Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Sherlock'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

A/N: This is an AU. More than that, this is a magical AU. I've read quite a lot of Sherlock AUs, but only rarely is John allowed to be 'special' without Sherlock also having something, too (or, in one memorable instance, it seemed as though the author were handing out psychic gifts like parade candy – everyone had one!). So, in order to rectify what I see as a grave injustice to everyone's favorite ex-army doctor, I sought to correct this lamentable lack. Right now, I've got six chapters planned (and anyone who's been following any of my other work will know now why it's been so long since I updated) with some tentative ideas on how to handle things, post-Reichenbach. However, since I've not written a Sherlock fanfic (well, not never – I wrote one for ACD's original stories when I was about ten, long before I ever found out what fanfic was, and a solid six years before my first foray online), I'm not too sure how well I've done at keeping things true to the characters as they've been presented on BBC's Sherlock. I hope that y'all will lemme know if I fucked it up, yeah? I'm considering this AU to be practice for the real fic I want to do later. So any and all help (including Brit-picking) would be welcome!

Warning: All puns contained herein are fully intended. And though I've always believed that Sherlock and Watson were more than just 'friends', I've endeavored to keep this as the characters were shown in the series – not Johnlock, in other words. Updates will also likely come slowly for this fic, but each chapter is going to be long and leave off at a satisfying stopping point (with one exception, but blame the writers for the series for that particular cliffie, not me).

Quick note about cats and superstitions: In the US, it's good luck for a white cat to cross your path, but bad luck for a black cat to do so. According to my superstitions encyclopedia, the colors are reversed for English traditions. Just so y'all know, of course.

Yes, this is a series-rewrite fic. As such, I make heavy use of dialog from the show and John's blog. If this irritates anyone, don't read it – I wrote this to amuse myself. I'm only sharing it because that's what I do with things that amuse me. Major, major thanks go to Ariane DeVere for her meticulous work on posting transcripts for the series over on her livejournal. Without her effort, much of this fic would never have come to be. Anyway, enough with my blathering. Happy reading!

Infinitely Stranger

"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outré results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable." – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Chapter One: Beginnings

It was dismal. Flat and uninteresting and bordering close enough to lifeless to tip the scale from mere bad dreams over to nightmares nearly every night. Had it not been for the fact the building itself was less than six months old, he'd be tempted to think that something unspeakable had happened in his room at some point in the not-so-distant past. Jolting awake for the umpteenth time since settling into the horrid flat was the last straw. Yeah, nobody could see him. Yeah, sure, it was a needlessly archaic mindset, but… It's my bloody head and I'll cling to whatever I wish. Besides, it's not about weakness. It never was – I just hate the clogged sinuses afterwards.

Once his negative emotions finally allowed themselves to be wrestled back into their lockbox at the back of his mind, he sat up and switched on the light. "I've got to get out of here…" he whispered, not entirely aware that the words were spoken aloud. But… Where would I go? It's not like Harry's got the room any more. I think her place is smaller than this. Have to wonder why she's letting Clara keep their place; after all, if I'd walked in on my wife sleeping with someone else, I think I probably would've wound up tossing 'em both out before they could find their clothes. Then again, I've got Mum's temper. Harry's always been more like Dad. Neither one gets angry – they just get depressed. He sighed and wished it would rain. He always thought more clearly during rainstorms.

"And my pension really isn't enough to live on, not in London…" John closed his eyes, briefly recalling some of the prices he'd seen in trying to find this horrible little mass-produced box of a room. Looks like I'm going to need to do some research. Or hope that luck runs with me a tad more strongly than it has been for the past few months. He opened his eyes and glared over at where his cane leaned against the desk. Then again, I might have simply exhausted my allotment of good luck, what with… everything. He was unsure as to whether or not classifying poker games and being shot at in the same category was altogether permissible, but waved the thought away. Well… What could it hurt?

His shoulder twinged. "Okay, okay, so that was a bad idea. D'you have to keep bloody reminding me of that every blasted minute?" Yes, he was speaking to a body part. Perhaps I really ought to get out more. This can't be healthy. A strangled little giggle escaped on the mental image he received of Ella finding out about this latest quirk. Definitely need to get out more.

Shaking his head to forcibly eject random thoughts, John yawned, then stretched. Once he finished, he rolled himself off of his bed and on to the floor. He tugged a large, heavy, hard-sided brown suitcase out from under the bed. Damn thing weighs too much. Good thing it's got wheels, else I never would've got it here from the storage place. He placed his hands over the latches, closed his eyes, and said with a little smirk, "Open sesame." Faint clicks sounded as the locking mechanisms disengaged. He chuckled, amused as always that it worked.

It wouldn't work on anything more complicated than the simple locks found on luggage, a teenaged Harriet's diary, or handcuffs, but it suited his case. Another small chuckle escaped as he unlatched it and levered it open. Instead of clothing, either messily or neatly packed – he had a perfectly serviceable duffle bag for that – it contained numerous wooden and plastic boxes all slotted together like a 3D version of Tetris. The box he was after was the one anomaly; it was intricately carved soapstone, the design abstract and somewhat Celtic. It was also the only one wrapped in packing paper. He extracted it from its place and carefully unwrapped it. Removing the ornate lid, he revealed a small leather-bound book, an antique lever-fill fountain pen that sported gold trim, and a half-empty bottle of plain black ink. Eschewing the ink and pen for the moment, he picked up the book and began paging through it.

You'd think I'd have this one memorized by now. He paused at one entry, then shook his head and continued looking. He found it, about a quarter of the way into the book, the page a little dog-eared and battered. "Got it," he muttered, reading the instructions. It took a good five minutes to free the various boxes he needed from their positions, but soon he had a small pile of whatnot handy. Leaving the mess of boxes for the time-being, he used the bed to lever himself to his feet, then hobbled over and snagged his cane. Ugly thing. Ought to see about finding something less… geriatric. Money, Watson – money first. And you've got more to be thinking on than a cane. Like getting the hell out of this awful place. It took more trips to move the whatnots from the bed area over to the surface of his desk than he liked, but he managed.

Finished moving everything, he pulled out his chair and sat down, leaning the cane against the desk once more. The first thing he grabbed was a small glass jar with a rubber stopper and a handwritten label which read H. J. the C. Oil. Next, he picked up the small taper candle. It was a metallic gold, purchased during the Christmas rush nearly three years ago – the last time he'd been in London, between deployments. Using a bone-handled penknife his grandfather had given him for his eighteenth birthday, John painstakingly etched his own name into the candle, then lightly coated the taper with a couple of drops of the oil from the jar.

He then pushed it firmly into a somewhat battered bronze candle holder and grabbed the box of matches. John withdrew a pair and held them for a moment. He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then slowly exhaled and dragged the matches across the sandpaper strip on the side of the box. They flared to life with a hiss of sulfur. "Light in the darkness," he said, "draw luck my way." He held the matches to the wick until it flared into life. Waving them to put out the flame, he sat the charred ends in the wax-catch of the candle holder. He focused on the candle flame for several long minutes, painting a vividly clear image of packing his things out of the tiny little cubicle in which he now lived, happily moving elsewhere in London. He knew better than to try to imagine the place he might be moving to – sometimes, it didn't pay to be too specific. As his imaginary self closed the door one last time, he wrenched his gaze from the candle's flame.

Next came the bit he wasn't altogether fond of, but which was necessary in this particular instance. He opened an alcohol wipe from his first aid kit and cleaned off the penknife's blade. Biting his lip, he then made a tiny cut on his right index finger, just deep enough to bleed, and gathered three crimson drops with a ready cotton ball. A wisp of antibacterial cream and one Band-Aid later, and he was using a pair of forceps to hold the cotton in the candle flame. "By my blood, I make it so."

The mass of scar tissue in his left shoulder laughed at him.

I really need to get out of here. "I make it so," he repeated, injecting just a hint of Capitan Watson into the tone.

It took about two hours for the miniature taper to burn itself out, and three hours later, just as twilight was beginning to shift to dawn, John's abysmal little bedsit was back to rights, with everything put away. John sat on his bed and stared at the wall, straining his ears to hear something – anything – outside the confines of this tiny little room. It didn't work. It never worked.

Giving up, he levered himself off the bed once more and set about finding some clothes and breakfast. Harry's – No, my phone. It's my phone now – phone chirped the alarm tone. John bit back a groan. Ella. Got an appointment with Ella at nine. Means I've got two hours to get myself fed and into her waiting room. He sighed. This is going to be a long, long day.

Later, after his latest scolding from Ella, John limped his way to Russell Square Park. It was on the way back to his… Well, to that place he'd been staying. But it had people. And sunlight. Intermittent sunlight, sure, but it also had trees and grass and other growing things. And benches, too. Mustn't forget the benches, where you can sit and look around, and as long as you don't stare too hard, everyone ignores you.

He entered the park, intent on his goal – a bench almost exactly centered within the park, which was centered, bridged, over a smallish leyline. Something else lacking at the bedsit. Nearest leyline is almost three blocks away. In the absence of interpersonal contact, it was always best to be alone with something at least minimally sentient. Perhaps I ought to get a dog. "John! John Watson!" an almost-familiar voice halted him in his tracks. He turned around. Yeah, familiar, but… "Stamford," the man said, "Mike Stamford. We were at Bart's together."

"Yes," John said, his mind digging up memories of a much thinner, student-aged Stamford, one that had done all his studying with a book in one hand and a pint in the other at the bar – since closed and remodeled into a coffee house – all the students back then had favored. "Sorry, yes. Mike." John shook Mike's offered hand. "Hello. Hi."

Mike grinned at him. "Yeah, I know – I got fat," he said with a little gesture to himself.

Not arguing any, John thought, but said, "No."

"I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at. What happened?" John could see Mike trying not to notice the cane.

Don't you know that the harder you try not to notice something, the more obvious it is? "I got shot," John replied, his tone matter-of-fact. It had the unintended side-effect of removing the smile from Mike's face.

Stamford cleared his throat awkwardly. "The coffee cart at the edge of the park's pretty decent. Care for a cuppa? We can catch up a bit."

Isn't this why you didn't just go back to the flat? Something that vaguely resembles interpersonal contact? Before that damnable bedsit drives you completely barmy? "Sure, Mike."

A few minutes later, they settled themselves on John's favorite bench. John ignored the worried, curious expressions that flashed across Mike's face with the regularity of clock-chimes. Ever since he'd gotten back, he'd been subject to those looks. The ones that said poor bugger and glad it wasn't me and the ones that simply conveyed a sense of fascination, akin to the fascination of train wrecks and car accidents. Just further proof that a person really can get used to anything. "Are you still at Bart's, then?" John asked, knowing the hospital where they'd studied was nearby.

Mike's smile reappeared, only slightly more forced than before. "Teaching now. Bright young things, like we used to be. God, I hate them!" he joked.

Politely, John laughed along with him. He felt a coil of the leyline below the bench curl around his ankle. It was warm and soft and felt somewhat like the friendly nudge of a housecat looking for attention. With the grand total population of magic users in the greater London area at a total of five individuals the last time he'd counted, John wasn't surprised. He split his attention between Mike and the curl of energy caressing his ankle.

"What about you? Just staying in town 'til you get yourself sorted?" Mike asked.

"I can't afford London on an Army pension," John replied. Mentally, he reached down and petted the energy coil. It sent an interesting vibrating hum of content up his leg, draining away some of the stiffness that had been present ever since his kneecap had slipped partially out of joint during that last firefight.

"Ah, and you couldn't bear to be anywhere else. That's not the John Watson I know."

The coil reached a little higher, wrapping around his injured knee. The pressure sparked along his nerves. "Yeah, I'm not the John Watson –" he cut himself off. It's not Mike's fault. He nudged the coil with his mind, trying to get it to let go or move lower. All he got in reply was a buzz of irritation overlaid with the sense of 'I know what I'm doing, damn it'. The coil tightened a little, sending sparkles of pain zinging up his nerves. It wasn't a brand of pain anyone but a magic user could feel – it was as though bits of himself were being forcibly torn away, but immediately replaced again. He could feel his left hand start to shake slightly, and so switched his coffee to his right. He clenched his left into a fist, hoping that would be enough to keep it still.

Mike – Bless his oblivious little heart – chalked the reaction up to, as anyone would have, time spent in a war zone. "Couldn't Harry help?" he asked, valiantly trying to move past the sudden awkwardness.

Grateful for the distraction from what the leyline was doing to his leg, John scoffed. "Yeah, like that's gonna happen."

"I dunno," Mike shrugged. "Get a flatshare or something?"

The coil of energy loosened its hold and slipped back down to John's ankle. He had to fight not to let out a sigh of relief. "Come on," John said, "who'd want me for a flatmate?" Mike chuckled at that. "What?"

"Well," Mike said. "You're the second person to say that to me today."

The energy wrapped around his ankle stilled and waited for John to reply to Mike's comment. "Who was the first?" he asked, doubly curious, both at Stamford's statement and at the odd behavior of the leyline. The energy surged in what John could only describe as a hug – like London herself was saying 'welcome back' – before it released him.

"Hang on a second, let me see if he's still there," Mike said, pulling his mobile out of a pocket. He quickly scrolled through the contacts, hit 'send', then held it to his ear. "Molly? Yeah, it's Mike… Not too badly. How about you?" He stood and gestured for John to follow.

Well, not quite what you meant this morning, but it is you getting out of the flat, isn't it? John smiled to himself and allowed Stamford to lead the way, chatting on the phone. Ingrained politeness met up with the odd behavior of the leyline and crashed into the sudden realization that, for the first time in months, his leg didn't feel like someone was pounding tent-spikes through his kneecap, and so he missed the vast majority of Mike's conversation. They entered the teaching hospital as Mike ended his call, then headed to Stamford's office, where Mike deposited his coat.

"Where're we heading?"

"Remember the lab Erin Connelly blew up our first year?" Mike asked.

John nodded. "Yeah. Took them nearly three months to clean up the mess."

"That's the one," Mike cheerfully replied. "In the remodel last year, it wound up as one of the ones assigned to pathology."

John followed Mike a little more closely than before. "They moved the morgue?"

Mike nodded and paused next to an elevator. "That they did." He hit the call button. "More space, better lab equipment. Half of Scotland Yard's murder cases wind up here now." The elevator dinged its arrival. Once inside, Mike continued, "Molly – Dr. Hooper, I mean – took over about the same time that the renovations were complete."

"You mean Dr. Jurgens retired?" John shook his head in disbelief.

"Yeah – none of us thought that old battle-axe would ever retire. But he did. Rumor has it that his wife insisted, moved them out to Plymouth. Think they've got family that direction, but I don't know for certain."

The elevator stopped and the pair disembarked. A droning voice, lecturing in the room directly across from the elevator, halted any further conversation. John took a moment to re-orient himself. If memory has it, the lab he's taking me to should be right there. His eyes landed on a door halfway between the elevators and the pair of double-doors capping the end of the hallway. Mike knocked on the door John had spotted, then entered. John followed close behind, looking around.

You really couldn't tell there had ever been anything wrong in here, he thought, taking in all the shiny equipment. His gaze flicked across the man in the room, just enough to register his presence and to note not a magic user before going back to the room itself. How did they manage to patch the holes in the ceiling, I wonder? "Well, bit different from my day," he said.

