The Cambrian Mountains are beautiful, a little wild still in the middle of a land settled so densely and for so long.

John came out here with Bill's birding group, on Bill's insistence in a change in scenery from that box where he sleeps in London. The shotgun feels comfortable in his arms, but John's never been much for shooting anything that wasn't shooting back.

The landscape, now—that's called to him since the moment he arrived.

It's not like Afghanistan's raw deserts and mountains, but there's something similarly echoing and haunted about the Welsh countryside. John knows It's a flight of whimsy, but also it's as close as he's come to any kind of danger or excitement since he set foot back in England. Which is why he begged off a third day of rough shooting with the lads this morning, in favour of a day-hike.

When she found out he was going, the owner of their bed & breakfast threw together a rucksack for him, equipped with a bottle of water, a bag lunch fit for three men, an emergency fleece, a torch and a coil of light rope. "You never know," she told him when he asked if that wasn't a touch gratuitous, and then she hung a rosary around his neck.

That was definitelygratuitous, but it would've been rude to say so. He thanked her, slipped it into his pocket, and set off, provisioned for about three days in the wilderness and possibly the zombie apocalypse.

The hills are beautiful, old and patient under humanity's feet. It's not something John expected to find here, this desert-like sense of lonely peace. But the valleys are even better. They feel hidden, wrapped in on themselves with an air of guarded secrets. He feels like an interloper in the valleys, and that feels pleasantly risky. So he follows the streams and dirt bike paths through the low places, enjoying the burn of his muscles and looking for trouble.

It's a lark, and he knows it, but when he clambers down over a rocky outcropping to come face to face with the mouth of a barrow, it still gives him a little thrill.

It's half-exposed, the front stones in the front sticking up out of the eroded earth in a snaggle-toothed granite smile. It reminds John of a leathery old Afghani man who'd insisted that the Djinn whispered men's futures to him when the wind blew. He'd said he could predict who would live and die under John's hands. John had never asked for names.

He sets his pack down and fishes out the torch, then hops over a couple of intervening stones to crouch and angle the light into the opening.

It's surprisingly dark. He'd expected caved-in dirt, actually, but it seems to go back a ways.

He sits back on his heels and considers the issue. The light is getting long, but he's got over an hour before dark, and it's not as though John's really that far from town.

The opening isn't very big, but then neither is he.

John ignores the pop of his knees when he stands and returns to the pack to fetch out the rope—probably needless, but just in case. He wedges the pack tight between a couple of the stones, to thwart any animals tempted to explore his zombie-apocalypse provisions.

Torch in hand and rope looped over one shoulder, he peers back down into the barrow mouth. This is stupid. It's ridiculous, and it's probably dangerous; not even in the exciting way, but probably in the 'get wedged between rocks and die a humiliating death' way. The most thrilling thing he can possibly find is some bits of bone that've been dead for two thousand years. He'll probably find rocks and spiders, and maybe a badger. It'll probably bite him. He might pick up an infection.

He swings one foot in, feeling for the ground—lower than the earth outside—and then ducks in.

No spiders. A lot of dirt. No immediate badgers, which is all to the good. The stone plinths that prop up the mound of the barrow glint in the beam of his torch. He follows their rise up to the broad capstone, about six inches above his head. He raises a hand to drag it across the underside.

He's touching a human structure that's thousands of years old. He grins to himself. "All right, that's a bit nifty."

It takes two turns about the little room to realize that the zone of pitch black at the back isn't a shadow. It's another opening, further back into the mound. The thing must be made of a whole series of these little chambers. Little as he remembers from the historical documentaries he used to watch with his grandmother, that sounds right.

Of course, she was an old Scotslady, and along with watching shows about Britain's archaeological history, she told him all sorts of things about barrows and what lives in them. And then he read Lord of the Ringsand… He chuckles quietly to himself. No force on earth can stop him from investigating to see if the next chamber holds barrow wights.

