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: Welcome to Chapter Six! Today's chapter is brought to you by the vocab word of the week, pareidolia. Pareidolia is typically defined as the psychological phenomena of seeing meaning or patterns in random or vague stimuli, such as making shapes in clouds or seeing 'the man in the moon'. Good word, and it's fun to say!

For this chapter I'm operating under the assumption that therapists (the kind who are licensed to prescribe medications and such for mental issues) in the UK need to, as in the US, attend medical school. If this is incorrect, let me know – I won't change this story, but I'll keep it in mind for future reference.

I know little of military procedure in the US, to say nothing of the total lack of information I have regarding UK military procedure. Google proved once again that it hates me, and I didn't get any replies to my Yahoo Answers questions, so I went ahead and made things up as I saw fit. If you know better than I, please tell me what I've gotten wrong – I may not correct it in the story, but I'll definitely keep the information on hand for future writing. And do I really need to mention that any/all phone numbers contained herein are figments of my imagination? Thought not. Also – see 'warnings' below.

Warnings: All warnings from chapter one still apply. Also, for the majority of this chapter, John's going to seem rather OOC – this is intentional. I've known many medical professionals (doctors, nurses, EMTs, pharmacists, and so on) over the years, and only one or two of them ever conceded the fact that they themselves were not the best source when treating themselves (that old saw about 'doctors are the worst patients' has – in my experience – been true). Now, I know that the argument might be made that John wouldn't behave this way, but I beg to differ – he's stubborn, he's smart, and he's in no way shy of admitting his medical prowess ('any good?' 'very good' ring any bells?) – this tends to be the 'magic formula' for stupidity among medicos treating themselves (from what I've seen, of course). Just what have I been hinting at? Well… For the majority of this chapter, we get to see stoned!John. I hope I did him (and the episode as a whole) justice.

One last thing before I quit nattering and turn y'all loose on the story itself – what I did with the dog was one of the very first things my imagination gave me when I conceived of this AU. It's been a long time coming, and I'm inordinately proud and happy that I finally managed to get to it. I expect the feeling will intensify when I finally get to the few ideas which I thought of prior to this – but those won't happen until the next chapter.

Again, many, many thanks to Ariane DeVere for posting usable transcripts of the show on her livejournal!

Infinitely Stranger

When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals. He has the nerve and he has the knowledge. – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Chapter Six: Barking

John straightened his brown cardigan and made sure that his buttons were all lined up properly, then whistled his way down to the kitchen. Sarah was coming over and then they were going out for breakfast; Sherlock – thankfully – was off… Skewering a pig, I think. Though I don't know why. He'd missed the bit of Sherlock's never-ending monologue that linked 'skewering a pig' back to the small matter of a missing engagement ring. He looked at the kettle, but decided not to get himself a cuppa with a glance at his watch. Any minute now –

The thought was cut off by the sound of the doorbell.

Grinning, John hurried downstairs and opened the door. "Sarah!" he greeted her, but paused when she didn't return his smile. His own shattered on the pavement. "What's wrong?" he stepped back to let her in, but she made no move to enter 221B.

Instead, she held up her phone. John leaned forward to see what she was showing him. On it was a photograph, taken the night before, that showed John and Mels over at Angelo's, having dinner. It'd been taken as the pair shared a commiserative laugh over Sherlock's Sherlockness. Slightly puzzled, John looked up at Sarah's face. "What about it?"

"Who is she?"

"Friend of mine," John replied, still confused. "How'd you get the photo?" he asked, knowing there was only a slight chance that her tech-illiteracy would lend itself to running the camera feature of her phone. "I mean – I didn't see you there. Otherwise, we would've invited you to join us."

"Linette," Sarah said, and John realized she was on the verge of either shouting at him or crying.

Possibly both, he thought, but replied, "Oh."

Before he could say anything else, however, Sarah barreled on. "Your sister two weeks ago, fine – I'll give you that one. But that blonde? Now this woman?" she jiggled the phone to punctuate her comment. John could sort of understand – Mels had come over straight from a client, and was dressed in a low-cut red cocktail dress, only to find Sherlock up to his eyebrows in that engagement ring case.