Mike chuckled, "You have no idea."

Actually, John thought while the man in the room asked to use Mike's phone, if you gave me a minute, I could probably tell you everything that ever happened in here… If the room was feeling cooperative, of course. But then again, you're not to know about all that – you wouldn't believe me even if I tried explaining it. Mike told the stranger he'd left his mobile in his coat. "Er, here," John said, digging his own out of his pocket. "Use mine." He used the excuse to look a little closer at the stranger. Yeah. Right the first time. Not a mage. Doesn't likely know any either – he's not carrying any charms or hexes. His thoughts weren't enough to miss the flash of surprise on the man's face as he thanked him and got up to fetch the phone. I'd probably be surprised, too, if a perfect stranger offered his mobile. But, across the room is one thing. Closer, I can sense more. And… Yeah. Definitely not a mage and not carrying anything magical.

The man took the phone and slid it open to access the keyboard, then blew all of John's assumptions to dust by asking, "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

"Sorry?" John stalled as he re-scanned his new acquaintance, using more focus than before. He almost didn't see the knowing grin on Mike's face.

"Which was it – Afghanistan or Iraq?" the man repeated, glancing at John.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Absolutely nothing more magical on or about his person than the typical readings of life and former-life – wool and silk and he's looking for a flatmate? John shelved the idle musing on his financial state and said, "Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you –"

The door opened, revealing a woman a couple of years younger than John, carrying a coffee mug. The man closed John's phone and handed it back to him while focusing on the coffee and nearly ignoring the woman, save for some vaguely insulting line about lipstick. The woman – Molly – quickly left. John spent the time checking and re-checking what he already knew – the most magical thing about the room in which he was standing was himself and the handful of charms collected in his pocket.

"How do you feel about the violin?" the man asked, setting his coffee down and focusing on a computer.

John looked over at Mike, only to be greeted by that smug, knowing smirk. He turned back to the tall man. "I'm sorry – what?"

"I play the violin when I'm thinking," the man said, not looking up from his typing. John couldn't help but be slightly envious of the ability, particularly since his own typing tended to be hunt-and-peck. "Sometimes," the man continued, "I don't talk for days on end. Would that bother you?" he asked, finally stilling the typing and looking up at John. "Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other." He shot a false smile at John.

John glanced over at Mike's smug grin. "Oh, you – you told him about me."

Mike shook his head. "Not a word."

It had been a very long time since John had last felt this level of confusion and it showed. "Then who said anything about flatmates?" he couldn't help but ask. He'd never done well with confusion.

"I did," the man replied, turning to grab his coat. He spoke while sliding into the coat with a slightly bored tone and expression. "Told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now, here he is just after lunch with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn't that difficult a leap."

Feeling as though someone had just pushed him off a pier to drown, John asked, "How did you know about Afghanistan?"

The man ignored him while wrapping a scarf caught between blue and grey and purple around his neck and grabbing his phone. "Got my eye on a nice little place in central London – together we ought to be able to afford it," he said, walking towards John. "We'll meet there tomorrow evening, seven o'clock. Sorry – gotta dash. I think I left my riding crop," he punctuated the words with a tiny wriggle of his eyebrows, "in the mortuary." The man tucked his phone in a pocket and strode past John towards the door.

John couldn't help it – he really didn't do well with confusion. He turned and asked, "Is that it?" A hint of Captain Watson flavored the question.

It worked. The man paused, then turned around and strode back in John's direction. "Is that what?"

"We've only just met and we're gonna go and look at a flat?"

The man glanced over at Mike, then back at John. "Problem?"

John also glanced over at Mike, only to be greeted by that same insufferable smug grin. He looked back at the man, total incredulity threaded through every syllable he spoke next. "We don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting. I don't even know your name." The last bit had a hint of 'so there' overlaying it.

The man's eyes narrowed. John fought not to take a step backwards. The last time anyone had looked at him quite that closely, it had sparked a truly monumental argument which had left lasting ripples throughout the majority of London's leylines – it was partly why he was so confused at the 'line's antics earlier. The man began speaking in the same borderline-bored tone as he'd used when explaining how he'd figured John was looking for a flatshare. "I know you're an Army doctor and you've been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you've got a brother who's worried about you, but you won't go to him for help because you don't approve of him – possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he's recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic – quite correctly, I'm afraid." At the mention of the limp, John looked down at his knee and cane. The man's voice shifted to something slightly less antagonistic when he said, "That's enough to be going on with, don't you think?" He headed back to the door, pausing just before exiting long enough to say, "The name's Sherlock Holmes and the address is two-two-one B Baker Street." He disappeared with a wink and a casual 'afternoon' tossed at the room at large.

John stared at the door for a moment, then turned his eyes on Mike. The 'explain now' he figured must be painted clear as day on his face must have gotten lost in translation, because all Mike said was, "Yeah. He's always like that."

After leaving Mike behind at Bart's, John headed back into London. He wasn't about to return to that horrible little cracker box of a flat, not when he had something far more interesting to do. Two buses and a short walk got him to where he needed to be – a tiny little shop on the outermost edges of Soho. He pushed the door open with a jangle of bells, then strode in. "John! I didn't know you were back!" the enthusiastic greeting drifted through incense-laden air and over racks of assorted books and whatnot.

"What, you don't listen as well as you used to?" John called out to the store's owner.

Footsteps sounded on the well-worn floorboards. "Nah, just been busy," the voice came closer, then a man three inches shorter and about twenty years older than John appeared from behind a set of shelves containing innumerable little statues of fairies and dragons. "I could kiss Rowling – for all her books are complete shite, she sure has a way of drumming up interest in magic."

John chuckled in agreement. "Can't argue any, Ajay."

"So," Ajay Singh gestured for John to come further into the cramped, dark store. "When did you get back?"

"Four months ago," John replied. "Ran out of luck."

"You always did rely on luck too much," Ajay pulled a beaded curtain out of the way. "Bea! I'm taking my lunch! Mind the store!" he yelled. After a light beat, a dim 'no problem' filtered back from the direction of the cash register. The curtain revealed a much more brightly-lit nook of a room, with creamy wallpaper, mismatched overstuffed armchairs, and an industrial-sized coffee pot on a stand in the corner. "Have a seat, John, and tell me what brings you by."

John settled into the orange-with-yellow-paisley-print chair and let out a small sigh. The chair might be uglier than sin, but it was the most-comfortable one he'd ever sat on. "Well… You still keep track of all the locals?" he asked, his tone enough to tell Ajay he meant the local mages.

Ajay nodded, pouring two styrofoam cups of coffee. He handed one to John, then gracefully lowered himself into the blue-and-green version of the armchair John was using. "Yes. No one else seems up to the job, after all," he said with a small smile.

"I met someone today –"

Ajay grinned and leaned forwards a bit, "Is she pretty?"

John rolled his eyes. "Not a bird, mate."

Ajay pouted. "Pity. Anyway? You met someone?"

"Yeah," John took a sip of his coffee and let its warmth trickle down his throat. "Didn't read as magical, though –"

"Unsurprising, really," Ajay interjected.

John glared at his friend. "You gonna let me finish or not?" Ajay mimed zipping his mouth and made an 'after you' gesture. "Anyway, he didn't read as magical, but he knew things… I didn't recognize the name, but since I've been away… Well, it's not out of the question for someone to have moved to the area." Ajay mutely mouthed a string of words. John grabbed a small cushion off a stack next to his chair and hit him with it. "You can talk now, you prat!"

Laughing like a little boy, Ajay blocked the cushion from knocking his coffee out of his hand. "What was the name?" Ajay asked, once their laughter was back under control.

How come I never came this way before today? Ajay always knows how to make someone laugh. "Sherlock Holmes," John replied.

Ajay immediately shook his head. "Nope."

"I come all the way across London, and all you have for me is 'nope'?"

An unholy gleam spread like slow jam across Ajay's face. "Uh – no, sir, Captain Watson, sir?" John hit him with the cushion again. Snickering, Ajay grabbed it and pulled it out of John's grasp. "But no – he's not a mage, and you're not the first to ask," he said, absently tossing the abused cushion into the far corner of the room, where it knocked over a stack of magazines.

"Who else?" John asked, "And if he's not a mage –"

Ajay shrugged, "Don't know how he does it, John. I've never met him myself, but Mary did. Said that he could tell a whole bunch of intimate details about her just by looking, but that he didn't read as a mage."

John nodded in agreement. "It's… Well, the first thing he said to me was 'Afghanistan or Iraq?' He knew, just by looking, that I'd been invalided home, that I was a doctor, that… Well, just about the only thing he got wrong was thinking Harry was my brother."

Ajay let out a loud, braying laugh at that. "A mistake more than one man's made, Johnny!"

John glared at him, both for the insult and the nickname. "Careful, Singh – that's my baby sister you're talking about there."

Much later, after a long lunch with Ajay, John eventually made his way back to the bedsit. His knee, though still feeling much better than it had at any point since a sniper's bullet had ripped through his shoulder and flung him down a steep, rocky hillside, was stiff and his thigh was screaming at him to just stop and sit already. He did, on the edge of his bed, his mind mulling over the odd man he'd met that day. Recalling he'd loaned the man his mobile, he pulled it out of his pocket and scrolled to the sent messages. He didn't recognize the number it was sent to, but the message itself was… Interesting.

If brother has green ladder arrest brother. SH

He looked over at where his laptop was still sitting on the desk. Smiling to himself, he levered himself up and across the room. Though he wanted to see what the internet had to say about Sherlock Holmes, he started with a basic search to see if he could find out who Holmes had texted from his phone. The number yielded a hit – apparently, it belonged to DI Lestrade, of Scotland Yard. His curiosity increased exponentially and he had to forcibly restrain himself from calling the number. Instead, he typed in Sherlock Holmes' name and got several hits. He spent the remainder of his evening reading through the man's own rather pompous website and the blog posts of what, he came to realize, were people who had hired Holmes as a private investigator.

Just before he was about to stretch out and see if he could manage a few more hours' worth of sleep than he'd had the previous night, he suddenly remembered Ella's insistence on writing down his daily activities. Even without the leyline and the trip to Ajay's, it was still more than I've done in a week. Might as well humor her.

He pulled up his blog and began typing.

I don't know how I'm meant to be writing this. I'm not a writer. Ella thought keeping a blog would help but it hasn't because nothing ever happens to me. But today, something did. Something happened.

I was walking in the park and I bumped into Mike Stamford. We were sort of mates when we were students. We got coffee and I mentioned that I wanted to move. He said he knew of someone in a similar situation. So we went to Barts and he introduced us.

Except, he didn't. He didn't introduce us. The man knew who I was. Somehow he knew everything about me. He knew I'd served in Afghanistan and he knew I'd been invalided. He said my wound was psychosomatic so he didn't get everything right but he even knew why I was there, despite the fact that Mike hadn't told him…

It took John's painfully slow typing nearly an hour to summarize the public-friendly bits of his day, and by the time he was done, he was more than ready for bed.

For once, the dreams didn't manage to wake him in the middle of the night. John peeled his eyes open at a quarter past nine the next morning. He blinked stupidly at the clock for several minutes, disbelief that he'd slept nearly twelve hours flowing through him like water. Eventually, he was ambushed by a yawn. Stretching, he felt his shoulder give its customary morning complaint, but there was no answering yell from his knee. Well, not until he stood, and then the sharp stab of pain was from his thigh.

"Gonna need to do some exercises, I think," John muttered, heading for the bathroom.

Shower finished, he turned on his kettle as he walked through the kitchen area, and took a seat at his desk. A quick check of the weather told him that today would be far chillier than the day before. What should have been an even quicker check of his blog revealed an argument between Bill and Harry in the comments section. John sighed and rubbed a hand through his damp hair, then typed. Can't you two email each other or something? This is meant for me to record my thoughts. He posted the comment, then dug clean underwear and socks out of the bottom desk drawer. He'd just pulled them on when his computer pinged out a reply.

Not denying it then?
Bill Murray 30 January 09:57

John rolled his eyes. I'm not gay. He might be. I don't know. It doesn't matter. On posting the comment, he headed into the kitchen area and poured himself a cup of tea, then flicked the lever for the toaster. He then opened the narrow closet that stood in the microscopic hall between the kitchen and bathroom. He tossed his wet towel over the shower curtain rod with one hand while pulling clean clothes off of the cupboard's shelves with his other. The toaster chinked up his breakfast simultaneously with the ping indicating another reply on his blog.

He paused long enough to butter his toast, then carried everything – without the aid of his cane, much to his leg's annoyance – back to the desk. He sat the plate with his toast next to his tea and glanced at the computer screen while reaching for his belt.

LOL!
Harry Watson 30 January 10:00

He finished threading his belt through the loops on his jeans before replying. LOL? You're 36, Harry. Thirty-six. He posted his reply, then pulled a plain white t-shirt on. He overlaid it with his second-favorite flannel shirt, the one with brown and grey and light hints of red threaded through it, then pulled on his jeans, tucking both flannel and t-shirt in. He'd just finished doing up the belt when his phone rang.

John flopped down on the desk chair and answered it. "Yeah?"

"Awful, just awful. How many times do I hafta tell you 'hello' sounds so much nicer?"

"Good morning to you, too, Harry. What do you want?"

"What makes you think I want something?" Harry asked, her voice carrying tones of indignant innocence.

"Because you called?" John replied. "And because it's before noon. You never call anyone before noon, unless it can't be helped."

"Then consider this one of those 'can't be helped' times," Harry said. "But… You got plans for lunch?"

"No. Not really. Why? You buying?"

"I will if it will get you out of that flat."

"Hey! I went out yesterday!" He was partially angry, but mostly teasing at his own expense. "I know you know so – you saw my blog entry. And what's with you and Bill all of a sudden?"

"What do you mean? The guy saved your life, can't I get to know him a little as a thank you?"

John winced at the thought of his sister getting to know any of his army mates. The potential fodder for teasing alone… "So, lunch?" he changed the subject. "Where and when?"

"That was unexpected," Harry said. John could practically see her blinking at her phone. "It usually takes a lot more wheedling to get you to agree to meet up. What gives?"

"Nothing," John said. "Just not in the mood for being whinged at this morning."

"Fair enough. How about one, at that pizza place by my flat?"

"I'll be there," John said, then disconnected the call. He ignored it when Harry immediately rang back, choosing to focus on his breakfast instead. When nothing remained but dirty dishes, he shut down his computer and transferred his charms from the jacket he'd worn the day before to his slightly warmer canvas-and-leather one. He also pulled on his favorite oatmeal-colored jumper and his shoes before sliding into the jacket.

Even with the weather being rather uncooperative, he couldn't let the opportunity to walk around go to waste – he had no idea if what the leyline had done was permanent or not.

Besides, I need the exercise. And it'll be nice to get reacquainted with London.

The walk, though chilly, was wonderful. Lunch with his sister was slightly less so, but that was about par for the course. A second, shorter walk after lunch was equally wonderful, particularly the bit where he'd spotted a stray black cat darting across the pavement just ahead of him. I can use all the luck I can get. He'd returned to his flat and set about straightening up. He washed the dishes from breakfast, then hauled his laundry down to the coin-op launderette just up the block.

