylaxis before it even became symptomatic) and his own interest in the subject, John can't find any reason to disagree.

John is about to leave the shelter of the little wood to trot down the driveway when he spots them. Tyre tracks, deep ones, and recent.

Fully on alert, John sinks back into the undergrowth. He takes deep, slow breaths of the air, searching for any sign of carbon byproducts. The breeze is just stiff enough that most of the remaining fumes probably drifted away mere minutes after being ejected, but a careful inspection of several thick patches of creeping vines rewards him with just enough of a whiff of trapped particles to tell him that it is emphatically not Mycroft who is waiting at the house, because Mycroft's ridiculous black saloons are electric vehicles. If it's a burglar, well, the poor bastard's out of luck—John doesn't keep much of value, really, and his medals and sensitive papers are carefully sealed under the floorboards of his bedroom and parlour. Even his medical texts are a bit too outdated to be worth much.

Nonetheless, caution is advisable. Putting every advantage of his unique nature to use, John slinks toward the cottage with nary a sound.

A-levels in biology, chemistry, maths, and health and social care make for a fairly difficult two years, but John buckles down and successfully earns an A grade in all but maths, where he receives a B. Not long after that, he studies like a man possessed and passes the UKCAT with a 3800. With those scores and two excellent interviews, he's soon accepted at Bart's and the Royal London School of Medicine. His parents aren't thrilled about him going to school so far away, but John is ready to leave his little hometown and the quiet country life there. So ready, in fact, that he applies for a medical scholarship through the Army—that's a guarantee of his education, a sizeable portion of his living costs, and a job that's both challenging and fulfilling. He remembers the giddy rush that had buzzed beneath his skin throughout the entirety of the Frank Incident and for some time after. If he was going to experience that sort of adrenaline and challenge anywhere, it would be as a medic or a surgeon with the Army.

The transition to London isn't very difficult. Between the pay from the Army scholarship and the money his parents give him to get him started, John has almost no trouble finding and moving into a tiny studio flat on Finchley Road. It's barely big enough for one person, but it's got a kitchen, its own shower room, and is barely three minutes from a Tube stop, so John's not about to complain. He's overwhelmed and exhausted by the end of his first week of classes, but it's tolerable, all told.

Of course, that's where it all goes to hell in a handbasket on a bicycle.

The intruder appears to be perusing his library. John pads to the opposite side of the cottage on velvety feet, springing to the rooftop in a single bound. He slips through the second-floor bedroom window (he leaves it open at all seasonable times for precisely this reason) and sniffs cautiously at the air in the house. There's no sign of fire or gunpowder besides the lightly scented mix he uses in his SIG, and even that's in its place in the bedside table. He does catch a whiff of tea, briefly, and when he pauses at the top of the stairwell to listen, he can hear the intruder shuffling from foot to foot in the kitchen as the kettle whispers and burbles.

Strange. Why should a burglar be getting into his tea?

Perhaps they think the house is unoccupied. John's not present in the house during most hours of the day, and a lot of the rooms are relatively un-lived-in, if furnished. If he's anywhere, it tends to be curled up in the armchair in the library or at the table beneath the kitchen window where he's got a model of the HMS Swallow in progress. The lack of dust, the date on the milk in the fridge, and the model should be enough to cue someone in that the house is, in fact, occupied, but John has long since learned that most people are effectively blind.

The intruder's shuffling moves back into the library part of the parlour, away from the stairwell. John makes his way down, avoiding the creaky sixth step, and tucks himself into the loo that sits just off the little hall leading to the kitchen and parlour. The intruder is still but not watchfully so, and seems to be just... looking.

That is, until John hears scraping and the distinct squeak of one of his little hinged-floorboard cubbyholes being prised open. He listens closely for more sound. He's used a design similar to the clever little bird-call trinkets made by the American Audobon society to differentiate the cubbyhole hinges; the unimportant ones are loose enough that they give short, bright chirps when opened, but the really important one lets out a long squeal so high-pitched that only cats, dogs, and John's ears can pick up on it. The contents of that one must never, ever be seen by anyone, especially not a burglar or any of Mycroft's henchmen. He's actually half-covered it by one of the bookshelves; the burglar would have had to move one to get to it.

