"You are almost as infuriating as that damnable traitor Watson, my good sir, and your distinct lack of leadership skills suggests that command is a poor position for you to be maintaining!" Sherlock snapped, looking up waspishly from Tony's computerized journals. JARVIS hadn't liked it, but Steve had convinced the disembodied voice to help them once he mentioned Tony's endangered life.

Steve flinched, the words, even stilted and Victorian, landing like a bloody slap. "What?" Steve asked quietly, turning to Sherlock. Sherlock wasn't like Tony when he was enraged: Where a truly pissed off Tony got snarky and monosyllabic, Sherlock was seething but in control that was bordering on psychotic. Steve's heart twisted; could he really pass Sherlock off as Tony to the world, or would he fail his...his friend. Again. Okay, Steve was not deluded: he knew that he'd hurt Tony pretty badly with what he'd said. Probably, he'd messed it up badly enough to warrant Tony never speaking to him again, but Steve got the sense that he'd be in-your-face with anger, not avoiding it. Still, Steve wanted to think of Tony as a friend.

"Your diatribe on the worth of your colleague is disgusting and offensive!" Sherlock started, standing violently and staring at Steve, "Do you understand nothing of what it is to be a soldier and a gentleman: a leader of men? The kindness you show all...why not to Anthony Stark? Is he truly worth so little in your estimation that you would stoop to words?"

"Tony is no picnic to deal with! He's abrasive and too damn smart and so snarky that I wanted to sock him in the mouth!" Steve took a step forward, and Sherlock just got into his face.

"I have loved the one person most infuriated and perplexed by me for years! I am expected to be his best man in my own time, his wedding is nigh, and I am forced to the painful hope that he will not go through with it. You do not know the extent to which a colleague can hurt you." Sherlock looked up into Steve's eyes more steadily than he'd ever looked into Watson's, and he could feel with the admittance that he was about to shake apart. "I infuriate him to hear him speak, and I perplex him because I know he is the only one that could understand me if I didn't. It is a...hazard...of carrying a...blasted bloody emotion in your heart!" Steve's lips parted, shock written clear on his features. "You have more need of this reading than I do, Captain Rogers."

Sherlock stormed out of the room, headed for the bathroom, which was the only other room that had been deemed safe for him to inhabit without risk of being seen. Sherlock felt sick to his stomach in any case, the memory of plastering on his charade for Watson's benefit still making him sick at himself. Gritting his teeth, Sherlock Holmes squared himself, factoid after factoid running through his head on the life and times of Anthony Stark. He knew how much it hurt not to be good enough for your family; he'd be damned if the Watson clad in red white and blue from this day and age deemed the other him insufficient on top of that. Breathing in the pristine, cool, white room, Sherlock looked at himself, knowing what Watson could see, what the world could see. A joke of a man, but with a mind that couldn't be paralleled. How he hated it. With such a sickening passion.

He was trying to kill himself, could either Watson or Rogers not see this? In this world, and in his own, their lives were forfeit for their usefulness. Taken from them both and crushed beneath the words and actions of men with lesser minds but better hearts.

Sherlock's mouth twisted down, and he looked down at the marble of the sink, seeing the silver and slight peach flecked within the creamy hues of the stone. He would not die in this world. It wasn't his to die in: Tony Stark was the one with the right to that. He was the one that had a right to let Steven finally be brought to acknowledgement of his pain, not Sherlock.

"Do what you will: I will not rest until Watson is safe in the arms of his Mary, all threat gone." Sherlock breathed, his threat past anything and everyone, all the way to the gods themselves.

He'd known the world around him was so much bigger than he could see. He'd been proven this with the death of Lord Blackwood; he could see it, in so many things that it nearly drove him mad daily. But to be thrown here, into a world so very different than his own; and to see just the same men as he and Watson in just the same hurt and pain and fear...it was almost painful, the way that the world would mock him his so vast yet still so limited knowledge of it.

This Doctor Doom character was going to answer for this: that was certain.

Two quiet raps on the door wasn't enough to break through Sherlock's concentration on the problem of getting this Doom to cooperate, but the sudden appearance of Steve Rogers in the mirror before him did.

"I get the sense you understand this all...much, much better than I do…" Steve admitted quietly.

"I understand because it is an easy thing to comprehend when one's own life is, to an extent, mirrored. My brother and I came from a wealthy home, to two parents who despised each other and rarely cared about us. Both of us, in our ways, developed our brilliances; and, though it is to Mycroft's constant puzzlement, I chose to help people, in the way that I could, when I have the mind of a scientist or philosopher.

"Anthony Stark, for all the fault you find in him, is going against the way he was raised, and is fighting the good fight despite the best way his mind works. He choses the path of righteousness when he could still tread down that of villainy, and you stand before him, telling him that he doesn't deserve to stand amongst others who have tread the path of the darker portions of the human strive for power, telling him he does not deserve to try. Tell me, you knew his father; did you look so down your nose at a man whose weapons you carried into battle? When Tony Stark found that his weapons were being sold under the table, he destroyed them; and he ended up nearly dying for it, and, what, you wanted to throw that into the light of a sin rather than a redemption."

Steve flinched under the words, as well he should, "I-I never…"

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, a motion that would infuriate Watson for the blatant questioning of his intelligence. "You never what, pray tell?"