On returning, with everything put away, and nothing else to do for the better part of three hours, John wasted some time poking around online. He didn't find much of interest, though. He started to get up to go to the store and refresh his supplies of tea and jam, but decided not to. If he was going to be moving, the less he had to move, the better. Instead, he retrieved a jar of Scrabble tiles from the back of the top desk drawer.

He put his laptop away, shook the jar vigorously, and said, "Anything of importance I need to know about the meeting tonight?" He dumped the letters out on the desk. "Let's see… Two Gs, one B, one R, two Ns, I, A, and U." He took stock of the ones that landed letter-side-up. Setting them aside, he swept the rest of them back into the jar.

With the jar refilled, he focused on the letters revealed. "Aging burn?" he chuckled and shook his head. "Uh, no." He rearranged them. "Nu barging?" He shook his head again. "One of these days, I'm gonna remember to tell them how many words to make their answer." Another shifting of tiles. "Bag gin run?" The anagram his Scrabble tiles gave him kept him busy until it was time to head to Baker Street.

He arrived at 221B with ten minutes to spare, so he spent that time examining the area. The café right next door was a plus, as was the prevalence of taxis, but the lack of a bus stop for three blocks in either direction was a definite minus, though the tube station only a block-and-a-half away was a plus. However, he switched the majority of his awareness to othersight – granted, it didn't affect just sight, but names were names, and who was he to complain? – and smiled. The second-strongest leyline in all of London runs right under the building's foundation.

The leyline, noticing his presence, sent out a thick tendril of energy, much like the one at Russell Square Park had the day before. This one, however, was much, much larger. Had anyone else been able to see it, it's likely they would have described it as looking quite a lot like the tentacles of the Kraken from the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, only glowing silvery-white and lacking in suction cups. John braced himself. The tendril wrapped around him, clinging in a way that reminded him of how his mother had done when he'd finally gotten around to accepting visitors in hospital after being sent home. It imparted a sense of you're home! and please don't leave me again and I was beginning to worry.

"All right, all right," John whispered to it, after a surreptitious glance to make sure no one was in earshot. "I'm fine. I'm here. Don't plan on leaving again anytime soon," he felt distinctly odd for comforting any aspect of the magical energy flowing through London, but sent a mental caress out to the energy-tentacle anyway. Why didn't it react like this any of the other times I came home?

Because you were leaving again, came the unasked-for reply. The tendril unwound from him, and actually petted his head before disappearing back into the main 'line.

He shook his head. "I'm losing it," he muttered. But before he could continue, his phone chimed. He took it out and turned off the alarm, then strode over to the door of 221B. He had to stretch a bit to reach the knocker, but it wasn't too bad. Behind him, he heard a taxi pull up, followed by the sound of the door opening and closing, then Sherlock Holmes' voice calling out, "Hello."

John turned around and – once more – checked the man with his othersight. Still no evidence of magic whatsoever. Punctual, though. I do have to approve. He should give Harry lessons. He watched as Holmes paid the cabbie with a quick 'thank you', then headed over to where John waited next to the door. "Ah, Mr. Holmes," he said in greeting.

"Sherlock, please," the man replied, shaking John's hand.

Briefly, John lamented the fact that the man was wearing gloves. It wasn't common, but there were times when a magic user could hide what they were from sight, but those misdirects would fail when presented with direct skin-to-skin contact. "Well, this is a prime spot," John commented. "Must be expensive." And what he wouldn't give to live directly over a leyline – any leyline – let alone the second-strongest in the whole of London.

Holmes adjusted his stance so his hands were behind his back. John figured he was subtly leaning against the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the drop to a set of basement windows. "Oh," Holmes said, "Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, she's giving me a special deal. Owes me a favor. A few years back, her husband got himself sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out."

The explanation was nonchalant, but John couldn't help but be a little impressed. "Sorry," he said. "You stopped her husband from being executed?"

Holmes smiled at John – the expression was cold, but a little manic, too, and it made goosebumps break out on the back of his neck. "Oh no," Holmes blithely replied. "I ensured it."

John had absolutely nothing he could say in reply, and so was grateful that the door was opened at that moment. The woman was about the same age as his mum, with hair that was once carroty red, but had done more than simply 'start' to go grey, and was wearing a purple housedress. "Sherlock," she greeted Holmes with honest warmth and affection. "Hello."

Holmes' smile became something more honest as he spotted her. He gave her a brief hug, then introduced John. "Mrs. Hudson, Dr. John Watson."

Mrs. Hudson smiled at him. "Hello," she said.

"How do?" John replied.

"Come in," she said, gesturing.

"Thank you," John said.

Holmes headed inside with an imperious 'shall we?' tossed over his shoulder. John followed at a much slower pace. Even with his leg feeling the best it had in nearing five months, all the walking around hadn't done it any favors and stairs were particularly nasty. Mrs. Hudson closed the door behind him while Holmes' footsteps faded up the flight of stairs just inside the door.

"Flat B is just upstairs, dear," Mrs. Hudson said. "Go on up."

Stairs. Of course there'd be stairs. John sighed and hobbled up, counting as he went. There were twelve, then a small landing where the steps did a complete 180, followed by five more. Holmes stood on the final landing outside a pair of doors, one to the left, and one straight ahead. Another set of stairs stood on the right, leading up to what John figured was an attic space. As he reached the landing, Holmes threw open the main door to the flat and stepped inside.

John followed him in, then stopped and stared around. Bookshelves! It's got built-in bookshelves! And a real fireplace, not an electro-decretive dud! No more fighting with the radiator to get warm. And… Are those floor-to-ceiling windows? They are! He fought not to let any of these thoughts show on his face. "Well, this could be very nice," he said, though a touch of his awe at the flat came through his voice. He took a couple of steps and spotted the kitchen around Holmes. "Very nice indeed."

"Yes," the man agreed, pocketing his gloves. "Yes, I think so," he fidgeted for a heartbeat. "My thoughts precisely." A fond quirk tugged at the corners of his mouth, not quite enough to be called a smile, but not far from it.

"Soon as we get all this rubbish cleared out," John took the man's pause to indicate the various bits of junk spread about, but Holmes said, "So I went straight ahead and moved in," at the same time.

"Oh," John said, then paused. Holmes spun away and started trying to make the mess less of one. "So… this is all…"

"Well, obviously I can, um," he cleared his throat while tossing a pile of papers onto a box, "straighten things up," he stabbed a penknife through a pile of envelopes, securing them to the mantle, "a bit."

Even without concentrating on his othersenses, the glow coming from Holmes' right was extremely powerful. John looked at the source, both with regular vision and othersense. He pointed his cane at it. "That's a skull," he said. A real, human skull. And not one from a medical-supply catalog, either, not with all the missing teeth.

Holmes glanced at it. "Friend of mine," he quipped, then seemed to realize what he said, and tried again. "Well, I say friend –"

His faltering explanation was interrupted by the timely arrival of Mrs. Hudson. "What do you think, then, Dr. Watson?" she asked, picking up a dirty tea cup and saucer from a stack of books on Holmes' mostly-buried coffee table. "There's another bedroom upstairs, if you'll be needing two bedrooms."

Off to the side, Holmes was quickly stripping out of his coat and scarf, but had turned away before Mrs. Hudson had finished her sentence. John just blinked at her. "Of course we'll be needing two."

"Oh, don't worry – there's all sorts 'round here," Mrs. Hudson cheerfully replied. "Mrs. Turner next door's got," her voice dropped to a whisper, "married ones."

For the second time, John had absolutely nothing to say in response. A quick glance at Holmes revealed that either the man didn't know what Mrs. Hudson was talking about, or simply didn't care. Mrs. Hudson carried on being cheerful, however, as she carried the dirty cup to the kitchen, where she paused at the door. "Oh, Sherlock. The mess you've made!" She sounded like John's great aunt Melanie, fondly disapproving. It brought a nostalgic little smile to John's face.

His thigh chose that moment to start bitching about the abuse it had put up with all day, so John moved a Union Jack pillow and flopped into the nearest armchair. It was almost as comfy as the one in Ajay's coffee-nook. The madman was still attempting to 'tidy a bit', while Mrs. Hudson bustled about in the kitchen, doing likewise, only being far more effective. He took a moment to reach out his othersenses to see if anything else in the mess around him would 'speak' as loudly as the skull on the mantle. Nothing in the immediate vicinity glowed as strongly, though he could sense something upstairs. Wonder what that is, then? His quick scan also brought to light the fact he wasn't the first mage to set foot here. The walls carried traces of a long-ago series of set-spells, the signature tied in with them was slightly familiar. Mary? No, not Mary. One of her ancestors, though. About a hundred, maybe a hundred-fifteen years ago.

He 'switched off' – inasmuch as was possible – and looked back at Holmes. The man was powering up a laptop computer. "I looked you up on the internet last night," John said, trying to make conversation.

Holmes turned around. "Anything interesting?" he asked.

"Found your website," John answered. "The Science of Deduction."

Holmes face morphed into a proud grin. "What did you think?"

You have got to be kidding me. John was pretty sure the thought could be easily read on his face. "You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and an airline pilot by his left thumb."

"Yes," Holmes replied, matter-of-factly. "And I can read your military career in your face and your leg, and your brother's drinking habits in your mobile phone."

Too used to the uninitiated assuming Harry was his brother, John ignored that bit for the time being. "How?" he asked, but was disappointed when Holmes simply smiled and turned away.

Further interrogation would have to wait, as Mrs. Hudson came out of the kitchen, a newspaper in hand. "What about these suicides, then, Sherlock?" she asked. "I thought that'd be right up your street. Three exactly the same."

Holmes didn't look up from where he stood, staring down at the street outside through the window. "Four," he said. "There's been a fourth. And there's something different this time…" His voice sounded like he was simply airing his thoughts, not expecting a reply.

"A fourth?" Mrs. Hudson asked, clearly wanting more information.

Heavy, quick footsteps on the stairs kept Holmes from answering, if, indeed, that had been his intention. Instead, he turned around and waited, staring at the still-open door to the flat. A man with graying brown hair, standing just a shade shorter than Holmes, and wearing a tie-less suit and dark coat strode in. "Where?" Holmes asked.

"Brixton," the newcomer replied. "Lauriston Gardens."

"What's new about this one? You wouldn't have come to get me if there wasn't something different."

John had to wonder who the newcomer was and why he'd arrived and what he had to do with the weird suicides that had been in the papers, but kept his mouth shut. I'll find out, I'm sure. His othersenses gave the man a quick scan. I'll be damned – he knows Mary. He's got one of her protection charms in his jacket pocket!

"You know how they never leave notes?" the newcomer said.

"Yeah," Holmes nodded.

"This one did. Will you come?" Though it wasn't immediately obvious, John could clearly hear the desperate note behind the newcomer's voice.

Well, maybe he doesn't actually know Mary personally, John thought. His focus on the item in the man's pocket brought it into sharper relief. It was one of several dozen keychains Mary had made for a friend's jewelry booth at a craft fair during their second year of uni.

"Who's on forensics?" Holmes asked, his eyes narrowing a little.

If he hadn't already figured as much, the question was enough to tell John that this newcomer was a policeman. His face was sort of familiar. Well, the suicides have been in the papers quite a lot lately, and then there've been the news conferences. That's where I've seen him before! He's the DI in charge.

"It's Anderson," the newcomer replied, a hint of apology in the words.

"Anderson won't work with me," Holmes grimaced a little.

"Well, he won't be your assistant," the man said.

"I need an assistant," Holmes commented.

"Will you come?" the newcomer repeated.

"Not in a police car. I'll be right behind," Holmes said, dismissing the man by looking out the window again.

"Thank you," the words were said with honest gratitude. The man glanced around for a moment, then turned and all but ran down the stairs.

As soon as the front door slamming shut reached their ears, Holmes shouted, "Brilliant!" and leapt into the air. "Yes!" He twirled about the room, generally acting like a complete kid. "Ah, four serial suicides and now a note!" He picked up his coat and scarf with an enthusiastic, "Oh, it's Christmas!" Holmes swung into his coat and headed for the kitchen, doing up his scarf while speaking, "Mrs. Hudson, I'll be late. Might need some food."

"I'm your landlady, dear," she chided, "not your housekeeper."

"Something cold will do," Holmes continued speaking as though he hadn't heard her. "John, have a cup of tea, make yourself at home. Don't wait up!" Holmes disappeared through the kitchen door.

John blinked. What does it say about him that the most emotion I've seen him display is a direct result of someone else's death? Think I got it right when I labeled him mad. There is definitely something not right with that man.

"Look at him, dashing about!" Mrs. Hudson said. "My husband was just the same." The innuendo in her latest sentence had John grimacing and thinking that she and his great aunt really were cut from the same cloth. She continued speaking, and John was relatively sure she hadn't caught the expression on his face. "But you're more the sitting-down type, I can tell." John managed to restrain the urge to roll his eyes. Really? What told you that? "I'll make you that cuppa," she said, turning to the kitchen. "You rest your leg."

"Damn my leg!" John shouted, giving vent to the frustration he was feeling at even being here. Wincing – That was rather a lot louder than I'd intended – he immediately apologized. "Sorry, I'm so sorry. It's just sometimes this bloody thing," he tapped his cane against his leg.

Mrs. Hudson smiled fondly at him. "I understand, dear – I've got a hip," she said, patting the body-part in question.

Of course she does. If it weren't for the once-red hair, I'd swear she was Aunt Milly. He let out a little sigh. "Cup of tea'd be lovely, thank you," he said as the woman headed into the kitchen.

"Just this once, dear. I'm not your housekeeper."

"Couple of biscuits, too, if you've got 'em," John called out, picking up the paper she'd left on the arm of the chair he was sitting in.

"Not your housekeeper!" she repeated, making John smile a little.

John scanned the headline, noting the paper was a couple of days old. It covered the most recent – well, until today – of the strange serial suicides. A smaller photo next to the large one of Beth Davenport drew his attention. I was right. He's the DI in charge of the investigation. Wonder why he came after Holmes? He noted the name, Lestrade, and tacked it to the man's face in his memory – something that came a little easier having seen the man in person.

Holmes' voice interrupted him before he could actually read the article, however. "You're a doctor." John looked up to see Holmes standing in the doorway, pulling his gloves back on. "In fact, you're an Army doctor."

"Yes," John agreed, then cleared his throat and got to his feet.

Holmes stepped fully into the room. "Any good?"

"Very good," John replied. And I've got a box of medals that prove it, if you're interested.

"Seen a lot of injuries, then? Violent deaths?"

"Mmm, yes," John agreed, not too sure where this was going.

"Bit of trouble, too, I bet," Holmes said.

If only you knew. Out loud, John just said, "Of course, yes. Enough for a lifetime," and, because it was expected by most people who didn't understand, he added, "far too much."

"Wanna see some more?" Holmes asked, a mischievous little spark visible in his eyes.

Really, what could he say to that? "Oh, god, yes," was what came out of his mouth, even though he'd intended the no-doubt expected denial. Holmes immediately turned around, but wasn't quite quick enough to hide the bright grin on his face from John. "Sorry, Mrs. Hudson, I'll skip the tea," John said. "Off out."