He edges through the narrow opening, and of course the next chamber doesn't have barrow wights. It doesn't have much of anything, except for an oval ring of stones in the floor that he supposes is probably an ancient grave. John steps forward and kneels at the edge so that he can sweep his hand over the earth. It's compacted almost as hard as rock. If anything's in there, he'd need more than he has on him to dig it out.

The idea feels disrespectful, and besides, if there's anything of historical value in here that someone hasn't already turned up, then that's a job better left to experts. John's speciality lies in putting live bodies back together.

He stands, torch clamped between his teeth so he can brush his knees off, then whips around at a faint scuff behind him.

And staggers a step or two backwards in shock, because there is a tall, living shadow standing next to the door. It flinches and puts a hand up when the torch beam catches it in the face, proving that it is in fact a living man.

"Jesus! I'm so sorry," John stammers, pressing a hand to his chest. His heart is skipping a million miles a minute. "Am I trespassing?"

The newcomer flicks what might be a smile at him. With the torch pointed less obnoxiously off to the side, John can barely make him out; he's standing in a dark hole in the ground, wearing a long dark coat, and his hair is a slightly inkier smear around the pale smudge of his face. "Somewhat, yes. But it's all right, I don't mind." His voice is deep and rich, filling the little space with its timbre.

John takes a few deep breaths, getting himself back under control. "I'm sorry, honestly. I just…I saw the…" He waves a hand vaguely upward. "And…well, curiosity, you know."

"Yes." The man smiles again. "I'm familiar with the phenomenon."

"Right." John nods uncertainly. "Right. Um. So, you too? I mean…is this a thing you do? Coming here." Because the man looks comfortable here, as if this place is too familiar to bother spending energy on looking around. His eyes, faint glints of reflected light, are fixed firmly on John. Which is quite understandable, under the circumstances, so John's not sure why it should make him so nervous. "Um. That is, if I lived near a place like this, I'd probably do too." God, he sounds like a babbling moron.

At least it seems to amuse his companion. John can hear suppressed laughter in his voice. "I do, yes. I come here often. It gets so boring,you know, after a while. Day in and day out of the same thing, over and over. Even finding ways to relieve the tedium gets boring eventually. This place, though…it's almost another world."

By the end, the man's voice has trailed off till he's almost mumbling to himself. John finds himself nodding along in agreement to the absent mutter. "I know the feeling. I miss…"
No, wait, what is he doing? Why would he unload war stories on a total stranger, or whinge about life in London since he got back? He gets it, that's all that matters.

The man nods anyway, as though he'd heard John's thoughts. The pale blur of his face tilts, eyes glittering intermittently in the low light as he studies John. They must be bright, to catch so little light so readily. It's so quiet down here that when he prepares to speak, John can hear him inhale. "I've long wished I could take a little bit of that world back with me."

The idea has a contagious wonder to it. What must they have been like, the people who built this place? What did they wear? What did they think? What rites did they give their dead before leaving them behind in the dark? Tombs like this were built for warriors, right? What sorts of wars did they fight? For a flicker of a moment, John can feel a bond of brotherhood stretching back to those ancient men.

But then it's gone and the ancient space is just a curious little burrow again, and John has to laugh at himself. "I think it'd lose its mystique, taken out of context." Rocks and dirt and roots and…no bugs or vermin or any sign of animals, actually, that's a little odd, isn't it…?

"Do you? I don't believe so."

The warmth in the words plucks at John, something like affection or interest, and in the gloom, he feels it back. So they're caught up in children's fancies, but doesn't the place beg for it? The sparks of the man's eyes feel hot against his skin, and John finds himself wondering the same sorts of things about this man that he just did about the long-gone builders of the barrow.

"What's your name?" the man asks suddenly, his voice low and vibrant.

"John Watson," John answers. "What's yours?"

The man smiles broadly rather than answering. His teeth gleam. "John Watson. I'm pleased to meet you."

The syllables are sounded so carefully in that lovely voice, each given its proper attention; John's never heard his name spoken so perfectly. It tugs at him down deep inside, like he's just been spoken tofor the first time in his life. Like he's never heard his own name before. The man's eyes are so bright in the torch's cast-off light that they almost seem to glow, the colour of moonlight.