When the long, high squeal reaches his ears, John doesn't hesitate. Whoever it is will find out whether he stops them or not, but if he charges, at least he can frighten them into silence.

It's a Thursday morning, well before sunrise, and John jerks awake with a yelp. His entire skin feels chapped and raw, and there are three sharp, prodding aches in his back like someone is viciously digging the heel of their palm under each of his scapulae and just over his tailbone. He groans, goes to rub his eyes, and yelps in shock when something furry and awkward meets his face instead. He jerks away from the unknown thing, but he realises it's attached to him when it follows him over the side of the bed. He hits the floor and the pain in his back does some sort of strange, spreading thing, and suddenly there are feathers everywhere and his hands appear to have been replaced with cat's paws covered in fur the same shade of dusty gold as his hair. John flails around ineffectually for a bit before he realises that the feathers are attached to wings, which are attached to John's back and are currently spread wide, preventing him from rolling. He figures out how to fold his wings in (it's like having a second set of arms, really), and he's finally able to roll to his side and then to all fours.

John looks into the full-length mirror bolted to the closet door.

There's a sphinx with his face looking back.

The burglar is surprisingly alert; he's already turning to block as John uses the doorframe as a springboard for his attack. It's entirely because of that alertness that John sees his face and retracts his claws before he plows into the man at full speed.

As soon as they hit the floor, John leaps away as if scalded. "No!" he cries, unaware that he's arched and bristling, wings mantled and rattling intimidatingly even as he backs away toward the far wall. "No, no, no! I saw you die! I saw you die!"

Sherlock is backed up against his own wall, glacier eyes as wide as saucers, his mouth open in a perfect 'O' of utter shock. He produces a noise that could be 'What are you' and 'That's not possible' and maybe a few profanities all mashed together into an unintelligible soup, but John is well beyond answering questions, much less processing them. When the spectre of Sherlock Holmes refuses to dissipate, John bolts from the room and the house entirely.

John learns a great deal in a very short time that first year of university. He learns that he can change back (thank God). He learns that it wasn't a dream when he tries changing the next day and finds himself staring at the sphinx in the mirror again. He learns simultaneously that wearing clothing is a terrible idea when changing shapes and ends up shredding a perfectly nice pair of trousers to free himself.

He starts taking notes again, the way he used to when his senses first changed. The first thing John does is weigh himself in his human form and in his changed form—he finds that, regardless of shape, his weight stays steady at about ten stone. He also finds that changing shapes makes him ridiculously hungry, so he tries to limit himself for his budget's sake. He manages to get photographs of one of his wings and his tail and takes them to the library, where he finds a near-perfect match for both on a picture of an Imperial Eagle; his body is a bit harder to identify, but he's pretty sure it's either a jungle cat or an African golden cat (his paws are too small to belong to a lion). Regardless of species, the other shape is absurdly powerful, and some of that sinewy, quicksilver strength spills over into John's human form. He's never been so fit in his life.

During the second weekend after his first change, John sets up a small camcorder in the flat and films the change process from a few different angles. Watching it is a bit nauseating (especially the part where the naked, pinfeather-studded limbs that form his wings just sort of... sprout-twist out from his scapulae as his clavicle visibly moves and fuses with his sternum to form a wishbone), but he takes notes anyway. He's a medical student; he'll see worse at some point, so he figures it's best to get used to the creepy things early on. When he's taken all the notes he can, he tucks the cassette into a little aluminium lockbox that he keeps under a floorboard beneath his bed. He should destroy it (should destroy all of his notes, really), but the thought of not having proof makes him feel anxious.

Classes get intense not long after that, so John shoves all thoughts of his other shape to the very back of his mind. It's not until he graduates with his degree and enters training for the Army that he worries about his other shape again.

Distraught as he is, John only gets twenty metres away from the house before he can't bring himself to run any further. He paces, wings still vibrating and twitching with distress.

Sherlock is dead. Sherlock is in his house, looking at all of his notes on his 'condition'. Sherlock had been very, very solid under his paws. Sherlock had seen him changed.

John's not sure what he thinks of all that. He's the last bloke who should ever panic about something being impossible, but Sherlock had been dead on the pavement. There's no doubt that Sherlock jumped because that deranged bastard Moriarty coerced him with one thing or another, but to leave John grieving and hollow for three years... there had better be a damn good reason for that, or John's going to chase Sherlock right off of his property. God knows he's plenty good at frightening people into running in this form.