The landlady followed them downstairs. "Both of you?" she asked on reaching the main floor.

Holmes spun around and walked over to her. "Impossible suicides? Four of them? There's no point sitting at home when there's finally something fun going on!" He ended the energetic string of comments by kissing her cheek with a smack.

"Look at you, all happy. It's not decent," Mrs. Hudson said, as always, fondly and with a smile.

Though John agreed with her assessment, a part of him had to also agree with Holmes' next statement. "Who cares about decent?" He headed for the door. "The game, Mrs. Hudson, is on!" He burst through the door, John on his heels, and hailed a taxi.

About twenty minutes later, the last of the sunlight had finally faded away. John's attention was split between trying to keep track of where the cabbie was driving and attempting to puzzle out the madman sitting to his left. Said madman was busying himself with his phone. Eventually, he lowered it. "Okay, you've got questions."

"Yeah," John said it easily, because it was true. Who are you? How do you know all that about me, but give no sign of magic? Where the hell are we going? That last sounded good, so he started with it. "Where are we going?"

"Crime scene," Holmes replied, looking out the taxi's window. "Next?"

"Who are you? What do you do?" He honestly hadn't intended to ask those, but, if a question were going to fall out of his mouth without his permission, better those than the one about magic.

"What do you think?" Holmes responded.

John blinked, then said, "I'd say private detective…"

"But?" Holmes prompted.

"But the police don't go to private detectives." At least, John was pretty sure they didn't. Granted, the majority of his experience in the area came from questionable prime-time telly, but surely, if the TV had it that abysmally wrong, wouldn't everyone know about it?

"I'm a consulting detective," Holmes explained. "Only one in the world. I invented the job."

Okay, a madman, sure, but an arrogant one, too. This could actually prove entertaining. He obviously wants me to ask, so… So be it. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Holmes said, with great relish, "when the police are out of their depth – which is always – they consult me."

Definitely arrogant. Wonder if I can fix a little of that for him? "The police don't consult amateurs."

Holmes shot him a look that could spoil milk. "When I met you for the first time yesterday, I said, 'Afghanistan or Iraq?'. You looked surprised."

Hmm… Hadn't intended to get the answers for that this way, but I'll take it. "Yes," he said. "How did you know?"

"I didn't know – I saw. Your haircut, the way you hold yourself says military, but your conversation as you entered the room said trained at Bart's, so: Army doctor. Obvious. Your face is tanned, but no tan above the wrists. You've been abroad, but not sunbathing. Your limp's really bad when you walk, but you don't ask for a chair when you stand, like you've forgotten about it, so it's at least partly psychosomatic. That says the original circumstances of the injury were traumatic. Wounded in action, then. Wounded in action, suntan – Afghanistan or Iraq."

Really very freaky-observant, isn't he? Well, on to something he couldn't have known, not just from looking. "You said I had a therapist."

Holmes smirked. "You've got a psychosomatic limp – of course you've got a therapist." John opened his mouth to argue the 'psychosomatic' point, but Holmes beat him to it. "Then there's your brother."

"Hmm?" John didn't dare say more than that. He wanted a really, really good moment to reveal the one detail Holmes had glaringly incorrect.

"Your phone," Holmes said, holding his hand out. John handed over the phone, more than half-expecting him to point out the engraving on the back. However, Holmes surprised him. "It's expensive, email-enabled, MP3 player, but you're looking for a flatshare – you wouldn't waste money on this. It's a gift, then." Holmes paused and turned the phone over and over in his hands, looking at it. "Scratches," he said. "Not one, many over time. It's been in the same pocket as keys and coins. The man sitting next to me wouldn't treat his one luxury item like this, so it's had a previous owner. Next bit's easy – you know it already."

"The engraving," John said. Holmes flipped the phone so the letters carved on the back could be seen in the weak light filtering in from the city's streetlights.

Harry Watson
From Clara
XXX

"Harry Watson," Holmes continued his 'lecture'. "Clearly a family member who's given you his old phone. Not your father, this is a young man's gadget. Could be a cousin, but you're a war hero who can't find a place to live. Unlikely you've got an extended family, certainly not one you're close to, so brother it is. Now, Clara. Who's Clara? Three kisses says it's a romantic attachment. The expense of the phone says wife, not girlfriend. She must have given it to him recently – this model's only six months old. Marriage in trouble then, six months on he's just given it away. If she'd left him, he would have kept it. People do – sentiment. But no, he wanted rid of it. He left her. He gave the phone to you, that says he wants you to stay in touch. You're looking for cheap accommodation, but you're not going to your brother for help. That says you've got problems with him. Maybe you liked his wife; maybe you don't like his drinking."

Okay, so he's more than freakishly observant. It's like a superpower or something. "How can you possibly know about the drinking?"

Holmes smiled at him. "Shot in the dark. Good one, though. Power connection." He turned the phone to show John what he was talking about. "Tiny little scuff marks around the edge of it. Every night he goes to plug it in to charge, but his hands are shaking. You never see those marks on a sober man's phone, never see a drunk's without them." He handed John's mobile back to him. "There you go. You see – you were right."

That's really not how I pictured him ending that. "I was right? Right about what?"

"The police don't consult amateurs." Holmes turned his face away to stare out the window once more.

And all that… Without magic? It's… Insane. Impressive. Daunting. A little unsettling, sure, but so's getting petted by not just one leyline, but two in as many days! "That…" he searched for a word, just one word that could really sum up everything cycling through his mind. He smirked a little as it surfaced. "Was amazing."

Holmes' head whipped around, his expression somewhat surprised. "Do you think so?"

"Of course it was," John replied, answering the slight insecurity he heard in the question. "It was extraordinary; it was quite extraordinary." And it's more extraordinary to see you've got this unexpected insecurity amid all that arrogance you've displayed so far.

"That's not what people normally say," Holmes replied, a small self-depreciating grin taking up residence on his face.

"What do people normally say?" John had to ask. It's fascinating, really. He's got this dichotomy to himself that I've never seen outside a kid.

"'Piss off,'" Holmes said, obviously quoting some unseen bit of memory. The taxi slowed to a stop and the pair climbed out. They ambled towards a collection of flashing lights and police tape about fifty yards away. "Did I get anything wrong?" Holmes asked.

Ah, that 'opportune moment'. I was wondering if he'd give me the opening I wanted. "Harry and me don't get on – never have. Clara and Harry split up three months ago and they're getting a divorce. And Harry is a drinker."

Smug descended over Holmes like a midwinter fog. "Spot on, then," he smirked. "I didn't expect to be right about everything."

And we have a winner! "And Harry's short for Harriet," John couldn't keep the grin out of his voice.

Holmes stopped short, nearly skidding on damp pavement. "Harry's your sister."

John took a couple of more steps before pausing and looking around. "Look," he said, "what exactly am I supposed to be doing here?"

"Sister!" Holmes said, through clenched teeth, obviously angry at himself for so simple a mistake.

"No, seriously," John attempted to drag the man's attention back to the here-and-now. "What am I doing here?"

Holmes let out the tiniest of sighs. "There's always something," he muttered to himself, ignoring John's inquiry.

The two of them were stopped at the police tape by a dark-skinned woman with longish, curly hair. "Hello, freak," her tone was malicious, her attention solely on Holmes.

John bristled slightly, wondering what made her so bitchy towards his new companion, then figured it didn't much matter – he had much the same reaction towards a couple of people he'd known over the years, and it defied all explanation. Instead of saying anything, he left Holmes to deal with the woman while he opened his senses as wide as they could go and tried to figure out just why Holmes had brought him along. The woman didn't read as magical – no surprise. None of the various people present did. Nor was there anything in the immediate area which was more interesting than was usual. The sound of his name returned his attention to the woman and Holmes.

"Dr. Watson, Sergeant Sally Donovan," Holmes indicated the woman at the tape. "Old friend," he tacked on, sarcastically.

The woman glanced at him, then said to Holmes, "A colleague? How do you get a colleague?" She refocused on John. "What, did he follow you home?"

Didn't the police invite Holmes here? Why's she being such a bitch? "Would it be better if I just waited –"

"No," Holmes interrupted, then held up the tape.

"Freak's here, bringing him in," Donovan said into her walkie-talkie.

John followed, this time splitting his attention between othersense and what was actually going on around him. So, this time, he didn't miss the pointed comments traded with Anderson. It was obvious by the time Holmes had finished with the forensic tech, just who he'd been quoting in the taxi. John had to bite his tongue, quite literally, to keep from laughing at Anderson's and Donovan's horrified reactions to Holmes' explanations. It didn't keep him from shooting a significant glance at the friction-burns on Donovan's knees as he walked past her into the house, however. Yes, it was petty. But she's a petty bitch, so it's appropriate. Definitely jealous of Holmes' keen eyesight and what is shaping up to appear as an encyclopedic level of knowledge about what all the little stuff most simply don't bother noticing really means.

Ten minutes and fifty-six excruciating stairs later, and John was standing in a room that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Even if they'd already moved the body – which they hadn't – he would have been able to tell something really bad had happened here. The very walls were appalled. The floor sang with recent pain. The ceiling wept for what it had seen. And this wasn't a new home, unaccustomed to the darker side of human nature; it had seen quite a lot in its hundred-fifty years. Happiness, sure, but echoes of its original family still resonated loud and clear to anyone who was even a bit sensitive to such things. Alcohol, depression, sickness, and suicide – real suicide, the sort brought on by the preceding three – had all happened here, as had violence and homeless squatters, and even the occasional junkie. Death, too, was no stranger to this address, but the woman lying on the floor… It wasn't suicide, John thought. I don't care what it looks like. Nor what any scientific test would come back with. It wasn't suicide.

He watched Holmes as the taller man inspected the body, using a magnifying glass at times. John would dearly love to know what sorts of information were making themselves known to him, but figured that – as had been the case with 'Afghanistan or Iraq?' – the answers would eventually come from Holmes himself. Instead of asking useless questions, John reached out to the house's spirit. Show me, he asked. Show me what happened here, in this room, with this woman. Please. I need to know.

The house-spirit was likely more upset at what had happened than he was, and as a result, was in a very obliging mood. Suddenly, the here-and-now faded away to mere ghostlike images superimposed over the room from earlier in the day. Bright light from the windows painted stripes across the dusty floorboards. The door creaked open and the woman stumbled in. She was crying – sobbing, really. "Please," she said, begging someone not yet visible. "Please, I'll do wha-whatever you wa-want – just d-don't hurt me. Please."

There was an inaudible reply, which made the woman sob harder. What? Oh, I specified this room, not the house as a whole. Gotta remember not to limit myself like that. The thought soon became null as someone else stepped through the blankness of the door. John frowned. It was a little old man. He was about the same height as John, and had likely once been about an inch taller, but age had worn him down and stooped his shoulders. His hair was shockingly white underneath a brown checkered cap, and deep lines carved his years on his face. John would have been surprised at anyone feeling threatened by this man, were it not for the gun the man held in his right hand.

While part of his mind tried to identify the gun, and a second part kept track of the goings-on back in the 'real' world, the majority of his attention was riveted to the scene unfolding in front of him. "You'd like it, I think," the man said, continuing whatever his comment from outside the room had been. "This game I cooked up. Bright young thing like you – of course you'll love it."

A game? What sort of game could lead to this? John wasn't stupid, not by a long shot, and could easily guess what sort of comment the man had said before stepping into the room, particularly the sort of comment that would make the woman cry so hard. "I… I really d-don't," she hiccuped. "Don't want to play any g-games, sir, please! Won't you let me go? Ple-please?"

"Now, now, there'll be none of that, girlie – you'll get your chance, I promise," the man made a motion for the girl to back away. She did so, nearly tripping over her own heels.

Wait a second, John thought, and the image paused. Not literally! he 'shouted' at the house. The image resumed playback. That's not a real gun he's got. A stage prop, maybe, but it's not heavy enough to be the real deal. Looks just like a Sig Sauer, though, so wherever he got it, the guy who made it knew what he was doing. The man reached into a pocket of his cardigan and withdrew a small glass bottle containing gelatin capsules filled with white-and-pink powder. He sat it on the floor next to the window. He then switched his gun momentarily to the other hand and pulled an identical bottle from his other pocket and sat it next to the hole in the inner wall where John was standing. The man returned the gun to his right hand and stood so that he was blocking the door.

"You see them two bottles?"

The woman in the pink coat nodded. "Y-yes."

"One's got poison in it. Other's safe as houses. You pick one. Whichever one you don't pick, I'll take. We each take one pill from our bottle. Whacha say, girlie? Wanna play?"

John's throat tightened as he saw curiosity and intrigue and determination flash across the woman's face. "What if I d-don't want to p-play?" she asked, the tears beginning to slow.

"Then I'll shoot you and find myself someone else. School's about to let out for the day. Usually get one or two girls who need a ride. Yesterday, it was this cheerful little third-form girl – she rambled on and on about some rock group the whole trip. Couldn't squeeze a word in edgewise. Woulda picked her, stead o'you, but she was talkin' on her mobile the whole way, see? Couldn't do, not then. But you? You're prime pickings. Come on, girlie – play the game. Could be you win, and the body they'll find up here'll be mine."

That was all it took for the woman's reserve to crumble. She nodded. "I'll play," she said, her voice suddenly even and steady, even though her hands were badly shaking.

The sound of the door slamming yanked John out of the recreation the house was playing for him. "So she's German?" Lestrade asked.

Holmes, his attention briefly focused on his phone, replied, "Of course she's not. She's from out of town, though. Intended to stay in London for one night." He smiled at his phone. "Before returning home to Cardiff," he said, putting the phone away. "So far, so obvious."

"Sorry," John said, not sure whether or not this was a continuation of a long string of information he'd just not paid any attention to. "Obvious?" he went with what seemed like the best question.

"What about the message, though?" Lestrade asked, gesturing to a spot on the floor.

"Dr. Watson," Holmes turned to John. "What do you think?"

"Of the message?" he was still trying to figure out what – if anything – he had missed while watching the past.

"Of the body," Holmes clarified. "You're a medical man."

"Wait, no," Lestrade interjected. "We have a whole team right outside."

Holmes glared lightly at the DI. "They won't work with me."

"I'm breaking every rule letting you in here!" Lestrade tried to complain.

"Yes," Holmes agreed, "because you need me."

Holmes and Lestrade stared at each other for a long moment before the policeman's resolve wilted. "Yes, I do," he admitted. "God help me."

"Dr. Watson," Holmes captured his attention again.

John hmmed and looked from the body to Holmes, then asked with his expression if Lestrade was okay with him taking a closer look.

The DI let out a small sigh of defeat. "Oh, do as he says," he said, gesturing to the woman. "Help yourself." He withdrew from the room and asked Anderson to keep the others out for a few minutes.

John walked over to the body, wishing he'd had just a couple of moments longer to view the house-memory – knowing how long the poison took would have helped narrow down precisely what it was. But, then again, they've had three others. Blood-work should have given that info already. He lowered himself to a half-kneeling position on the woman's right side; Holmes crouched on her other. "Well?" he asked.