John held his hands up in front of himself. "Hey – Mels is just a friend! And I told you before – Mary and me might've well've been siblings!"

Sarah glared at him. "You seem to have an awful lot of friends, John!" She took a quick, deep breath. "Ones who just so happen to be beautiful women!"

"Oh, for crying out loud!" John reached up and tugged slightly on the white patch in his fringe. "Is that what this is about? Would you feel better about it if they were hideously disfigured?" Sarah didn't reply, but John could see it in her eyes that, yes, she would feel better were Mels not beautiful. "Yeah, I've got a lot of friends who happen to be female. I've got a lot of friends who're blokes, too, you know – I've got a lot of friends, full-stop!"

"Then why haven't I met any of them?" Sarah's voice was starting to get rather loud. John's, too, for that matter.

"You wanna meet Mels, fine!" John all but shouted, digging his phone out of his jeans pocket. "I'll invite her over!"

"That isn't the point!" This time, she did shout. A couple of pedestrians and customers at Speedy's outdoor tables looked curiously at the quarreling couple until John's best glare sent them on their way or back to their breakfasts.

"No," John agreed, the word back to a reasonable volume. "The point is that you're being unreasonably possessive!"

Sarah's eyes flashed. "Unreasonable," she hissed. "Unreasonable? How is it unreasonable to expect fidelity from my boyfriend?"

"You think I'm cheating on you?" John couldn't help it, he started laughing. "Oh, that's rich. That's just too rich! Mels is gonna rupture something when I tell her!" Running a hand through his hair, he looked up at Sarah. It was her turn to wear a puzzled expression. "For fuck's sake, Sarah – Mels is trying to get into Sherlock's pants, not mine!"

She blinked at him, then looked at the photo on her phone. "But…"

"Look," John said, stepping close enough to her to cup her cheek. "Mels had come over from a… client's." At her continued expression of befuddlement, John glanced around, then leaned down to whisper in her ear, his hand on her shoulder to keep himself from overbalancing and tumbling down the short series of steps between the hallway and the pavement. "She's a high-class call girl, Sarah." He leaned back and saw some of the confusion fade from her eyes. "Sherlock's been busy with a case the last, oh," he checked his watch, "twenty hours or so. Didn't have time to waste on her last night, so we went out for supper. She wanted… Well, I guess you might call it 'insider info' on how Sherlock felt about her. Unfortunately, I wasn't much help – he never really talks about that side of himself."

She closed her eyes and let out a breath. "I feel like an idiot," she said.

"Warranted, I think," John replied, "in this instance." He dropped his hand and Sarah opened her eyes. "I'll give you a pass on it – this time," he said, only a little sternly. "But one thing, Sarah: I am nobody's possession. Not even yours." He waited for her to nod, then his demeanor shifted, his smile returning. "Okay, now that's done with – breakfast?"

She shook her head. "I'm… I'm not particularly hungry, John. Mind if I just…" she made a small 'head on out' motion with her hands.

His smile softened a little around the edges. "No, I don't mind."

Sarah took a step backwards, then changed her mind and grabbed John into a hug. "Sorry," she said.

Automatically returning her embrace and kissing her cheek – to scattered applause and a couple of whistles from Speedy's customers – he chuckled a little. "Nothing to forgive – just keep what I said in mind, okay?"

She loosened her hold on him and leaned back. "I will."

"Call me later?"

She nodded and gave him a small kiss before releasing him.

As John watched her walk away, Mr. Chatterjee stepped out of his shop, broom in hand. "Pretty," he said, gesturing with the broom handle in Sarah's direction. "Not as pretty as the brunette, mind, but still worth it." He grinned conspiratorially at John.

"I'm not… I mean," he gestured in the direction Sarah had walked. "She's my girlfriend. My only girlfriend." Mr. Chatterjee let out a skeptical 'uh-huh' and set to sweeping the pavement around his outdoor tables. John replied with a frustrated sigh, scrubbed a palm across his face, then turned on his heel and retreated back to his flat.

Mrs. Hudson met him at the foot of the stairs. "Everything all right?"

John nodded, "Yeah. Sorry if we disturbed you."