The stranger, suddenly, strikes him as unspeakably beautiful, crafted of moonlight and shadow and teased into reality by the yellow-white halo of John's torch.

"John Watson." He repeats the name, turning the words over in his mouth as though tasting them. It feels like he's tasting John."You're wounded."

John jerks his gaze down. He hadn't noticedpicking up any cuts or scrapes...

The man chuckles. It's a breathtaking sound in this place. John instantly wants to hear it again. "You hold yourself like a soldier, John, but your hands say...healer. Curious. And your wounding," a hand flaps out of the shadows like an albino bat, "that's written all over you. You've been branded by war. That's her way, you know, to mark the best and bravest and keep them for her own. I think you might be quite remarkable."

John scrunches his face into a bewildered squint. Who are they talking about, now? He opens his mouth to ask, but the man cuts him off with a deep pull of air through his nose. Is he...sniffing? "At the foot of the Hindu Kush, wasn't it. Dust and snow, a land just as ancient as this one. You've travelled a very long way and come home again, John, haven't you? But war still won't release her claim on you."

John's lips part, but he can't find anything to say. That's just... "Amazing." He tries it again, louder, and yes, it is. "That's amazing. How did you..."

But...no, that's not right, is it, it's not amazing,it's... Creepy. Instinct digs warning fingers into John's hindbrain.

The claustrophobia of the space constricts around his shoulders, in this tiny underground room in the middle of nowhere with an attractive but very strange stranger between him and the door. John feels the first flush of danger rise, like a blush that steadies rather than shakes him, and meets the man's eyes in the gloom. "It might be more comfortable to continue this conversation elsewhere."

The man bounces on his toes, gleeful as a child who's just received unexpected permission. "Would you like to?" He seems to be totally immune to the massive amounts of caution that John is now radiating.

Also he's making no sense. John purses his lips, wondering whether he's sharing space with a nutcase. "Would I like to what?"

"Go elsewhere."

What…? John opens his mouth on a sarcastic retort, then snaps it closed again. Sod this. He starts for the door. "I'm going ou-ow!"

He staggers back, more in confusion than pain. What the hell did he just trip on? It feels like the air just shoved him backwards. He catches his balance and starts forward again, and collides again with something he can't see.

The man watches him grope at the air, trying to find the root or whatever it is that must be blending in with the dark. After a few seconds, he points down at John's feet. John follows his gaze, but there's nothing there but the stone circle.

"Do they not warn you about us anymore?" the man asks, sounding curious.

John's head snaps up. "What?" Warn him? Dangerfloods through him again, a lot closer to the fight-or-flight end of the spectrum this time. He doesn't know how, but he can feel that stare digging into him again, scoring over his body and paring him down.

"You don't know, do you?" the man asks wonderingly after a moment of study. "You're stood in a circle in a barrow, talking to me, and…your kind haven't got any smarter over the years, have they?"

"Excuseme?" Obviously John can see what the man is getting at, but it's lunatic. The fellow's either a madman, or an arse who needs professional consultation on what constitutes functional humour. "Listen, I don't know what's going on, but I am not about to stand here and be insulted-"

The man waves him silent. "Oh, don't be like that. It's not your fault evolution moves so slowly." Blithely disregarding John's open-mouthed incredulity, he steps forward till the toes of his shoes brush against the outside of the stone ring. He's only inches away, looking down at John, but when John reaches up to push him back to a more reasonable distance, he can't touch him. The palms of his hands flatten on empty space.

The man seems not even to notice, despite its impossibility. "John." His name in that voice still puts a shiver down John's spine. "I meant it. Would you like go elsewhere? I can take you. You're bored. You'd find it marvellous."

"You said you find it boring." John leans forward to put his weight on his hands. Rather than falling forward on his face, his shoulders sway backwards at the force he exerts. He can't decide whether to be alarmed or fascinated.