John glanced at the body, then looked up at Holmes. "What am I doing here?" he whispered.

"Helping me prove a point," Holmes echoed John's lack of volume.

"I'm supposed to be helping you pay the rent," John replied.

"Yeah, well," Holmes smiled, "this is more fun."

"Fun?" John couldn't quite keep his disbelief to himself. The more I learn about this guy… He was unable to adequately end the thought, so he finished speaking. "There's a woman lying dead."

"Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper," Holmes overlaid his retort with a slow blink.

Can't hurt, some tiny part of the back of John's brain spoke up. And he does have a point, you realize. Dead woman or no – this is more fun than you've had since that time back in medical school when… John wrestled the irritating little voice into silence. Enough! Hearing Lestrade come back into the room, he focused on the body. Even though he knew what had caused it, even if the poison involved hadn't been named in the memory, it was relatively easy to spot the various signs. Any half-awake coroner could see this was a poisoning. He finished and straightened up. "Yeah," he said. "Asphyxiation, probably," he levered himself to his feet. "Passed out and choked on her own vomit. Typically, you only see this if it's a drug overdose or alcohol-induced. Since neither seems likely… Well, there are about three million different chemicals out there that could cause it." He paused, then added as an afterthought, "Even could've been an atypical food allergy. Saw something similar a while back."

"Could have been," Holmes nodded, "but wasn't."

"Didn't say it was," John stated.

"Sherlock – two minutes, I said," Lestrade interrupted them again. "I need anything you've got."

John resumed his position near the hole in the wall while Holmes explained what he'd deduced about the woman. He tried to fall back into the memory the house had been so helpful to queue up for him, but the intense energy of Sherlock Holmes mid-revealing rant was far too distracting; particularly how he'd figured she'd had a string of lovers. "That's brilliant," John said, admiringly, and wishing he could see as much without needing to rely on spells and othersense. "Sorry," he amended on seeing Holmes glare in his direction. He made a concerted effort to keep quiet, which only worked until he explained how he figured out where the woman was from. "That's fantastic!"

"Do you know you do that out loud?" Holmes asked.

John apologized again. "I'll shut up."

"No," Holmes replied, "it's fine." He seemed surprised himself at the admission.

"Why d'you keep saying suitcase?" Lestrade asked, sparking a new rant that touched on the unfinished note etched in the floor, and after a table-tennis shouting match between the DI and Holmes that ended out on the stairs. The last word Holmes shouted – "Pink!" – was still reverberating in the air when John realized the man had just rushed out and left him there.

I foresee this becoming something of a habit with that man, John thought, dragging his aching leg down the stairs. And isn't that thought telling? I've known the man for all of a collective hour or so and already have done more real living than I've done since that damnable bullet outside Kandahar. Even though his leg ached, even though his shoulder was starting to twinge in sympathy – or because it was about to rain soon – and even with the dead woman upstairs, John couldn't help but smile. He fought to keep it small, though he really wanted to beam brightly at everyone. Wouldn't do at all for these fine fellows and girls to think me as mad as him.

Eventually, he reached the main floor of the house. He stripped off the paper coverall and left it on the folding table where he'd gotten it, then made his way outside. Just in case Holmes had waited, John took a good look around. Just as I thought – he's not here. He was about to tap his othersense to track him when he heard the bitch who was still guarding the tape.

"He's gone," she said, a trace of laughter under her voice.

"Thanks," John snarked back, "but I do have eyes of my own."

"He just took off. He does that." Donovan insisted on trying to seem helpful, even though John could clearly hear the mockery underscoring her every syllable.

"I have noticed as much, yes," John straightened himself as much as he was able and stepped around the woman, then ducked under the tape.

"You're not his friend, you know," she said to his back.

He paused, then turned around. "How would you know? You only just met me tonight."

"He doesn't have friends," she explained. "So, who are you?"

There were so many, many ways he could answer that question. Ways that could burn her, figuratively speaking. Ways that would earn her sympathy. Ways that would likely even startle a laugh out of her. However, he wasn't interested in her sympathy, nor her good will. And as to injury? Well… Maybe she was just having a bad day. Even bitches deserved a second chance. So, he settled on, "Name's John Watson; weren't you listening when he introduced us, Sergeant Donovan?" He made sure to use just a hint of his Captain Watson voice – just enough to make her pay attention.

The Captain Watson voice was either too much for the situation, or she was simply more susceptible to it than most, because she winced slightly and stepped towards him. "Sorry," she said, seemingly honestly contrite. "You don't deserve it – the snark, I mean. But you really ought to stay away from Sherlock Holmes, though."

John quirked an eyebrow at her. "Why?" he asked, still using the thread of magic wrapped in his words which made others shut up and listen and do as I say.

She shrugged and looked down at her feet for a moment, then met John's gaze. "He's not paid or anything. He likes it. The weirder the crime, the more he likes to get involved. Sure, he helps out, but it doesn't change the fact that he's gonna get bored with it all someday. And on that eventual day, helping the police isn't going to be enough. One day, we're gonna get called out to a dead body, and Sherlock Holmes'll be the one who put it there."

The image of Holmes, as seen by his othersight, flashed through John's mind. He glowed – well, anything living glowed – but it was the color which was important in this case. Sherlock gave off a quiet, mellow golden color, threaded through with teal and green, but with no traces of the violent reds or blacks that John had seen in far too many people, particularly those in Afghanistan, and not all of those violent streaks had been seen on the 'bad guys'. "You obviously don't know him as well as you think you do, Sergeant," he couldn't keep Captain Watson out of the statement – not that he'd tried, mind.

Donovan winced again. "Just…" she sighed and glanced over her shoulder. Lestrade had just strode out of the house and called her name. "Coming!" she yelled back, then looked at John once more. "I'm just telling you to be careful, Mr. Watson."

"It's doctor, actually. You really don't listen at all, do you?" John didn't wait for her to reply, instead he turned on his heel and walked as straight as he could to the end of the street. Once out of the woman's line-of-sight, he leaned heavily against the glass walls of a phone booth and massaged his aching thigh. Yes, yes, you're angry with me. I understand. However, you will get better. At least, as long as that stabbing pain in our kneecap stays away. So, if you'd be so kind as to shut up, I'll see about finding us a taxi back to the flat.

The phone within the booth startled him as it let out a shrill ring. John nearly jumped out of his skin, then laughed at himself. Ignoring the phone – probably a wrong number – he began hobbling towards the far-busier cross street at the end of the block. It was a much better place to grab a cab than the deserted-save-for-police side street he was currently on. Reaching it, he glanced right, then left. Right just lead right back into another residential area, but towards the left John could see several shops and businesses. He turned left. Just as he approached the Chicken Cottage, their phone began ringing. Coincidence, John thought, even though it had been his experience that there was no such thing. The phone stopped shrilling even as one of the employees reached to pick it up. Yeah, not really. So, he was half-expecting it when the next phone booth he approached began to ring.

He stared at it for a long minute. Do I answer? He smirked at a long-ago memory involving his sister's diary. Harry always said my curiosity would eventually be the death of me. He stepped into the booth and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

The voice on the other end of the line was calm, coolly controlled, and sported a very upscale accent. "There is a security camera on the building to your left. Do you see it?"

Ooh, we've had the overgrown mad child, then a dead-but-not-by-suicide body, and now a bona fide Mysterious Voice! Since when has my life become a bad spy story? Grinning, he looked out the glass and had no trouble spotting the camera. He waved at it. "D'you want me to say 'cheese', too?"

"There is no need, Dr. Watson," Mysterious Voice assured him. "Simply watch."

The camera twisted away. "I remain unimpressed," John said, lacing his voice with all the remembered downtime boredom he could muster. "Have fun with your little games, Mr. Mysterious Voice. Find yourself another player, because this? Really isn't my thing. Ta for the distraction, though. Have yourself a nice night." John hung up the phone and quickly strode into the Chicken Cottage. "Hey," he greeted the clerk. "D'you have a loo?" The kid nodded and pointed. "Thanks." John glanced over his shoulder to see a Non-Descript Vehicle™ pull to the curb. He didn't waste any time and ducked into the restroom.

Shutting himself in a toilet stall, but not locking the door, he retrieved one of the charms he carried in his pocket. It didn't look like much, just a sweat-stained white cotton pouch hardly bigger than a pound coin, but it was filled with some very special fern spores. He unwound the string, then pulled it over his head to hang around his neck. "I'm not here. Neither sight, nor sound, nor scent, nor sense of touch shall betray my presence. I am a hole in reality. Eyes aside, ears closed, I am not here," he said the incantation nearly quickly enough to trip over it, but it worked. A cool wash stirred up from his feet and encircled him to the ends of his hair.

Out in the restaurant, John heard the teenaged clerk say, "Sure, I saw him. Pointed out the loo."

John stood on the toilet seat to avoid the inevitable door-to-the-face scenario. Sure enough, less than thirty seconds later, a man burst into the loo and began pushing open the row of stall doors. Since there were only three, it didn't take long for the man to open John's. "Damn it!" he groaned, loudly. It wasn't the same voice as the man who'd called the payphone, but then again, John would've been surprised if it was.

The man backed away and leaned against the row of sinks opposite the stalls. John took the opportunity to slip out before the stall door could finish swinging shut. He waited by the door for either someone else to come in, or for the man to leave. Neither happened. Instead, a very pretty woman stuck her head in. "Problems, Anthony?"

"Guy gave me the slip," Anthony replied with a sigh. "The boss really isn't going to like this."

The woman echoed his sigh and nodded. "Come on, then – so much for an early night. You know he'll be wanting to use plan B now, right?" She held the door open for Anthony. John slipped past her. What now? Baker Street or the flat? He wound his way through the line of customers at the counter, managing to time it so that he slipped outside while a young man held the door for his date. A third option presented itself in the form of the car parked at the curb.

The back window was down. Whistling somewhat tunelessly to himself, John climbed in, then clamored into the passenger seat up front. Whoever Mysterious Voice was, he was gonna find out the hard way that Dr. John Hamish Watson, formerly Captain Watson of Her Majesty's Army, was not to be fucked with. Honestly, this is gonna be fun!

He didn't have to wait long before the beautiful woman and Anthony returned to the car. Anthony, as John had assumed, slid in behind the wheel. The woman got into the back, her phone pressed against her ear. "…seem to have lost him, sir," she said, buckling her seat belt as the car pulled away from the curb. "No, sir, we aren't sure how. None of the kitchen staff claim to have seen him." She hit the button to roll the window up. John idly wondered why it was down to begin with, then decided it didn't matter. "None of the cameras, sir? That is… Yes, sir, I know. I shall. We will be there in fifteen minutes, unless traffic fails to cooperate, sir." She let out a bright laugh. "Of course, sir. Thank you, sir." She ended the call, but didn't put her phone away.

John's own mobile rang not ten minutes later. Sighing, he pulled it out of his pocket and declined the call. Don't really want to talk to Harry right now anyway. Not that she'd be able to hear me, but still. I'll call her back later. He glanced at the driver, then back at the woman. Neither had noticed his phone. Good to know it works on mobiles, too. Knew it worked for gunshots, but I wasn't certain electronics would be affected. Electronics can be so tetchy around magic.

The car eventually wound around to an old warehouse. It pulled around the back and into what looked like a large combined parking/storage area. The building's lights still worked, but there wasn't much else showing what it might have been used for. Undoubtedly, Holmes would be able to tell not just what was stored here, but where it was shipped and when. The car slowed as a man, dressed in an expensive grey three-piece suit and sitting on an incongruously new-looking plastic-and-metal chair, with a long umbrella hooked over the back of the chair. He was flipping through a much-abused copy of The Daily Mail. He quit his perusal as the car pulled to a stop and folded the paper back into an inner pocket of his jacket while standing.

The driver got out, leaving his own door open behind him. Sensing this was his best opportunity, John hurried out behind him and stepped off into the shadows behind the car. He quickly removed the notice-me-not charm from around his neck, deactivating it with a whispered, "Thank you for your faithful service, friend," and then stuffed it back into his pocket. He peered around the car and saw the driver had opened the back door and was waiting for the man in the suit to climb in. Just before the man was about to sit, John stood up. "You wanted to speak with me," he said with every ounce of Captain Watson he possessed, stepping out of the shadows. "Here I am."

The man startled, badly, and landed on his rear end in a shallow puddle of unknown origin. "Have to say, I really am not impressed," John couldn't help the snark – it had been one hell of a long day. On the upside, though, the Captain Watson voice lent snark an indefinable level of veracity that would have been otherwise lacking. Firmly ordering his thigh to be strong, he strode forwards with minimal use of his cane. He paused next to the man and offered his hand. "If you wanted to chat, you could have simply called my mobile. It's not like the number's all that hard to find, after all."

The man in the suit made a visible effort to wipe the surprise from his face and – to John's shock – actually accepted the hand up. "I believe I may have made a gross miscalculation," he admitted, climbing to his feet. "Well played, however," he nodded in salute to John. "You really must tell me how you evaded my people, Dr. Watson."

"Nah," John argued. "I don't think I really should. You probably wouldn't believe me anyway." The man simply stared at him, but John stared right back, making sure his expression was one of polite puzzlement. That particular expression had managed to get him out of more than one close scrape in his life; everything from detentions in school all the way up to convincing a Taliban insurgent that he knew nothing of value and wasn't a high enough rank to warrant an outright killing-to-make-an-example – and that had been without coupling it with the Captain Watson voice. "This is your show, mister…?"

The man blinked first, so John counted it as a 'win'. The man shook his head. "My apologies, Dr. Watson, but I fear you've thrown me rather off my stride, as it were. Would you care to take a seat?"

John glanced at the uncomfortable-looking metal-and-plastic chair. His thigh sent a distinct don't even think about it message to his brain. "Ta, but no thank you. Wouldn't be polite, what with there being only one chair and all."

"Your leg must be hurting," the man tried a different tactic.

John shrugged, "Same old, same old. Doesn't warrant subjecting it to that monstrosity, just so you can feel superior by looming over me. Figure you can do that just fine without me sitting down, after all – you're what? About six inches taller than me? More than enough height difference to feed your ego, I'm sure."

The man chuckled. "Really, Dr. Watson! Are you trying to bait me?"

"Why?" John asked. "Is it working?"

"Not as such, no," the man replied. "But I give you a solid A for effort."

"Suppose that's gotta count for something. But, I really am growing a bit impatient. How about you cut to the chase, Mr. Mysterious Voice? I'd like to get home at some point tonight, and I'm sure your people," he glanced at the driver and the woman, who were both unabashedly listening in, "would also like the chance to get home before midnight."

"Very well," the man said. John's phone chimed a text-alert. He glanced at it while the man asked, "What is your connection to Sherlock Holmes?"

Baker Street. Come at once if convenient. SH

"Potential flatmate," John replied as he slid it back into his pocket. "But I'm not altogether certain of it yet – he's more than a little mad." Following a hunch, John tapped his othersense and looked at the man in the suit. "But, then again, he's your brother, isn't he? So you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" The man had an aura nearly identical to that of his younger brother, golden and teal and green, but the individual proportions were slightly different. It had the added benefit of ensuring nothing – and no one – magical was in the vicinity.