"No," she said, straightening the sleeves of her floral-print dress. "I was just about to pop out myself. I didn't want to interrupt…" her apology for eavesdropping was implied.

John shook his head. "Don't worry about it, Mrs. H." He headed up the stairs, pausing just long enough to look over his shoulder as Mrs. Hudson checked her reflection in the small hall mirror, fluffed her hair, then headed for the door.

On returning to the flat, John entered the kitchen via the living room – Sherlock's mini-fridge was still blocking the other door – and made himself breakfast with the last of the milk. He added it to the list held to the fridge door by a magnet scavenged out of a shower curtain, then ambled into the living room. He stared at the chalkboard that had shown up around the end of February, hanging next to the map of London, and counted the tally marks. He added a note to it, then settled at the desk with his cereal and tea. Not quite the morning I had in mind, he thought as he finished. But a little peace and quiet never hurt anybody. He read through the papers while he ate.

When nothing of his meal remained but a couple drops of milk, he washed his breakfast dishes, then stood in the living room for a long minute. God, I'm bored. With a small sigh, he flopped into his armchair and grabbed the top book off the stack on his end table. He flipped to his bookmark and began reading.

To bolster our claims about the experience or mind of a dog, we will learn how to ask the dog if we're right. The trouble, of course, with asking a dog if he is happy or depressed is not that the question makes no sense. It's that we are very poor at understanding his response…

The sound of the front door slamming pulled him from the book with a small jolt. He looked towards the stairs. A moment later, Sherlock strode in, covered in bloody spatters, and slammed the end of a long harpoon against the floor. "Well, that was tedious," he complained, with precisely the same phrasing he always used, of London's subway system.

"You went on the tube like that?" John asked, only a little taken aback at his flatmate's appearance.

"None of the cabs would take me," Sherlock growled, then strode towards his bedroom.

John snickered softly over the sound of the bedroom door slamming shut. "Wonder why?" he sarcastically mused, then returned to his reading.

About half an hour later, Sherlock reappeared, wearing his blue dressing gown overtop a white button-down, black slacks, and socks, with his hair curling in damp ringlets. He paced frenetically from the kitchen door to the windows and back several times, toting his harpoon like a small child clinging to a security blanket. The really sad thing was – harpoon aside – this was not new behavior, and so John ignored him.

"Was there nothing in the papers?" Sherlock eventually spat the question in John's direction.

John bookmarked his place and sat it on top of Miller's Anatomy of the Dog (4th ed.) on the side table. "Um… There was a military coup in Uganda and there's been a cabinet reshuffle…" he thought back to the morning's headlines. "Oh, and another photo of you and 'that hat'."

"Nothing of importance?" Sherlock queried, then wilted slightly on seeing John's negative head-shake. "God!" he slammed the butt of the harpoon against the floor. He fidgeted in his dressing gown pocket, then whirled to face John. "I need some," he said, "get me some."

"No," John replied, narrowing his eyes at Sherlock. Looks like it was a little more than just one or two out on the fire escape. "Cold turkey, we agreed. No matter what." Sherlock frowned, and leaned his harpoon against the desk. "If I could deal with it, then so can you, and it's not like oxycodone is in the same league as nicotine – besides, you've paid everyone off, remember? Nobody within two miles will sell you any."

"Stupid idea – whose idea was that?" Sherlock asked. John cleared his throat and sent a meaningful look at his friend. Sherlock didn't notice, or if he did, he didn't comment on it. "Mrs. Hudson!" he shouted instead, and then began digging among the stacks of paper on the desk, flinging pages about with abandon.

"Look," John said, trying to catch his friend's attention, "Sherlock – you're doing really well. Don't give up now!"

Sherlock abandoned the desk in favor of plunging his hand into the crevasse between the sofa's seat and back cushions. "Of course you did it well! You had your leyline to help!" Not finding anything of note within the sofa cushions, he whirled around and straightened. John had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at Sherlock's somewhat pitiful pleading expression. "Tell me where they are. Please." John half-expected crocodile tears to follow. "Tell me."

"Can't help. Sorry."

"I'll let you know next week's lottery numbers."