No, alarmed, definitely. Just, in a few minutes. He can see the man's face clearly for the first time, and he's…not gorgeous. Striking.Strange, exotic features; beautiful individually, but almost alien, taken as a whole.

Oh, but his eyes. It's as though they're the most incredible things John's ever seen; he can't look away from them. He can't decide whether they're really glowing or if it's just the way they catch the light.

The man shrugs. "I do." John has to scramble to remember what conversation they were having. "But it would be new for you. You'd find it magnificent, it's like nothing you've ever known, beautiful and mad and dangerous. You like danger, don't you? Yes, it's written all over you. Oh, it is, John, it's ever so dangerous for someone like you. They'd eat you alive if you let them, but you wouldn't, would you. You'd fight. You'd go right back at them. It would be thrilling. And you'requite interesting, John. You're something different."

While the man hurls words at him like handfuls of pebbles, John turns in a circle, dragging his fingers around the unbroken hard air of the circle. How?He shakes his head and tries to catch up to the conversation. "How am I different? If you're…what you're implying, then I can hardly be anything new." Of course he can't be what he's implying. That's impossible. But looking into that remarkable face, it doesn't feel all that impossible.

Being trapped by air in a stone ring should be impossible. He's trapped.That...hadn't quite sunk in till just now. His lungs lurch like a car at the start of a drag race.

"Ah!" The man snaps a bit straighter, a dog catching a scent trail. "So you doknow." One eyebrow goes up. "Rather stupid of you, then, wasn't it? Coming down here."

"You're a myth!" John snaps, then growls because no, that's not what he meant. He feels like he's losing the plot. "Fairies are a myth. You'remad."

"Are you implying that myths aren't real?" The man cocks his head. "You still haven't answered my question."

"No!" John snarls, at the end of his rope. Whatever the fuck is going on here, like hellhe's going to swan off with a man who's holding him prisoner in an invisible jar. "I don't want to go anywhere with you!"

"Ah." The man takes a long step backwards, and sinks back to set his shoulders against the wall of the barrow. Even in the puddle of dark he's retreated to, his silhouette's gone stooped and sulky. "Well, then, conveniently for you, neither of us will be going anywhere."

John gapes at him. And then punches the wall. Air. What the fuck ever.

And then curls over his hand, swearing, because bloody hell, did he just split a knuckle?

Once the pain dies down a little, John says, in a dangerously level voice, "Let me out."

The man—fairy, ghost, barrow weight, whatever the buggering blazes—says nothing.

John places his hands against the air and leans slightly forward. His voice goes a few degrees more frigid. "Let me out."

The man—thing—watches him.

His mind threatens to explode into incandescent rage, but that's about the least productive and most ridiculous thing John can think of doing just now, so he holds it back and casts about for something—anythingelse. Belatedly, the innkeeper comes to mind. John slips a hand into his pocket to find the rosary she gave him.

The…man's head lifts a little, interested, when John pulls it out.

He's not sure what to do with it, exactly. Is he supposed to pray? He really doesn't do God. These things are supposed to be blessed, though, right? He takes a swipe at the air with it; the loop of beads swings right through the plane of air that John can't get through, but his knuckles still bump off it.

Well, what the hell. He spins it a few times to get up some speed and then lets fly at the stranger.

It bounces off his shoulder. He stoops to pick it up. "Oh, now thisis interesting. Atheist, are you? You need to buy into the message in order for this to work, you know." He straightens and starts twirling the rosary in lazy loops, the bastard. "Atheist, though. That's unusual. Must cause you some trouble with the authorities, mustn't it?"

"What?" John's brow furrows, so thrown by what the…oh hell, the fairyis saying that it takes him a moment even to place it. "It's 2011! Have you been living under a rock?"

Oh. Right.

The fairy looks upward pointedly. "You might say so, yes." Then his eyes come back down, so avid that they light his face in the darkness. His voice is greedy. "You're saying that it's changed, though. Tell me. Or no! Wait, don't. Let me work it out."