Training for Army duty nearly blows John's cover. He's been in medical school mode for so long that he's forgotten how quick and strong his other shape's influence has made his human form—when he and his fellow trainees are made to run a mile, he finishes in just under six minutes. He has to make up a story about being a running enthusiast in his spare time to deflect the excess attention.

Once John remembers how to keep a low profile, though, he doesn't hold back so much that he becomes completely unnoticeable. He's always been competitive, really, and it's not like anyone will complain about a doctor being a crack shot or being able to bench seventeen stone. Add the six-minute mile and John figures he's got a frontline position very soundly secured.

He finds that he's overestimated the prevalence of combat involving frontlines when he's shipped out to Kosovo almost as soon as he's through training. He finds plenty of excitement, certainly, but most of his time is spent tending to contusions, lacerations, gunshot wounds, and other common riot-related injuries in the emergency wards of aged hospitals crammed with people who didn't speak a word of English. He's proud of the work he does, however, and he gets to play hospital bouncer several times while working in field clinics. He arrives home after one tour feeling good about his medical work but just a bit... cheated in terms of actual combat experience.

Sierra Leone, which John volunteers for, is a mess. John's sent to a little place called Lungi to do surgical work in a field hospital, but somehow ends up wading through the jungle with a reconnaissance team. The place is absolutely a riot of sensory information, overloading John's ears, nose, and eyes so badly that he spends an hour jumping at every crack of a twig, whiff of cordite, and twitch of a bough. Even once he manages to parse his way through the sensory fog, his back and fingertips itch with the impulse to get up into the canopy or slip away into the brush on all fours; the others in the unit are so loud that even the local snakes could probably hear them tromping about. John feels exposed.

As it turns out, he's right to feel that way. John hears and smells the rebel soldiers a bare ten seconds before the actual ambush; it's just enough time that he's able to duck down out of sight of the enemy men as they close in on his teammates.

The rebels are not pleased to find that one member of the twelve-man recon team is missing. As soon as John sees that they're aware of his absence, he shucks his pack, kit, and uniform as quickly and quietly as possible. He's spent over five years trying to be as human as possible, but now is not the time for human limitations—as soon as he feels velvety-soft pads blossom over his fingertips and palms, he drops to all fours and slinks away into the undergrowth, listening and waiting for an opportunity to turn things around... somehow.

He hits on the idea when one of the rebels passes not even a metre from where John is crouched. They're tromping through an ancient rainforest full of weird noises, large and dangerous animals, brush thick enough to hide a bull elephant, and creepy fungi. John is a sphinx. He's a ten-stone creature out of Greek nightmares with a five-metre wingspan, alarmingly large fangs, razor-sharp claws, eyes with slit pupils that refract light, and a scream-roar frightening enough that John scared himself the first time he had tried it.

He's honestly not surprised when the first rebel he ambushes simply drops to the ground in a dead faint.

Angry, confused, and shaken as he is, John isn't able to stay outside for more than thirty minutes. Sherlock is alive; being away for one minute longer is just not an option, not when he could be back in the parlour demanding an explanation.

Sherlock startles violently when John trots back into the parlour. He's still sitting against the same wall, but the floor around him is absolutely littered with the yellowed pages of John's old notes on himself. "How is this possible?" he asks as John picks his way around papers and notebooks. When John gets too close, he scoots away. "This isn't possible. I'm hallucinating. Mycroft slipped me something. This can't be real."

"Says the man I watched die three years ago," John sighs, following Sherlock as he continues to back away. "Sherlock, I'm not going to hurt you."

Sherlock's back bumps into the bookshelf. "How can I know that? You say you're real but you always say you're real!" He looks John up and down, crinkles his nose. "Normally my mind isn't so... fanciful, though. What are you supposed to be?"

John has to chuckle at that. "Somehow I'm not surprised you don't know that." He opens his wings a little bit, turns so Sherlock can see all of him. "I'm not human, you know."

The sheer obviousness of the statement seems to snap Sherlock out of his panic. He doesn't seem to know how to respond, but he does actually look John over a bit more analytically. "That much is clear." He tilts his head, lifts one hand. "You're not possible, either."