The man's expression shifted so quickly, John was nearly positive he hadn't spotted the flash of petulant pouting before a sly smirk took its place. "Bravo, Dr. Watson. You are the first to deduce my relationship with Sherlock on the first meeting."

John 'turned off' his othersense and now that he was aware of the link, he could see vague traces of features shared by the two. "It isn't hard to see the family resemblance," John replied. "So, why meet me here and not, you know, at a pub or something? I can understand wanting to protect a younger sibling, so I get it, really, but this?" He gestured to the warehouse as a whole. "It's a bit much, don't you think?" He had yet to let up on the Captain voice. It was proving to be worth the minor expenditure of energy to keep it up, particularly considering the situation – John was pretty sure that, without it, the man in front of him would be far less forthcoming with information.

"Perhaps," the man allowed. "But then again, I find myself in the altogether unanticipated position of not being the one in control here. You yourself took that by showing unexpectedly and in such a… dramatic manner. I really ought to be asking for lessons."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Anthony's and the woman's mouths drooping open. "I get the sense that admitting you're not in control and asking for help are two things you don't often do," he said.

"That is correct, Dr. Watson," the man said.

"Also, you've got me at something of a disadvantage. You still haven't introduced yourself."

"Mycroft Holmes," the man said, offering his hand.

"Mycroft and Sherlock, eh?" John shook the man's hand. "Your parents really must have hated both of you."

"Father I am certain of. Mummy not so much," Mycroft admitted.

John finally allowed his expression a bit of free reign and smiled. "Well, this has been fun and all, but I'm ready to find someplace more hospitable than an old warehouse. Could you give me a lift back to a main road?"

"Certainly, Dr. Watson, but if you so desire, my people would be more than willing to take you home."

"I'm sure they would, too, but I don't think I'm heading in that direction yet. Just to the nearest place to grab a taxi would be sufficient." John's phone chimed another text-alert.

If inconvenient, come anyway. SH

"Come along, then, Dr. Watson. Perhaps we can chat a little more on the way?"

I wonder if the entire Holmes family is completely barmy? Certainly, both sons are. Both? Are there only two? God help us all if there are any more waiting to crawl out of the woodwork. Two is probably one more than is strictly necessary. However, of the two, I think I'd rather take Sherlock – sure, he's abrasive, rude, and arrogant, but he doesn't try to be anything else. Mycroft? I don't think he'd know what blunt honesty was if it stripped naked and gave him a lap dance. John walked around the car to the passenger side, and settled himself in the front seat. Right back where I started. Wonder what they'd do if I just disappeared in the middle of the car? Though the thought was amusing, he didn't want to try it. He had absolutely no idea what sort of job Mycroft held that would give him access to citywide CCTV cameras, landline telephone numbers, and would allow him to afford a suit John was positive cost more than his parent's house, but he was certain it was the sort which had contingencies upon contingencies for just about anything, and the last thing he wanted was to literally disappear.

Once the car started moving back towards a more civilized area, John twisted around to face Mycroft, who was sitting behind the driver. "So, gonna tell me what your original plan for this evening was? What you woulda done if I hadn't hung up on you?"

"That depends," Mycroft replied. "Are you going to tell me just why it is you need a ride when you arrived at the warehouse on your own?"

"A friend dropped me off," John lied with the ease of long-practice. "Couldn't stick around, though."

"And how did you find the location?"

"Easy," John said. "We followed this car here."

"But Anthony is a very capable driver – he should have noticed being followed…"

John shrugged. "'It doesn't matter how good you are at something, there's always going to be someone who's better than you are.' My dad taught me that when I was a kid, and it's one of the few things I've found is undeniably true."

Mycroft gave John another regal nod. "Certainly so, Dr. Watson. Certainly so. This simply means Anthony will need some refresher courses."

The man in question glared out the corner of his eye at John. John pretended not to notice. "Well, what about you?" John asked. "What had you been planning?"

"A simple meet with someone new to my brother's sphere of influence," Mycroft said.

"Sorry, but that sounds like complete bullshit," John replied, then winced a little. "Sorry for the language, miss," he aimed the comment at the woman sitting next to Mycroft. She didn't even look up from her phone.

"Perhaps there was a bit more to it than that," Mycroft allowed. "However, I doubt that you would be interested, not after having chatted with you this long."

"Never hurts to ask," John replied. "Besides, now you've got me curious." His Captain voice was still going strong.

"I was prepared to offer you a substantial sum of money in exchange for status updates on my brother's well-being, should you decide to move into the Baker Street flat."

John forced out a little snicker. "Though I'm sure the money would come in handy," he said, "I'm not really in the information business. Besides, aren't there easier – and cheaper – ways to get that information? Like actually talking with Sherlock like a normal person?"

"My brother despises normal people," Mycroft replied.

"I did manage to somehow get that impression, yeah," John wryly replied. "But you're his brother. There's some sort of universal law that, even if you don't like your siblings, you still have to talk to them every now and then."

"Though such a law would be beneficial in certain circumstances, I fear Sherlock would simply ignore it as he does any law which he finds disadvantageous."

John's phone pinged another text-alert. Sighing a little, he pulled it out of his pocket.

Could be dangerous. SH

Without prompting, his brain flashed back to the anagram his Scrabble tiles had given him. It wasn't 'aging burn' or 'gab gin run' or 'barging nu' or any of the other possibilities he'd gone through before leaving his bedsit earlier that evening. The actual message flashed across his mind in blazing capitals.

BRING A GUN

"Is something the matter, Dr. Watson?" Mycroft asked.

John shook his head and put his phone away. "No, not at the moment." He glanced out the window and saw they were in a commercial district, not far from a cinema. "You can let me out at the cinema over there. I really do need to be going."

Anthony glanced in the rear-view and waited for Mycroft to nod an assent before slowing and turning into the cinema parking lot. The car halted not far from the cinema's doors. "It was interesting to meet you in person, Dr. Watson," Mycroft said as John was about to leave.

John turned his head back around to meet the man's gaze. "Interesting?" Probably the only word that really fits, I suppose. "Yeah, it was. Not particularly looking forward to speaking with you again, though."

"A pity," Mycroft replied. "I quite enjoyed our little chat."

"Ta for the ride," John said, finally dropping Captain Watson. He slammed it shut behind him and headed for the multiplex before Mycroft could draw the goodbyes out any farther.

Ignoring the ticket-counter, John headed towards the restrooms that stood between a concessions stand and a loud arcade. After checking he was alone in the room, he put his notice-me-not charm back on and reactivated it. Not particularly caring what the teenaged concessions workers thought of the loo door opening by itself, John checked the movie-times board against his watch. The movie in theater six was just about over. Another two or three minutes would have dozens of people streaming through the hallway towards the exit.

The only hard part about being invisible in a crowd was making sure nobody behind you was about to run you over, but John managed quite well. On exiting the cinema, he spotted Mycroft's vehicle parked under a broken street light near the far end of the parking lot.

He examined his options:

He could keep the notice-me-not up, duck around the corner of the building, and find a way to the next street over before dropping it and catching a cab or the tube or a bus. But, if Mycroft had access to city-CCTV, then it would be pretty easy for the man to track him. I really don't want to make it easy on him, not with the whole kidnapping-intimidation-bribery thing he had planned.

He could keep the notice-me-not up, duck around the corner of the building, and take a bus or catch the tube, but maintaining notice-me-not in crowds was rather more effort than it was worth. Besides, it's already been a long day. And it's not like I'm being shot at, after all. I'd hate to exhaust the charm, then find I really need it, only to find it non-functioning.

He could walk, with or without the notice-me-not running. Not on your life! His thigh apparently had other thoughts on the matter.

He could hitch a ride in some unsuspecting person's car – it wouldn't be the first time he'd used notice-me-not in that manner. But then there'd be no telling just where I'd wind up.

Or… He checked his pockets. There was a battered and half-full box of chalk in his inside jacket pocket. Ah, yes. That will do nicely. Ajay won't mind, I'm sure. He wandered around the side of the cinema while pulling a half-used stick from the box. As soon as he was out of sight of Mycroft's car, he drew a full-sized door on the rough cinderblock of the cinema wall, complete with illustrated knob and keyhole. When the drawing was complete, he returned the chalk to its box and put it back in his pocket. Holding his hand over the keyhole, he chanted a long-since-memorized string of Hindi that Ajay swore up and down was a word-for-word translation of Mary had a Little Lamb. It had always seemed too long for that, but since John only knew how to say 'thank you' in Hindi, he ignored it; doubly-so since Ajay was the one who taught him 'thank you' to begin with.

When the last syllable fell from his mouth, the door drawing shimmered, taking on a three-dimensional presence that could only be seen/felt/experienced by othersight. John grasped the knob, turned it, and pulled the door open. Closing his eyes – nobody but nobody was nuts enough to go through a gate with their eyes open – he jumped through.

The noise of a motion-activated door chime like the ones found in convenience stores announced his arrival. Ajay looked over from where he was sprawled out on his sofa. "Evening, John. What's got you taking the gate tonight? Thought you hated that bloody thing."

John waited for the translocative nausea to subside. It never took long, but it was absolutely hellish while it lasted. "Was being followed by someone I'd rather not see again," John replied. "Sorry for the interruption of your evening, Ajay."

"Stick around. I was about to order some take-away."

"Thanks, but I don't have time right now. Maybe tomorrow?"

Ajay shook his head. "I've got a date tomorrow. I know you don't plan further than that, so I won't ask. Just gimme a call sometime, yeah?"

"Will do," John promised.

"You know the way out," Ajay motioned towards the fire escape.

"Yeah, I do," John nodded, then let himself out Ajay's living-room window. Once back on street-level, he removed and deactivated the notice-me-not charm. One of these days, I'm going to put forth the effort for that true invisibility spell. Notice-me-not is useful and all, but it doesn't work against other mages. He exited the alleyway where Ajay's fire escape landed and hailed the first taxi he saw. Giving the cabbie the address of his bedsit, he relaxed back into the seat and watched the city flow past the windows.

He couldn't keep the smile off his face. Tonight has been… Fun. Even with the dead woman and Mr. Mysterious Mycroft. It's been fun. His phone rang again. Checking the caller-ID, he saw it was Harry again. Rolling his eyes, he hit 'decline' and returned the phone to his pocket. Pretty sure he'd been successful in losing his Mycroft-tail, he turned his thoughts back to the dead woman and what the house-spirit had shown him. It's really too bad mages are so rare. If we were more common, magic would be something regular people would believe in, and it would be easy to catch the man who killed that poor woman. Unfortunately, if I tried to give the police a description of the man, they'd want to know how I knew, and the explanation… Well, I really do not fancy a long stay in a padded cell. The bedsit's been bad enough, thanks. Okay, so how else can we go about stopping him? I get the feeling he's not going to stop on his own.

The cab pulled to a halt, jolting John out of his thoughts. He looked up and saw that they were at his current address. "Wait a moment, would you? I'll only be a minute," he asked the cabbie.

"No problem, mate," the thirty-something redhead replied. "Meter's running, though."

"Didn't expect it not to," John mumbled, then more clearly, he said, "Be right back." He climbed out of the cab and hurried as quickly as his protesting, under-used, over-exerted leg would allow him to go. His intention had been to just slip in, grab his Browning, and slip out, but he paused at the door. I've used magic more today than I have since Afghanistan. Might do to have a few essentials handy, just in case. It took a full ten minutes to pack a satchel – old, brown leather, he'd had it since primary school – with an assortment of various magic-related odds'n'ends. Positive he was forgetting something important, he left the chaos of his suitcase and its boxes behind to be cleaned up later, and nearly forgot to lock his door behind him on the way out.

Luckily, the cabbie was still there. John breathlessly slid into the back seat. "Two-two-one B Baker Street, please," he gasped out.

Once his breathing was back to normal, John went back to musing on how to stop the old man from killing anyone else. If I can't get a description of the man to the police, how else can he be stopped? I've nothing of his with which to do any sort of commanding spell. I don't even know his name. I wonder if Ajay would know anything? He dug his phone out and dialed Ajay's number.

His old friend and former mentor answered on the third ring. "I know I said to call, John, but weren't you just here?"

"Yeah, sorry. Didn't think of it then, but I do have a quick question for you."

"This have to do with why you gated in tonight?"

"Not directly," John replied. "That was just a… Well, you could call it a side-effect of the night I've had."

"Sounds like we really need to meet up, and soon, Johnny."

John let out a little growl at the childhood nickname. "Don't call me that, Ajay."

His friend snickered. "Sorry," he sounded anything but. "What d'you need to know?"

"Is there any way to find out someone's name – someone you don't already know – when all you've got is an image?"

"I take it you don't mean a photo, do you?"

"Spot on," John confirmed. "I don't have anything I can use like that."

"And you can't just ask them?"

"Not an option, I'm afraid."

"Divination, then. It's the only method left."

John sighed. "I was afraid of that. Unfortunately, you know my preferred method."

"Scrabble tiles, yeah – I know. Not much use, and that's assuming they actually cooperate. Divination never was your strong point – likely why the only method which actually works for you is the one you invented."

"Guess I'll have to figure out something else, then. Thanks, Ajay."

"Any time, you know that. Except for –"

"When Manchester's playing, I know, Ajay. Trust me, I know."

Ajay laughed. "Good to see I trained you well, John."

"Only as good as my teacher," John replied. "But – I ought to let you go. I'll keep in touch. Promise."

"Careful throwing around the P-word, John – you never know what sort of trouble it can get you into," Ajay chided. "But you're right. Supper's here. Talk with you later."

"Bye," John said, then disconnected the call. He put his phone back in his pocket and went back to thinking.

All right, so finding out his name is next door to impossible without finding him and flat-out asking. If this drags on, I'll give the tiles a try, but I doubt they'll give me a usable answer. The last time he'd used his Scrabble tiles to find out someone's name, they'd given him the anagram for the meaning of her name. It was an exercise in total frustration, and not something John was all that eager to repeat. So… What else can I do?

Well, Watson – what did the house show you? You saw the little old man tormenting Jennifer Wilson. No. You saw more than that. He was trying to play a game. There were two bottles of pills. One poison, one harmless – or so he said. What was that movie Harry loved so much when we were kids? The one with Andre the Giant in it? He waved the thought away. Doesn't matter. Could be that both pill bottles are poison, but one that he's developed a resistance to within himself. But of what possible use is speculating on the pills? It's not like he left any behind, and even if he did, there's no way I can get a hold of one for sympathetic magic.

What else did you see? Well, Miss Wilson didn't want to play, but the man threatened to shoot her if she didn't. It's obvious she didn't know his gun was just a prop. But then again, how many people in London have actually seen a real gun before? Not too many, I'd bet real money on that answer. So, she obviously felt she had no choice but to take her chances with the pills.

Part of the old man's words floated through John's memory. "Then I'll shoot you and find myself someone else. School's about to let out for the day. Usually get one or two girls who need a ride. Yesterday, it was this cheerful little third-form girl – she rambled on and on about some rock group the whole trip. Couldn't squeeze a word in edgewise. Woulda picked her, stead o'you, but she was talkin' on her mobile the whole way, see? Couldn't do, not then. But you? You're prime pickings. Come on, girlie – play the game. Could be you win, and the body they'll find up here'll be mine." I wonder what he meant? Does he drive a bus? Is that how he picks his victims?