John let out some of his amusement at that. "Divination doesn't work that way, even if you are a mage."

"It was worth a try," Sherlock muttered, then dove towards the stack of books and papers that stood between his chair and the fireplace.

"Ooo-hoo!" Mrs. Hudson called out as she entered the living room, even as John's brain backpedaled and had him ask, "What do you mean, I had the leyline's help?"

Sherlock ignored him in favor of all but turning a slipper inside out. "What have you done with my secret supply?" his tone clearly addressing Mrs. Hudson. When she failed to immediately answer him, Sherlock tossed the slipper over his shoulder and looked up at her. "Cigarettes! What have you done with them? Where are they?" He spoke so quickly, John was honestly surprised he didn't manage to trip over the words.

"You know you never let me touch your things," she protested. "Chance would be a fine thing," she gestured around at the mess.

"I thought you weren't my housekeeper," Sherlock said as he climbed to his feet and snapped up the harpoon once more.

"I'm not," was her unamused reply as she crossed her arms over her chest. "How about a nice cuppa – and maybe put away your harpoon?"

"I need something stronger than tea!" Sherlock looked down at the mess for half a heartbeat, "Seven percent stronger," he muttered and then aimed his harpoon at Mrs. Hudson. "You've been to see Mr. Chatterjee again," he deduced.

"Pardon?" Mrs. Hudson replied.

"Sandwich shop. That's a new dress, but there's flour on the sleeve. You wouldn't dress like that for baking," he indicated the flour, then her hand, using the harpoon like the world's weirdest pointer. "Thumbnail – tiny traces of foil. Been at the scratch cards again. We all know where that leads, don't we?" He flipped the harpoon and inhaled deeply through his nose. "Mmm – Kasbah Nights. Pretty racy for first thing on a Monday morning, wouldn't you agree?"

"It's Tuesday," John corrected.

Sherlock ignored him and continued, "I've written a little blog on the identification of perfumes. It's on the website – you should look it up." He leaned the harpoon against the left-hand window.

"Please," Mrs. Hudson said, trying – in vain – to stop Sherlock.

"I wouldn't pin your hopes on that cruise with Mr. Chatterjee – he's got a wife in Doncaster that nobody knows about," Sherlock did a little finger-wiggle in the vicinity of his hair. "Well, nobody except me."

"I don't know what you're talking about, I really don't!" Mrs. Hudson leveled a glare at Sherlock, then stormed out of the flat, slamming the door behind her as she went.

Sherlock leapt over the back of his chair. Perching in it, he wrapped his arms around his knees and commenced rocking in agitation. John sighed. "What the bloody hell was that all about? You ought to go after her and apologize."

"Apologize?" Sherlock blinked like the word had come out in Sanskrit.

"Yes," John said. "Apologize. Much like 'sentiment', it actually isn't a dirty word. You were an ass."

Sherlock sighed and flopped into a more traditional posture on his chair. "Oh, John – I envy you so much."

"What?"

"Your leyline drains the pain from your knee while you're in London, likely any residual ache from your shoulder, too. Hardly a difficult deduction that its interest in your well-being would have extended to mitigating the effects of opiate withdrawal. That aside, I also envy your mind – it's so placid, straightforward, barely used. Mine's like an engine racing out of control; a rocket tearing itself to pieces trapped on the launch pad." He reached up and tugged his own hair. "I need a case!" he shouted.

John replied with, "You've just solved one!" and from there, the conversation devolved into bickering and sniping – mostly from Sherlock mocking the latest bunny-napping guest entry on his blog – until the door buzzer sounded. "Single ring," John said.

"Maximum pressure just under half a second," Sherlock agreed.

Simultaneously, they both said, "Client."

Roughly fifteen minutes later, Sherlock grabbed the TV remote and hit the power button. "What did you see?" he asked, rather bored with the new case already.

Henry Knight gestured to the now-dark screen. "I was about to say," he said.

"Yes," Sherlock retorted. "In a TV interview. I prefer to do my own editing."

"Yes?" Henry looked a little taken aback at Sherlock's blunt reply. "Sorry, yes, of course." He paused for a moment and pulled a paper napkin out of his pocket. "'Scuse me," he said, blowing his nose.