John crosses his arms and leans one shoulder against the solid plane of air. "Why don't you just go out and find out for yourself?"

"Because I can't, obviously." John doesn't need to be able to see the man to know that he's just rolled his eyes. The sarcasm is deafening. "Remember all the bits about the boringand the other world and the wishing for something different?"

John sighs. Right. He might've remembered, if he weren't so busy being pissed off about being held prisoner in a sodding magic ring. "Let me out and I'll tell you."

"I just told you I don't wantyou to tell me!" the man snaps. "I'll work it out for myself."

John laughs a little bitterly, steps backwards, and sits down in the middle of the circle. "Right. You have fun with that, then. I take it the Catholics were still running things last time you were up top? Or maybe you'd got to Good Queen Bess? What's the last year you remember, then?" He doesn't try to keep the mocking edge out of his voice.

The fairy steps forward slowly, then another, and kneels down opposite John. He looks enthralled. "It was the Year of Our Lord 1451."

John laughs again. "Christ, no one even says that anymore. Bloody hell, you could live till the end of time and you'd never be able to guess how much the world's changed since then. It's developed another hemisphere, just for starters. And humanity learned how to make suns."

The fairy actually vibrates in place. Visibly breathless—fairies need to breathe, you learn something new every day—he leans forward on his hands, keeping his nose just that side of the stone ring. "Youcould let me out."

"Me?" John squints at him dubiously. "Not me, mate. I'm stuck in a bloody stone ring." He scoops up a few grains of dirt and throws them at the boundary. They arc right through to land on the other side. John curses.

"I can let you out of the ring," the fairy tells him earnestly, straining as close to the edge of the ring as he can get without crossing it. What would John do, anyway? Play a savage game of 'got your nose?' "And you can let me out of the barrow. I can only go to my home from here. I can't go to the human world unless someone who belongs to it gives me permission."

John frowns dubiously. "And setting you loose on the modern world would cause what kind of havoc, exactly?"

The fairy makes a rude noise in the back of his throat. "I just want to see it! I'm bored, John, I told you. You can't fathom how bored! You can't even live long enough to get as bored as I am. Age after age of the same damned thing, the same tired faces nattering the same dried-up repetitive drivel and playing the same games over and over and over again! There's nothingfor me there, John. I'd rather live in a hole in the ground a few feet from the human world!"

It's John's turn to stay silent and watch the other man.

"You, though!" the fairy keeps going, trying to convince him. "You mortals, you change. Your world changes! Coming and going, new faces with different ideas and no one living long enough to establish any kind of real continuity. It's chaos! It's beautiful. I don't want to hurt it!" he insists, sounding almost desperate. "I just want to be in it."

John sits there a moment longer, hands on his knees, before he hauls himself up and crawls back over to the edge, nose to nose with the fairy. "You let me out, and then I let you out. And…then what? Where do you go? What do you do?"

The fairy smirks. "I won't know that till I get there, will I?"

John pulls in a breath laden with ancient dirt and stale air, and wracks his brain for everything he can remember about fairies in the folklore. They make deals. They grant wishes. They have to keep their promises…but their promises are like contracts written by corporate lawyers. There's always a loophole.

John crouches there, inches away from a bloody fairy,and thinks harder than he's ever thought in his life.

"Alright," he says at last. "On one condition. I'm your supervisor. You can stay in the human world until I tell you to go."

This close, the fairy's grin is dazzling in the torchlight. "Agreed." He all but leaps to his feet, holding his hand down to John across the barrier. "Come out, John Watson."

That tone of command shakes down through John's body and seizeshim by the name. He sways forward breathlessly before he catches up to himself and takes the fairy's hand to be pulled up and across the circle.

The fairy is strong, his hand warm, bony and sinewy, and not appreciably different from a human hand—except that there's a vibrancy under the skin that John can't put a name to. Belatedly, John realizes he's still hanging on, and hurriedly releases the fairy.

The fairy pulls his hand back more slowly, giving the impression that he wasn't in any hurry to let go. John wonders what it feels like for him to hold a human's hand.