John shook his head. No, that can't be it. Miss Wilson apparently was taken in the middle of the day. I've never seen a bus that empty in the middle of the day.

"We're here," the cabbie broke into John's thoughts and yanked him out of his head.

John looked up. Sure enough, there was the door to 221B. He paid the cabbie – it took every last cent he had on him to cover it – and climbed out. He walked over to the door and knocked. Mrs. Hudson quickly answered it. "Hello again, dear," she smiled at him.

"Evening, Mrs. Hudson. Sherlock's expecting me?"

"Go on up, dear," she stepped aside, gesturing to the stairs. "He is in a bit of a mood, though…"

From what I've seen, that seems to be his basic mode of operation, John thought, but said, "Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Excuse me, please." Ignoring the landlady's knowing smile, he hobbled his way up the stairs, his leg threatening mutiny at every step. I know, I know – I'll sit soon. Definitely hope whatever the leyline did is permanent. Without that agony, I'm pretty sure all I need to do for a full recovery is to rebuild the muscle.

A loud sigh echoed out of the open flat door as he reached the landing between the long flight and short flights of stairs. John hurried the last few steps, then entered the flat's living room. Sherlock was stretched out on the sofa, his left sleeve rolled haphazardly to his elbow while the right was still buttoned around his wrist. His right hand was pressed against the exposed forearm. "What are you doing?" John asked, his inner doctor wanting to know if the man had somehow hurt himself.

"Nicotine patch," he replied, revealing three circles stuck to the inside of his forearm. "Helps me think." He paused for a breath, then said, "Impossible to sustain a smoking habit in London these days. Bad news for brain work."

John took a couple of steps into the room, looking around. Not much had changed since his visit earlier in the evening – everything was still a mess. "It's good news for breathing," he said, still in doctor-mode.

"Oh, breathing," Sherlock sounded uninterested. "Breathing's boring."

John peered a little closer at the man on the sofa. "Is that three patches?"

Sherlock closed his eyes as he answered, "It's a three-patch problem."

Why did I come back? John ignored the thought – he really knew why, but wasn't ready to think it. Instead of lecturing Sherlock on the probability of nicotine poisoning like his inner doctor really wanted to do, he instead made good on his promise to his aching leg. He flopped down on the armchair with the Union Jack pillow, then sat his satchel down on the floor and used it as a foot-rest while massaging his complaining thigh muscle.

He looked over at Sherlock to find the man hadn't moved a muscle. He was still stretched out, his hands pressed palm-to-palm with fingers extended just under his chin. I've seen marble statues in that pose before, but never an actual person. Is he even breathing? Yes, if he watched closely, John could see him breathe. Further scrutiny halted as the leyline below the building chose that moment to snake a tendril up into the flat. It was much thinner than the one which had hugged and petted him earlier, closer in thickness to the one which had greeted him at the park the day before.

And like at the park, this one curled around his injured leg, wrapping around his ankle, calf, knee, and halfway up his thigh. John removed his hands from the muscle and let the leyline do whatever it felt necessary. It helped that it suffused the abused tissue with a heady sense of warmth, like a really good heating pad, coupled with an undulating pressure that was better than any massage. John was hard-pressed to keep from groaning out loud as it drained the stiff-and-soreness right out of him. He made a mental note to ask Ajay why the leylines would be doing this for him – healing his leg – the next time he spoke with him, then simply let his mind go blank and enjoy the feeling of being pain-free for what felt like the first time in years.

An uncounted amount of time later, Sherlock's voice cut through the drowsy fog of bliss surrounding John's mind. "It's no use, there's no other way. We'll have to risk it." The man sat up, then blinked at John as though he'd forgotten the other man was there. "Can I borrow your phone?" he asked.

John's mind took a moment to actually register the meaning behind the words. "My phone?"

"Yes," Sherlock replied. "I don't want to use mine. There's always a chance the number will be recognized from the website."

"Fair enough, but what do you need it for?" John asked, mentally nudging the leyline tendril. It unwound from his leg and petted him on the head again before returning to the 'line.

"On my desk," Sherlock hooked a thumb indicating the mostly-hidden piece of furniture situated between the living room windows, "there's a number. I want you to send a text."

John retrieved his phone from his pocket. Unwilling to do anything immediately that would wake up his traitorous leg, he simply tossed it at Sherlock. "Go ahead," he said. The phone landed on the cushion next to the other man. "Send it yourself."

"It's your phone," Sherlock replied, looking at it.

"Technically," John argued, wondering if this Holmes would be as susceptible to Captain Watson as his brother had been, "it's my sister's phone. She's just letting me use it for now."

"The argument is invalid – the phone was gifted to you, so it is yours, regardless of its origin," Sherlock rebutted, tossing the phone back to John.

John caught it with his off hand. He let out a sigh. "What's the number, then?" he asked.

"It's on my desk," Sherlock repeated.

John cleared his throat. It's like dealing with a little kid. Using just the smallest trace of Captain Watson, he said, "So get up and either hand it here or read it to me. I know you're under this impression that whatever's wrong with my leg's psychosomatic, but I can assure you – it isn't."

Sighing in protest, Sherlock actually did get up and snag a scrap of paper off the desk. He thrust it in John's direction before returning to his perch on the sofa. The scrap fluttered on the air to land on John's outstretched leg, just over the kneecap that had been giving him trouble for so very long. "See?" John risked teasing Sherlock. "That wasn't so hard, now was it?" He dropped his gaze from the man who'd gone back to ignoring his existence to the scrap of paper. Jennifer Wilson. "Can I ask why you want to send a text to the dead woman from earlier this evening?" he asked, scrolling to the proper function on his phone and entering the number. Sherlock continued ignoring him. John sighed. "Okay – what message do you want me to send?"

Sherlock finally looked over at him. "Type these words exactly: What happened at Lauriston Gardens? I must have blacked out. Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Please come." At that, Sherlock sprang to his feet, then – using the coffee table as a stepping-stone – rushed into the kitchen.

John typed most of the message, but paused partway through. "What was that address again?"

"Twenty-two Northumberland Street."

He typed it in and finished the message, then hit 'send' just as Sherlock reappeared toting a small carry-on bag and a chair from the kitchen. He flopped in the other armchair after setting the kitchen chair in front of it with the small suitcase resting on the makeshift tabletop. John lifted his ankle off his satchel and leaned a little to the side, peering around the back of the kitchen chair. "That's Miss Wilson's case, is it?" he asked, dropping all traces of Captain Watson from his voice. In its place was honest curiosity.

Sherlock unzipped it, then looked up at John. "Yes, obviously."

John slowly got to his feet, unwilling to undo the effects of what the leyline had just done. He stared into the small case, seeing nothing of any real value. I suppose I could use the case itself to trace where it had last been, but there's no guarantee it would work. The killer only had it in his possession for a little while. That's not nearly long enough to leave behind any sort of usable echo.

Apparently, he had remained silent for too long, for Sherlock rolled his eyes and stared up at John with a slightly exasperated look on his face. "Oh, perhaps I should mention I didn't kill her."

John quirked an eyebrow at the man. "I never said you did." What brought that on?

"Why not?" Good grief, now he sounds affronted that I didn't think he was the killer! "Given the text I just had you send and the fact that I have her case, it's a perfectly logical assumption."

John let out an amused huff of air. "Logic and me have never been on a first-name basis. Just ask Harry about it, I'm sure she'd give you an earful." He glanced back into the contents of Miss Wilson's case. "Do people usually assume you're the murderer?"

"Now and then, yes," Sherlock replied, adjusting his position on his chair so that he was perched on the back with his feet resting on the seat. He seemed both pleased and amused at the prospect.

"How did you find the case?" John asked, sitting back down. "And where was it?"

"The only way for the killer to have had his hands on the case was if he had kept it by accident. And the only way that makes sense was if he had driven her to Lauriston Gardens and forgot the case was in the car. Nobody could be seen with this case without drawing attention – particularly a man, which is statistically more likely – so, on realizing his mistake, he would have obviously felt compelled to be rid of it as soon as possible. I checked every back street wide enough for a car five minutes from Lauriston Gardens and anywhere you could dispose of a bulky object without being observed. It took less than an hour to find the right skip."

And all that without the aid of magic. Honestly, I don't know whether to applaud or be appalled that he could figure all that out just because he realized it had to be pink. Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because Sherlock peered at him and asked, "What is it?"

"You got all that from the realization that the case would be pink?"

"Well, it had to be pink, obviously."

"You like that word, don't you?"

"Which word?"

"'Obvious'," John said it with a little smirk.

Sherlock gave a little shrug. "So many things in life are obvious. It boggles my mind how much gets overlooked, even by so-called professionals." He turned his attention back to the suitcase and its contents. Gesturing to it, he said, "Now, look. Do you see what's missing?"

John's first instinct was to say no, but he pushed it aside. He nudged the kitchen chair around and really looked at the contents of the suitcase. Clothes, underthings, cosmetics case, a book. All things you'd expect in an overnight bag. But 'missing'? What could it be? Well, Watson – if you were going on an overnight stay, what would you take with you? Change of clothes, yeah. Bathroom stuff, check. A couple of charms for just-in-case, but let's not mention that bit. My phone and laptop. Hey… "Where's her phone? Was it on her body?" he asked.

Sherlock's face spread into a slow smile. "Ah… That is a very good question, John. Where is her phone? No, it wasn't on her body, so where did it go? We know she had one, you just texted it."

John mused on it for a moment. "She could have left it at home."

"She's got a string of lovers and she's careful about it. She never leaves her phone at home." Sherlock slid back into a more traditional posture on his chair.

"It could have gotten stolen or lost. It could have even gotten damaged from all the rain you mentioned back at the crime scene and been thrown away."

"Yes," Sherlock said, drawing out the word with a healthy dose of skepticism. "But I doubt it."

"You think the killer has her phone," it wasn't a question. "Sure, I've read that most serial killers like trophies, but a phone?"

Before Sherlock could reply, John's own phone began to ring. He checked the caller-ID, expecting to see Harry again, but the screen displayed 'withheld'. He held it up to show Sherlock. The other man's expression just brightened somewhat, so that he now looked like a grinning – but vindicated – loon. "A few hours after his last victim, and now he receives a text that can only be from her. If somebody had just found that phone, they'd ignore a text like that, but the murderer," he paused for a moment, nodding towards the now-silent phone in John's hands, "would panic."

Sherlock flipped the suitcase lid closed then stood and grabbed his jacket off of the back of his desk chair. John looked at the 'one missed call' message on the screen of his phone, then tucked it back into his pocket. "Have you informed the police?"

Sherlock paused in slipping into his overcoat. "Four people are dead – there isn't time to talk to the police."

Irony, thy name is Sherlock, John thought. "Then why are you talking to me?"

The man jerked his chin towards the fireplace. "Mrs. Hudson took my skull."

John had to chuckle at the sheer petulance in his tone. "So, I'm just filling in for Yorick?"

Sherlock grinned at him and tied his scarf around his neck. "Relax, you're doing fine. And how did you know what his name was?"

John shook his head, "What other name could a skull possibly go by?"

Sherlock started pulling on his leather gloves. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, you could just sit there and watch telly…"

"You want me to come with you?"

Sherlock nodded, "I like company when I go out, and I think better when I talk aloud. The skull just attracts attention, so…" John wondered what it said about Sherlock that he could easily picture the younger man toting a skull along on a 'date'. He laughed. Sherlock's eyes narrowed at him. "Problem?"

"Not at all," John said, climbing to his feet and slinging the strap for his satchel across his chest. It was habit more than necessity that had him using the cane as he followed Sherlock downstairs and up the sidewalk. "Where are we going?" he asked, mentally sending a 'tendril' of his own back to the leyline, petting and caressing it in thanks for what it had done for him. A chirruping purr of content rippled back through the connection before distance snapped it.

"Northumberland Street's a five-minute walk from here," Sherlock replied.

"You think he's stupid enough to go there?" If it had been John on the other end of that text, he wouldn't have gone within a hundred miles of Northumberland, not even with serious money on the line.

Sherlock smiled, bringing to John's mind an image of a cat with bird feathers hanging from its mouth. "No," he said. "I think he's brilliant enough. I love the brilliant ones. They're always so desperate to get caught."

"Why would any killer want to get caught?" the question hurled itself from John's mouth before he could stop it.

"Appreciation! Applause! At long last, the spotlight!" Sherlock explained. He looked at John and in a slightly more conversational tone said, "That's the frailty of genius, John: it needs an audience."

"Yeah," John replied, leveling a pointed look at his companion. I'm beginning to see that.

Sherlock either didn't notice the look or chose to ignore it in favor of continuing his monologue for his very own audience of one. "This is his hunting ground, right here in the heart of the city. Now that we know his victims were abducted, that changes everything. Because all of his victims disappeared from busy streets, crowded places, but nobody saw them go."

John's mind re-played the line he heard in the house's memory. "Then I'll shoot you and find myself someone else. School's about to let out for the day. Usually get one or two girls who need a ride. Yesterday, it was this cheerful little third-form girl – she rambled on and on about some rock group the whole trip. Couldn't squeeze a word in edgewise. Woulda picked her, stead o'you, but she was talkin' on her mobile the whole way, see? Couldn't do, not then. But you? You're prime pickings. Come on, girlie – play the game. Could be you win, and the body they'll find up here'll be mine." He could feel a connection there, but Sherlock kept speaking and it eluded him.

"Think! Who do we trust, even though we don't know them? Who passes unnoticed wherever they go? Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?"

I would do better with the 'think' portion if you'd shut up a moment, John thought, but his mouth said, "Dunno, who?"

"Haven't the faintest," Sherlock replied, then angled across the street. "Hungry?"

Half an hour later, after an exceedingly awkward conversation with Angelo, who, despite all attempts to convince otherwise, was still operating under the assumption that John was Sherlock's date for the evening, John was enjoying a dish of chicken and fettuccini alfredo. His mind kept whirring, going over and over the man's words from the memory.

"You're thinking hard," Sherlock said, interrupting.

John swallowed the bite he had in his mouth before replying. "Just mulling things over."

"Have you thought of anything new?"

New? "Not as such, no, but I'll let you know if I do."

Sherlock resumed his gazing out the window, resuming his silence since arriving. He suddenly tensed. "Look across the street. Taxi," he said, a layer of urgency flavoring his words. That's it! All the pieces clicked together inside John's mind. "Nobody getting in, and nobody getting out. Why a taxi? Oh, that's clever. Is it clever? Why is it clever?"

"Sherlock!" John hissed at him to stop the flood of words and gain his attention.

"What, John? Can't you see I'm busy?" he glared at him.

"That's the answer," John hastily explained. "You asked who'd hunt in a crowd, right? And what do all the victims have in common? They all would have hailed a cab!"

Sherlock looked startled for a moment, then, nearly tipping over the table, he leapt to his feet and whirled into his coat. He was out the door by the time John could follow, though the former Army-doctor quickly caught up; the pair narrowly missed getting hit by a car as the taxi pulled away into the night. John hastily memorized the cab number. "I've got the cab number," he said.