"Sherlock, who was it that told me that 'when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'?"

"You're a hallucination. You are, by nature, outside of such rules."

John groans and rolls his eyes. "I am not a hallucination. If you'd just get on with it," he grumbles, tilting his head at Sherlock's half-outstretched hand, "you could see for yourself that I am quite real." When Sherlock looks suddenly nervous, John's patience snaps. Without further ado, he bullies his way past the detective's hand and casually drapes himself over Sherlock's lap. "Thinky git," he mutters gently before beginning a rolling, thunderous purr.

Sherlock seems to have experienced some sort of blue-screen upon finding himself being commandeered as a pillow for a warm, heavy, fuzzy-feathery, very real sphinx. He's completely still, his mouth hanging open and his grey eyes wider than John's ever seen them. A confused jumble of syllables tumbles out of his mouth, and broad, seeking hands come to rest on the leading edge and shoulder joint of the wing currently half-unfurled over his chest. "You... this... you're real," Sherlock finally manages to say, his normally confident baritone reduced to an awed, shaking whisper.

"Took you long enough," John rumbles, trailing off as Sherlock gently feels at John's scapular joints with both hands. "Seriously, I should be the one in shock. I saw you die, Sherlock. You made me watch you jump off of a building, you left me with nightmares of blood on pavement, and you left me to the media dogs. I gave up on being human because of your death, and now here you are. All a magic trick. Three years of being stared at in town, three years of being alone, three years of you being dead, all for nothing." John never gets above a casual speaking volume, but the strain is there in his voice. He feels Sherlock's wince more than he sees it.

"I... did not think you would suffer so."

John says nothing, only glances back over one shoulder to fix Sherlock with a gunmetal glare.

"There were snipers, John. Paid on a weekly basis to watch you, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade. If I reappeared or if their pay got cut off, they would kill you. I... I was not surprised when you left London, but when Mycroft told me you'd just... moved in and then vanished, I nearly broke cover. You didn't return for a month. I feared... I feared that you'd pre-empted the sniper's mission."

John shifts his position so he can gently lay his head over Sherlock's heart. "I gave up on humanity, but never life." Sherlock's hands immediately go to his shoulders, carding through the fur-to-feather gradient as delicately as if handling spun glass. "You're here, though. You've taken care of the snipers?"

"I found Mrs Hudson's assigned killer and took care of him two years ago, as well as the backup gunman in case the first left or died. Lestrade's assassin and backup killer were disposed of last year." Sherlock's hands go tense for a moment. "Yours... I have killed his backup, but the original... he's posing as one of the tabloid hacks that skulk around waiting for you in the village. I can't get him away from witnesses."

John grumbles. Of course one of the four reporters who routinely lay in wait to ambush him for more dirt on the 'fake genius' is actually a hired gunman waiting for the signal to kill him. Tabloid paparazzo, hired assassin... no difference, really, just a slightly different target. Small wonder he hadn't picked up on it. "So which one is he, and when is his pay due?"

Sherlock sighs. "The tall blonde with the decidedly simian visage. He's a clever one with prosthetics; he was Moriarty's right hand man. His name is Sebastian Moran, and his pay was due three days ago."

If there's one man that John hates more than he thought he could ever hate anyone, it's Colonel Sebastian Moran.

John's been put in charge of the medical facilities at FOB Inkerman for a month or so until a replacement is found; Dr Roylott, the previous supervising official, had been killed en route from a meeting at Bastion. Normally John is a frontline medic—he isn't the sort of bloke who enjoys paperwork or inventory sheets—but he's the only one qualified enough to keep the place up and running, and he's not about to let the base's medical facilities languish under rookie supervision.

Things go a bit pear-shaped as soon as he takes his first inventory of their supplies. They're supposed to have three unopened crates of transdermal and intravenous fentanyl, going by the shipment confirmation records, but John can only locate one. He discovers the same problem with almost every narcotic on the list, as well as the benzodiazepine and other, milder anti-anxiety drugs. He asks his nurses and surgeons about the missing drugs, but no one seems to even realise that more than half of their supplies have gone missing. When he digs a bit more and inventories most everything else he can think of, he discovers that their supply of fresh sharps and intravenous drips are considerably more depleted than they should be.