"So." He rubs uncomfortably at his mouth with the back of his hand. "What do I call you, then? I expect I need a name to invite you out with. And you…don't really want to see what happens when you shout 'hey fairy' in public these days."

The fairy grabs his arm and tugs him towards the door. "In a moment. Come on, John!" John lets himself be hauled out to the entrance.

A trickle of weak light is filtering through the barrow opening into the outer chamber. It shocks John. He feels like he's been underground for years.

The fairy lets go of him at the doorway, turning so they face each other. "Name me."

"What?" And John is lost again. Surely he must… "You have a name, don't you?"

The fairy tosses his head. "I have a name among the aes sidhe. I don't have one for the human world. I'm not real there unless you name me."

"Oh." John stares at him for a moment, willing that to make sense. He thinks he gets it. It's very…storybook. "Alright. Well… Does it matter what I name you?"

The fairy jerks his head back like John just struck him across the face with his ignorance. "Of course it does! Names shape people. They mean who they are." He glares down at John. "You people really have forgotten almost everything, haven't you? By naming me, you define me for your world."

The criticism doesn't even register. John's too busy gaping. "You want me to…Jesus!" No pressure,as the Americans would say.

"No, oh, no, don't name me that." And John can't help but laugh at the prissy wrinkle of that aristocratic nose.

"Well, it's a bit of a tall order you're putting on me!" The very thought of definingsomeone rankles. "What if I turn you into someone you hate?"

The fairy shakes his head so hard his hair flops, grabs John's shoulders and starts turning him in circles—widdershins, John notes, and wonders if he needs to pay attention to that sort of thing from now on. "Don't be an idiot! It's not as though you're giving birth to me. Just come up with something that seems appropriate. We can work with it."

John struggles out of the fairy's grasping hands, cuffing at them till he stops trying to 'help,' or whatever the hell he thinks inflicting John with motion sickness is supposed to accomplish. "Alright," he says after a moment. "Alright. I think…right." He peers hesitantly up at the fairy, feeling strangely shy, as though they're about to consummate something. "So…there were these stories I liked as a boy." They'd been fantastic stories, about a brilliant, strange, impossible bloke who'd had adventures. John first read them when he was young enough to believe the man was real, but later he'd known that was impossible. The real world was too drab to contain such a figure. But he'd always wished… "So…what do you think of the name Sherlock? Sherlock Holmes."

The fairy cocks his head, clearly turning the name over in his mind. Then he smiles and bows John towards the exit with the stately manners of an older time.

John ducks and swings up and over the threshold, one foot still planted inside so he can stabilize his taller companion when he has to stoop, and extends his hand back towards the fairy. "Come out and meet the human world, then, Sherlock Holmes."

The fairy takes his hand, bending almost double to clear the low jamb. When he straightens up again outside, he still looks the same, and yet it is Sherlock Holmes who is smiling raffishly down at him in the greying light of twilight, larger than life and, somehow, just as John always pictured him in his head.

It reminds him of another thing his grandmother told him about fairies. "My gran said that names have power."

"They do," Sherlock agrees. There's a teasing twist at the corners of his lips. "And now I have yours, and you have mine. I've known married couples who weren't so intimate."

Now there's a strange thought. John's not even sure, yet, what to make of that little thrill that goes through him every time Sherlock says his name.

He backs away a few steps to retrieve his rucksack, still tucked between the rocks where he left it. The torch and rope—just as useless as he'd expected—go back in, and then…

Well, what the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound. He stands and walks back to Sherlock, rucksack slung over one shoulder. "It's John Hamish Watson, actually."

Sherlock's eyes narrow with pleasure. John doesn't pull back when he steps in to bend his head down till his fringe tickles at John's nose. "I knew you liked danger, John Hamish Watson," he purrs. John gasps as his name, as he's beginning to suspect it will always do when spoken by this man, trembles right through to the core of him. "I can see we're going to be very glad indeed to know each other."