"Good for you," Sherlock replied, then closed his eyes and rattled off what sounded to John like a quick-fire string of Google-maps driving directions. A sudden silence erupted from Sherlock, then the man tensed and sprinted down the street, pushing a man out of the way as he ducked into a building.

"Damn it!" John swore and took off after him, throwing a 'sorry' at the maligned pedestrian. Adrenaline flooding his system, it didn't take more than a single flight of stairs to catch up to Sherlock, despite the younger man's longer stride. John made sure to keep up – he had quickly lost track of where, exactly, they were, and didn't want to become separated. He had to pause when Sherlock leapt the gap between a pair of buildings, though. I hate heights. Realizing if he didn't follow, though, Sherlock would definitely leave him behind, John jumped the gap. Finally racing down stairs, they reached street-level and Sherlock sprinted towards the end of an alleyway, only to see the taxi amble past before he could get there. Instead of following, Sherlock turned and ran the opposite way. John didn't have breath enough to argue – Besides, he's gotten us this far, and we nearly had him just then – he just poured a little more strength into his running.

Not even five minutes later, Sherlock dashed out of another alleyway and directly into the path of the cab. It screeched to a halt, but not before the man wound up ricocheting off of the grill. He's like a bloody cat, John had to think, when Sherlock landed on his feet, pulling what looked like an ID badge out of his jacket. "Police!" Sherlock shouted, "Open up!" He started to go for the passenger compartment, but John grabbed his elbow.

"Not the passenger, Sherlock," John gasped out. "Driver. How could a serial killer hunt with witnesses?"

Sherlock twitched a little, but didn't reply. He grabbed the driver's door handle with one hand and tossed his phone to John with the other. "Call Lestrade," he said.

John quickly did as Sherlock asked, scrolling through his contacts to find the right name, while Sherlock peered at the cabbie. It was definitely the same old man John had seen in the house's memory. "Well, well, well," the cabbie said, overlaying the sound of ringing through the phone. "Sherlock Holmes, as I live and breathe."

"Shut up, and get out of the cab," Sherlock replied.

"Hello, this is DI Lestrade," John heard through the speaker of the phone.

"Hi, um," John wasn't entirely sure what to say, so he went with what came to mind. "This is John, John Watson – we met earlier tonight, at the house where they found Jennifer Wilson. Sherlock asked me to give you a call. Seems he's found your killer." John took a look around and realized what street they were on. He gave Lestrade the address. "If you could hurry, I'd much appreciate it."

There was total silence from the DI for nearly a full ten seconds, then the sound of a clearing throat echoed through the line. "We'll be there in five minutes," he said, then disconnected the call.

John returned his attention to Sherlock and the cabbie. "…doncha wanna know how I did it, Mr. Holmes?"

"Why, are you confessing?" Sherlock replied.

The poor guy who'd been the passenger looked hopelessly lost and confused. John stepped over to where he still sat in the back of the cab, with the window rolled down. "What's going on?" the passenger asked, his accent enough to tell John he was a tourist.

"Nothing you need concern yourself with," John replied, using Captain Watson's voice once more. "In fact, it would probably be best if you found yourself another taxi for the evening."

"…will do, but then you won't ever know, will ya?" the cabbie continued his efforts to get Sherlock to… Not sure if he's trying to get him to let him go or if he's trying to get Sherlock to play his little 'game'. John walked around to the other side of the cab while the tourist gathered his things and got out of the car.

"I don't want to know, do I?" the tourist asked, looking from the cabbie to Sherlock to John.

John shook his head. "Likely not. You shouldn't have much difficulty hailing another cab if you head to the end of the street," he punctuated his instruction by pointing in the proper direction. The man started walking that way, wheeling his suitcase behind him, and glancing back at the cab only once. With him out of the way, John finally turned his full attention to the cabbie and Sherlock. Focusing all the power he could on the cabbie, Captain Watson stepped up to Sherlock's side and quietly ordered, "Enough! No more chatter, not until the police get here – then you can talk to your heart's content. But until they arrive, you're going to stand right here and not make a sound, understood?"

The cabbie immediately quieted and nodded, but since he wasn't the target of the order, Sherlock took the lack of words to glare at John. "He was going to explain how he did it."

John ignored the glare and leaned around the cabbie to reach into the taxi and turn the vehicle off. "Like you really need him to explain," John replied, straightening with the cabbie's keys in hand.

Sherlock looked pained as he said, "Well, I must confess – there are a few gaps in what I could deduce."

John glanced at his watch. "Well, by my count, you've got a good three minutes left before Lestrade gets here, and a whole cab to inspect."

Sherlock brightened and all but dove into the still-open driver's door. While the man rummaged around inside, John kept one eye on the cabbie. It wasn't typical, but every now and then people could – and did – manage to break the compulsions he used when they were solely voice-laid. He sat his satchel on the bonnet of the taxi and rummaged around in it. Coming up with a bottle of slightly yellow oil, he sat it aside, then dove back into the bag. He quickly located a small ziplock baggie filled with brown mustard seeds, a braid of dried five-finger grass, and a small notebook. He tore a scrap of paper out of the notebook, then replaced it in the satchel. Next, still keeping one eye on the cabbie, he tipped a couple of seeds out of the packet and onto the paper, then added a few fragments of the grass. He returned the baggie and braid to the satchel, then twisted the paper around the seeds and grass. He added a drop of oil from the bottle, its label read Confusion Oil B, before returning it, too, to the bag.

He turned and faced the cabbie fully, the twist of paper in his left hand. His right was checking his pockets for a lighter. Locating it in his left jacket pocket, he retrieved it and lit the twist of paper. It burned violently white for one, two, three seconds, but it burned without any heat, leaving white ash in the palm of John's hand. Unnoticed by John, the light had drawn Sherlock's attention, and the younger man was now watching from his seat behind the wheel of the cab – the two pill bottles and fake gun he'd located in the glove box all but forgotten.

John raised his palm, and the ashes on it, so that it was level with the cabbie's face, then blew the tiny pile into a cloud around the cabbie. "I command and compel you, by the right of mage, to confess your crimes, no matter how big or small, to the police once they arrive. I command and compel you, by the right of magic, to answer any questions the police might pose you to the best of your ability. I command and compel you, by the right of guardian of London, to cooperate fully and without complaint with all the police ask of you. As I say it, so shall it be." John lowered his hand, and saw the pale green glow of compulsion magic form in the cloud of ash-dust, then sink slowly into the cabbie's body.

From Sherlock's perspective, all he could see was a cloud of ashes that hung, suspended in the air, ignoring all eddies and currents of wind and the law of gravity, before settling on the cabbie's hair and clothes in a fine layer as John finished speaking. The distant sound of sirens coming closer prompted him to slide out from behind the wheel of the taxi. "John?" he asked, uncertainty in his voice.

John wrenched his eyes from the cabbie and blinked at Sherlock. "Shit," he hissed. "You saw, did you?"

Sherlock nodded. "What did you just do?"

The sirens were now only a block or so away. John sighed. Well, he had to find out sooner or later. Can't really hide magic from a flatmate, after all. "Look, I'll explain later, but for now forget you saw it, alright?"

The first police car screeched around the corner. Sherlock glanced up, then looked back at John. "I look forward to the explanation," he said, then leaned against the taxi, waiting for Lestrade to come over.

John wasn't sure how he managed it, but Sherlock got Lestrade to put off taking their statements until the next day. An hour after their mad dash across what had felt like the whole of London, the pair walked back towards Baker Street. John couldn't catch him at it, but he could feel Sherlock's eyes flicking over and looking at him every couple of seconds. "Oh, for god's sake, spit it out, Sherlock," he said, finally having had enough.

"You said you would explain," came the quiet reply. Sherlock kept his gaze fixed in front of him, no longer glancing at John as they walked.

"I did at that. Well, you said back at Bart's that potential flatmates ought to know the worst of each other, right?"

"Yes," he said, still being uncharacteristically quiet. "I did. However, I was leaning more towards a tendency towards leaving wet towels on the floor of the bath or an appalling need to watch reality television. Not… Whatever that was."

"Well, I don't consider it the 'worst' of me, so it didn't cross my mind. I don't have many bad habits – the Army drummed most of them right out of me. But I'm not just a doctor or a former soldier, Sherlock. I'm also a brother and son, a friend, and…" He took a deep breath, held it for a step, then let it out. "A mage."

"A… mage…" Sherlock drew the words out, something that was trying hard to be skepticism threaded through the syllables, warring with the impossibility of dust ignoring wind and gravity.

"Yes," John said, his tone simply matter-of-fact. "It's really not like how they show in books and in films, but magic is real. I can use it, see it. That's what makes me a mage."

"And I assume these facts are all some great secret."

John snickered. "Not hardly. But mages – real magic-users – we're pretty rare. There're only five of us in the entire London area. Only about a hundred total in all of the British Isles. It's akin to finding someone who's honestly and totally colorblind, or someone who can do complex calculus equations in their head as fast as a computer. Only in my case, nobody believes it until they see it."

"I saw… something. But I'm still unsure if I believe what you're saying." They stopped for a crosswalk light and Sherlock finally turned and faced John.

"I know it's unbelievable. Trust me – I've been in your shoes, and I've been able to see magic my whole life. I can't count the number of shrinks my parents dragged me to as a kid because I saw things they couldn't. It wasn't until I was fifteen and met Ajay Singh that I found out what I was seeing was real."

"And I suppose next you'll try to tell me that unicorns and leprechauns exist."

The light changed, but neither man moved. John shook his head. "Not that I know of – like I said, books and movies and television don't have the right of it. What you saw earlier, that's one of the flashiest spells I know. Most magic's far more subtle."

"Then show me something," Sherlock said. "Something not subtle."

John reached into his pocket and pulled out the small collection of charms he carried with him. He was tempted to use the notice-me-not charm again, but decided not to; it had already been used quite enough in the last few hours. Health charm's not going to be of any help, he thought picking up a green drawstring pouch that was much larger than the white one for the notice-me-not. He returned both to his pocket. Next was a piece of abalone shell, etched with a Celtic knot. Hmm… Doubtful my anti-nightmare charm is even still working, considering. Need to see about recharging it. The shell, too, joined the health and notice-me-not charms in his pocket. John's eyes landed on a carved ring, made from mistletoe wood, and sporting a tiny iron bead – the bead itself had once been part of an honest-to-goodness coffin nail. Now that might work. He picked the ring off his palm, slid it into place on his left middle finger, with the bead facing his palm, and then returned the rest of the charms to his pocket. He looked up at Sherlock. "Do you have a penknife on you?" he asked.

Sherlock shook his head. "It's still at the flat."

John frowned for a moment, then shrugged. "No matter, I think I've something that will work." He looked around for a moment, then spotted a bus stop bench a couple of yards up the street, on the other side of the crosswalk. He ignored the light – there wasn't any traffic to speak of – and headed for the bench. On reaching it, he sat his satchel down and rummaged through the contents. "Here we are," he came up with a fist-sized piece of obsidian. Juggling the chunk of volcanic glass in one hand he got the preexisting ridges lined up properly, then tapped it firmly against a metal support of the bench. A semicircular flake detached from the rest of the glass. John caught it with the ease of long practice. Holding the flake by pinching the middle between his right forefinger and thumb, he returned the rest of the obsidian chunk to the satchel. "Be careful with this, it's sharper than a scalpel," he said, handing the flake to Sherlock.

"And what am I to do with it?"

"Cut your finger or something. Nothing too severe, mind, just enough to bleed a little."

"Why?" Sherlock asked, holding the obsidian flake up so that the light of a street lamp shone through it.

"Because you wanted to see something flashy, and this is the best I can think of on short notice."

"What do you plan to do?"

"Heal it." Sherlock looked at John for a long time. Long enough for John to become slightly uncomfortable. He reached down and latched his satchel without looking, then slung the strap back across his chest. "Look," he said, "you don't have to if you don't want to, but I've not got the ingredients with me to cast othersight on you right now. If we go back to my bedsit, I'll have what I need. Or, if you're feeling up to it, we could drop by Ajay's place. I know a shortcut you wouldn't believe," he smirked a little, wondering if Sherlock would find gates to be as nauseating as he did.

Without warning, Sherlock moved quickly, slicing the edge of the obsidian across the palm of his left hand. It obviously hurt more than expected, because the flake was immediately dropped to shatter on the cement sidewalk. He held his hand out to John.

John looked at it with normal vision for a moment and watched as beads of red blood began to well up from the two-inch cut across the fleshy bit just under Sherlock's thumb. Thenar, what Ajay calls the Mount of Venus. Not a horrible wound, but would usually need stitches. Let me see if I can't fix that, shall I? John held Sherlock's wrist with his right hand, then laid his left over the cut. He closed his eyes and concentrated, focusing his energy through the ring of mistletoe and iron he was wearing. It was only a heartbeat before he felt the telltale tingle of direct energy drain that was the hallmark of all healing spells. It didn't last very long – five seconds at the outside – but it wasn't a very horrid cut, either. John opened his eyes and let go of Sherlock's hand.

Sherlock peered down at his palm. All that remained of the cut were a few lonely drops of blood and a thin, nearly imperceptible, white scar. He ran his thumb over the line, smearing the blood into a streak. "If you can do this," he said, finally looking up at John, "then how did you wind up invalided home?"

John hadn't been expecting that sort of question. Then again, is there really anything about this man that I can truly say was expected? "It's one of the steadfast rules of magic – you can't heal yourself. Healing spells work because you're pouring your own energy into the wound, making it fix itself on a far faster timeline than the body is typically capable of." There was more to it than that, a lot more, but that was the foundation guide for all healing spells. "So, when I got shot outside Kandahar, I had to heal like a normal person. And that included a near-fatal staph infection. It was the infection more than the bullet hole that got me sent home."

Sherlock simply looked at him and said, "Fascinating."

Somehow, John just knew this was going to be trouble.

But it'll be fun, too. He grinned. Yes, it's going to be a lot of both.

A/N2: And thus concludes part one of Infinitely Stranger. Yes, there will be more to come in the future, but I've no idea how long it will take to hammer out the next bit. Before tackling episode two of the show, you might get a slightly shorter chapter containing little things like John moving into 221B and a bit more of the magic. I know some of you will likely be disappointed I didn't have John shoot the cabbie like in the series (or kill him some other way), but this is – like I mentioned before – written primarily for my own amusement. That said, however, if there's any Brit-picking you want to do, I'd be grateful for it (except for spelling – British spelling gives me headaches, so I'm sticking with American spelling whether you want me to or not!). Once again, I'd like to thank Ariane DeVere over at livejournal for her brilliant (and amusing interjections to) transcripts and hope she will continue her fantastic efforts when series three airs.

With all that out of the way, I'd love to hear what y'all think – especially if I managed to keep folks in-character. (And before someone points it out – yeah, Mycroft is definitely not in-character, but John was using magic on him, so it really should be expected!)

Until next time folks!

Edit 03/23/2013: Thanks to the lovely Tanydwr, I killed a blatant Americanism (issue with a 'sidewalk' and a 'sure' that didn't read right), nothing too serious.