John has a bad feeling about the missing drugs, drips, and sharps. He's heard about soldiers developing addictions due to lax prescription oversight, but this is looking less like over-prescription and more like something very ethically bankrupt. He spends a night checking prescription and use records for the past month; by the next morning, he's very sure that there's something Very Not Good happening. He decides to keep his conclusions to himself, however; if any of the nurses or surgeons are involved, he's got to keep his suspicions well-hidden if he's going to find more conclusive proof.

A week goes by and new shipments arrive. John is personally taking inventory of the stock in the storeroom when three men wearing ill-fitting scrubs wander in. They seem surprised to see him; after some heated, muttered debate, they approach him. "The Colonel sent us to get some, uh, stuff for one of the other FOBs," says the burliest of the lot, crossing his arms and lifting his chin in an effort to seem even taller than he already is. "Said we should hurry, it's pretty critical."

John raises an eyebrow. "Do you have the paperwork?" he asks. There isn't any paperwork, in all actuality; John's just hoping to take advantage of their surprise at finding him here to trick them into some sort of slip. "I'll call Colonel Morstan and ask him if he sent any of it to me ahead of you."

While the apparent leader and his second-in-command merely shrug, the third goes pale. "No, uh... no sir! Talk to Colonel Moran, sir, he's who sent us, he is, he'll send along the-" He's cut off abruptly when Head Goon steps on his foot.

While his effort to silence his idiot compatriot was obvious and poorly executed, Head Goon does a decent job of working with the slip. "Yep, Colonel Moran, sir, sent us along. We just forgot the papers, we did, so we'll... just go get those. And the Colonel. Sorry we forgot all of that, sir, they just need the stuff soon, right, yessir, we'll return, sir, with the papers and the Colonel..." He trails off awkwardly and chivvies his two wingmen out of the storeroom; John clearly hears a smack and a yelp of protest through the flimsy door and thin walls. "You fuckwit! Colonel's gonna kill us!"

"But if he talked to Morstan, then Morstan'd know something was up!" protests the loose-lipped man. "You know the Colonel and him don't get on! He'd do anything to get the Colonel off the base, and then where'm I to get me money and me soothers?"

"Fuck your 'soothers', you're not supposed to sample the wares to begin with, an' what about my women, where'm I gonna get any..."

Loose-Lips' scolding fades out of John's hearing range as the men turn the corner at the end of the corridor outside the storeroom. John sits back and purses his lips, thoughtful.

He knows that Colonel Morstan will probably be free of any trouble; the man is pathologically straitlaced and would probably have an apoplexy if he heard from John about people trying to pilfer supplies. Colonel Moran, however, is another story. The scuttlebutt on base about the man is singularly lurid; while John hasn't personally witnessed anything, he's seen hints of a violent temper and a certain disregard for others, particularly when Moran felt he was being challenged or disrespected.

John decides to observe the three and Moran if they really are going to come back to try and 'talk' with him. Frankly, he'd rather not paint a target on his own back, and watching Moran could give him a better idea of how to proceed. Morstan won't be able to do anything until he has enough paperwork, procedure, and forms to satisfy a Vogon; if there really is some sort of drug market on base, John figures it's his duty as a doctor to take care of it as soon as possible, protocol be damned. He'll have to go over Colonel Morstan's head, but it'll be worth it if it'll cut Moran off.

"Moran, you say?"

Sherlock nods, tilts his head. "You know him."

John's grin is sharp-toothed and predatory. "I know him and owe him, Sherlock. He's the one that put a bullet through my shoulder." The scar is still stark against his left shoulder, but in his natural form, the scarring and nerve damage barely impinge upon his range of motion at all. Of course, John couldn't tell anyone in the Army about being anything but human, so discharge had been his only option. "I think he was a little upset that I'd blown the whistle on his little pharmaceutical trade, which then resulted in the human trafficking ring he was a part of being exposed, and you bet he was pissed about losing that much money. Defied a court-martial and honourable discharge to hire a man- Taliban, no less- to hunt me down in the field."

John leaps to the back of the sofa and scales the nearest bookshelf with a limber spring. He wedges a claw under a latch in the top of the shelf nearest the outside wall of the room; a panel in the ceiling slides aside when John flips the latch. He grins at Sherlock, who looks caught between being impressed and concerned. "John... do you honestly have secret crawlspaces in the walls and ceilings of this house?"