Steve's jaw worked for a moment, annoyed, "I don't know what came over me on the Helicarrier. I don't know why I said those things, or even thought them. I don't know why I didn't give him a chance."

Sherlock, for all intents and purposes, dismissed it immediately: he had more pressing things to attend to than Steve Rogers' crisis of self. It wasn't forgotten, though, no matter how thoroughly Sherlock played the part, "I believe I know why our places were switched." Steve's head came round like an enticed puppy, "The danger inherent in both our lives suggests an attempt to wipe the both of us by one of us making a mistake. If one of us slips; if one of us dies, it is entirely likely that we both die." Steve paled, and Sherlock pressed on, unrepentant. "Working under the assumption that in order to keep the balance of the worlds, one must replace what they displace-myself for Tony-the effect of the displacement and subsequent replacement would be a connection strong enough that our lives would balance each other: he dies, I die."

Steve's brow was furrowed, concern and panic rising behind his features, "Then we have to keep you safe-"

"Oh, by all means, you need to keep me safe. But it is him you need worry about. My life, while perhaps less complexly dangerous, is perhaps even more endangered than his. He is human; mortal, and at a disadvantage further than a limited knowledge of the world around him. I doubt Watson will be of much help, and my brother even less so. I do pray he's as clever as he's thought to be: he'll have a half a chance if he is."

Steve looked about ready for a relapse into hysteria. Sherlock could only roll his eyes, darting nimbly around him and walking directly into a breathtaking redhead that had the unfortunate effect of reminding him of Mary. "Ms. Potts!" Steve exclaimed from behind him, sounding like a kicked puppy, and Sherlock frowned, turning slightly before the brash and dominating woman caught his eye again.

"Ton-Wait. You are not Tony. I know Tony. Steve, what have you done with Tony?" Pepper began, the babble of her voice rolling from one thought to the next before it was fully formed.

"Captain Rogers did nothing with your Mr. Stark. I am Sherlock Holmes, though." Her eyebrows flew upwards, her eyes widening as he took her hand and kissed the back of it charmingly.

"P-Pepper Potts." She stuttered, looking more panicked by the moment. The cause of her distress was present, yes, but, really, one would think that people of this age would show more decorum than this. "Steve, tell me Tony isn't in Victorian England?"

Steve winced at her sympathetically, "We're trying to get him back."

Pepper pursed her lips, cocking one eyebrow, "Mmm. Well, I can keep things at bay for a while at least. Just in case, help him turn into Tony?" Steve looked as though he'd been punched. She patted him on the arm, "I'm sure you'll enjoy it...your chance to change him how you want him and all that." Pepper half-snapped at him, her eyes completely cold and fierce.

Sherlock smothered a smile, impressed. Steve scowled, looking properly ashamed. He ducked his head, biting his lip, and Sherlock could see why his other self would have such a close relationship with this Potts woman. "Madam, would you be so kind as to fill in some of the blanks as to what Captain Rogers should not know?"

Pepper blinked at the charming drawl of British accent pouring from the lips of a man that looked exactly like the devilishly handsome Tony Stark (apart from a grand lack of tan, moustache, or goatee). This was a combination so dangerous she honestly didn't know if even Natasha would be a match. "We should also get you some new clothes…" Pepper eyed him appraisingly, "and a shave. I don't think we can leave your hair, though. I've been trying to get Tony to embrace his curls from about a year after he hired me." Pepper smiled fondly, and Sherlock couldn't help but return it.

Feeling forgotten, Steve looked down, a look of severe disappointment in his eyes, "I would be much obliged."

Pepper bit her lip, her eyes straying to his chest, "The only problem is that Tony's arc reactor usually shines through his shirt…"

Sherlock perked up, "Master Jarvis?"

There was amusement in the AI's voice, and Steve shrunk a little, feeling unnecessary in the face of Pepper Potts and her sheer magnetism of apparently any and all things Tony. "Yes, sir?"

"I should like to see a decoy created of the light that would shine from Mr. Stark's chest."

"I shall render it now, sir." JARVIS answered with fondness in his voice. Steve only heard that tone when Tony was injured.

"Thank you," Sherlock called, smiling angelically.

Pepper considered what would happen if she started dating Sherlock Holmes. Then again, Steve would object to putting Natasha in a position where she would have to indirectly kill Tony. "Thank you, Mr. Holmes." Pepper smiled at him, offering her arm, "Come with me, I'll get you some different clothes. I've been wanting to see Tony in a nice cobalt blue, any objections?"

Holmes took her arm, smile still in place, "None at all, I am at the mercy of your every whim, my dear." Sherlock assured her.

Pepper should not have been so pleased with that.

A/N: Thank you to everyone who's been reading and reviewing. I'm sorry this mother's been taking so long: I've been struck with fifty different things at once and none of them want to play out for me.

Anywho, please, I'm trying as fast as I can, but I gotta say, while a review does help stoke the flames, demanding more or being bossy about it really isn't helping here. I try to finish what I start, so I will get to it, you just gotta bear with me.

Sorry for the wait, I hope you enjoy (writing Sherlock Holmes is bloody difficult, let me tell you), I hope to have another update for you soon.