"Mycroft gave it to me. They were here when I arrived." Granted, the floorboard caches, singing hinges, pistol-trapped decoy safes, peepholes disguised as fire sprinklers, and nightingale floors were all his additions, but the unrelenting press attention and slightly creepy messages from several disgruntled, recently freed criminals had aggravated his post-Moriarty paranoia. "I'm not good enough at carpentry to make safe crawlspaces or the little latch mechanisms, anyway." He hops up into the ceiling space and beckons for Sherlock to follow.

The panel slides shut with a gentle push of John's paw after Sherlock folds himself into the low, dark crawlspace. "Explain why we are hiding, then, if you have a score to settle."

The chirp-chrrrrr of the kitchen window seems absurdly loud in the close space. "Because, Sherlock, the last thing anyone expects in a cute little Woolmer country home is for a fucking sphinx to drop out of the ceiling onto their heads screaming bloody murder."

By the time Moran has started to turn in response to the thunderous CLAP of John's wings snapping open, John's already on top of him. He catches the Colonel with both forepaws, claws tearing messy gashes across his face and the back of his head.

"Thief of mothers and children!" John shrieks, doing his best to sound as inhuman as possible. "Corrupter of healers!" He's really pretty good at it, seeing as he sounds like an extremely large, extremely angry, suddenly verbal mountain lion.

Moran escapes John's grip when they hit the ground; John lets him get a few seconds head start before taking to the night air again. Climbing is easy at this time of night; the air is cold and thick near the ground, not rarefied and searing like it is during the day. When John's gained enough height, he crooks his wings into a shallow dive, arrowing after the scrambling, panting Colonel.

It's like playing tenpins with hollow plastic pins and a granite bowling ball, John thinks as he knocks Moran to the ground with a fly-by swat of one paw. Moran scrambles to his feet and tries to start running again, but John's already banking in for another flying bull rush. All four paws connect with Moran this time, and John worries that he might have actually killed the man when he hits the ground with a truly ugly crunch.

Well, worries more for his own sake. He'll never be able to go out for a night flight again if they find Moran dead by some sort of horrific animal attack. Moran? Well, after discovering the drug pilfering and doing some surveillance, John discovered that Moran was actively participating in a sex trafficking ring in cooperation with the Taliban. Women and children alike were caught and shipped off like cattle to buyers around the world, all with "borrowed" Army vehicles, supplies, and money. Moran's life... well, John just wasn't particularly worried about Moran's life. Not when he'd murdered, dehumanised, and destroyed dozens if not hundreds of innocents.

Moran begins to struggle and wheeze, letting out pathetic whines in between gasping breaths. John crouches low atop his back and lets out a rumbling growl. "You will leave this place, defiler," he snarls, so close to the bloodied back of Moran's neck that the Colonel can surely feel his breath curling over open wounds. "You will leave, or we will crack your ribs to clean our teeth... and then, if we are feeling... magnanimous, we will let you die."

Moran's terrified keening is almost as satisfying as the scent of piss is disgusting. John takes off without another word.

It's a deliciously satisfying variety of déjà vu as John plummets through the ceiling, claws outstretched and reaching for Moran's face as the man turns to look up at the commotion. The wicked grin that spreads over John's face when he sees recognition in Moran's cold, cold eyes is probably manic and more than a bit not good, but oh how he relishes the feeling of his claws parting old scars anew. It's almost as sweet as Moran's horrified shriek.

"Just like the old days, isn't it, Moran?!" John crows as he rides Moran to the floor and swats away the overturned sniper rifle. "Does it feel good to have all your worst fears brought to life?"

To his credit, Moran actually gets up the cajones to start snarling and fighting back. "I left! I left, you fucking thing! What the fuck do you want from me!?" He manages to turn over in an effort to grapple John; when he actually looks at John's face, though, his snarl goes slack in shock. "You! You!" he shrieks, redoubling his efforts. "You're John fucking Watson! You're the fucking toadie that ruined my bloody business, you're the reason Jim is dead, and you're the freak that ruined my face?!"

John fights Moran down; Moran has a weight advantage but John has vicious claws and teeth, not to mention nearly three years of practice pinning down prey in this form. "Damn right I am!" he roars back, claws digging deep into Moran's forearms. "You're the fucker behind the drug addictions of three hundred men! You're the bastard that colluded with the enemy to ship off women and children like chattel to be raped, beaten, and worked like dogs! You're the prick that hired a Taliban sniper to shoot me because I took away your toys!" He uses a hindpaw to rake at Moran's thigh, fending off the man's efforts to shake him. Moran howls. "You, Moran, you are the one who partnered up with the soulless fucking monster that forced my best friend to jump off a building!"

"He's not fucking dead!" Moran rasps as he tears his right arm free of John's pin and lands an awkward punch to the face. It leaves John more blood-spattered than hurt. "He's coming here, I swear to God I'm going to fucking fix him for good, because he didn't die when he should have!"

"Stay away from Sherlock Holmes!" John screams, dropping a vicious swat across Moran's face. There's a nasty crunch as the blow wrenches Moran's head, and the man falls suddenly limp.

Sides heaving, John stumbles away. Watching suddenly seems undesirable; he's seen deaths by broken neck and doesn't want to see another, even if it's a well-deserved fate. He tunes out the weak, barely-audible scratches and squeaks coming from behind him.

A few minutes later, the sounds of final, desperate twitchings have ceased. There's a soft rustle of cloth and light footsteps. "He's gone, John."

John sighs. "I know."

A large, gentle hand comes to rest atop one of John's wings. "You're covered in blood. Come to the shower. Mycroft will undoubtedly be pushing his fat nose into things within the hour; I would rather you not be covered in damning evidence."

John doesn't comment on the futility of trying to dupe a Holmes; instead, he lets Sherlock guide him upstairs to the master bath. It'll be good to be clean of Moran, physically and otherwise.

About thirty minutes later, John's clean, feeling much better about things, and is in his human form. Mycroft and his team are supposedly arriving in five to ten minutes, so John's wearing actual clothing for the first time in about two months. "Honestly, Sherlock. Do we have to let him in? I could just bury it. Or burn it. Or drop it in the Rother, it's pretty deep not too far from here. Really." He plucks irritably at the tags in his shirt and the buttons on his cuffs.

Sherlock rolls his eyes for the twenty-fourth time since he'd finished his call to Mycroft to request a cleanup team. "Such disposals leave entirely too much evidence, John, and a fire large and hot enough to burn a corpse that big would attract too much attention. You must remember that you essentially live on a national park. Wardens are terribly nosey creatures." He bats John's hands away from his cuff buttons; the stitches are beginning to fray under his nervous picking. "Stop that. You fidget me beyond endurance."

"Oh, dear, do forgive me, Sir Holmes, for offending your delicate constitution. How ever shall I make it up to you?" John ceases his fussing long enough to flap his hands dramatically.

Eye-roll number twenty-five. "If you want it in plain English, keep your sodding clothes on until my brother is gone and all bugs have been removed," Sherlock growls. "Or do you want your little... eccentricity coming to the attention of the British government?"

"It's rather too late for that, dear brother," a light, supercilious tenor purrs from the direction of the house. John and Sherlock both whirl; Mycroft is leaning in the open front door, ubiquitous umbrella hooked on one elbow. "John's peculiarity has been known to me since first we met."

John finds himself being manhandled behind a bristling Sherlock. "You will not touch him, Mycroft!"

With a sigh so delicately disdainful that John couldn't help but wonder how many years of practise it had taken to perfect, Mycroft steps out from the doorway and tap-taps his way down the front walk. "Tut tut, Sherlock, such hostility toward your own brother!" He comes to a halt at the end of the walk. "John and his kin are elegant and striking, yes, but they are anything but novel. I have no need of him for anything you are imagining."

Sherlock snarls and stomps into the house; Mycroft seems perfectly unbothered by the ensuing racket that is Sherlock attempting to forcibly remove the cleanup team from the building. Instead he turns his focus to John.

"You have questions, John."

John nods. It's a bit overwhelming to suddenly learn that his secret's been out for nearly five years, but it does explain the lack of snooping by Mycroft's teams over the past three. "You've known since that warehouse, then?"

Mycroft nods.

"How?"

Mycroft smiles. Where there had been a perfectly mundane set of human teeth previously, there's a glittering white array of shark-sharp fangs. "Let us call it personal experience, John. Let us call it personal experience."