"In your own time," John said.

"But quite quickly." Sherlock either didn't notice or ignored the slight glare from John.

Henry lowered the napkin and thought for a moment before asking, "Do you know Dartmoor, Mr. Holmes?"

"No," Sherlock replied.

"It's an amazing place. It's like nowhere else. It's sort of…" he cast about for the right words before deciding on, "bleak, but beautiful."

"Mmm," Sherlock said. "Not interested – moving on."

"We used to go for walks, after my mum died. My dad and me – every evening we'd go out onto the moor."

"Yes, good," Sherlock impatiently said. "Skipping to the night that your dad was violently killed. Where did that happen?"

One of these days, he's gonna wind up getting himself punched in the face. John didn't vocalize his thought. Instead he simply continued taking notes.

"There's a place, it's…" Henry said, "it's sort of a local landmark called Dewer's Hollow."

Sherlock leveled a 'so what?' look at their prospective client that was strong enough John was surprised that Mrs. Hudson didn't come up the stairs to complain about it.

"That's an ancient name for the devil," Henry explained.

John noted it down, but didn't believe the man. Thought the Celtic for 'devil' was diabhal or deamhan? Do I know it in Welsh? Yeah – Grandmum'd be proud. It's diafol. So, where'd he get the idea 'dewer' was another name for devil? Somebody must not've liked a Dewar somewhere along the way is my best guess.

Sherlock simply quirked an eyebrow at Mr. Knight. "So?"

Henry stared at them until John decided to move things along by asking the expected question – Something I do so often for Sherlock that it's getting to the point where I don't even need a meaningful pause to cue me. "Did you see the devil that night?"

Henry looked at John and slowly nodded his head. "Yes," he whispered. "It was huge. Coal-black fur with red eyes. It got him, tore at him. Tore him apart. I can't remember anything else. They found me the next morning, just wandering on the moor. My dad's body was never found."

John looked at Sherlock, who'd been peering intently at Knight. "Red eyes, black fur, enormous – dog? Wolf?"

"Or a genetic experiment," Sherlock tossed the idea out like a poker chip at a penny-ante game, a genuine amused expression tugging at his face.

"Are you laughing at me, Mr. Holmes?" Henry asked, sounding like he was well on his way to being offended.

Sherlock managed to clear his expression as he asked, "Why, are you joking?"

"My dad was always going on about the things they were doing at Baskerville, about the type of monsters they were breeding there. People used to laugh at him. At least the TV people took me seriously."

"And, I assume, did wonders for Devon tourism," Sherlock snarked.

I should start charging him for this, John thought, leaning over to Henry. "Henry, whatever did happen to your father, it was twenty years ago. Why come to us now?"

Henry ignored John in favor of glaring at Sherlock. "I'm not sure you can help me, Mr. Holmes," he said, his voice strained with something that sounded very close to anger, "since you find it all so funny." He stood, clearly intending to leave.

Sherlock's voice halted him in his tracks. "Because of what happened last night," Sherlock spoke to John even though his attention was still focused on Henry.

And we have a winner! The thought flashed through John's mind in an irritatingly cheerful game-show-announcer's voice as Henry slowly turned around to stare at Sherlock. And another of those opportunities for asking the obvious question. "Why? What happened last night?"

"How," Henry asked, "how do you know?"

"I didn't know; I noticed," Sherlock replied, then spewed forth a rapid-fire narration of how Henry had spent his morning, ending with, "Sit down, Mr. Knight, and do please smoke – I'd be delighted."

Henry blinked at Sherlock, then glanced at John. John gave the man a small 'what can you do' grin coupled with a slight shrug. Henry slowly meandered back to John's armchair and sank into it. "How on Earth did you notice all that?" he asked, sounding a bit like someone who'd just been informed that yes, aliens are real, and yes, they do quite enjoy anal play.

Sherlock glanced at John out of the corner of his eye. John gave a little sideways tilt to his head, which Sherlock correctly interpreted as 'go for it'. A nearly feral-looking gleam began glowing behind Sherlock's eyes, and he resumed his faster-than-a-caffeinated-fourteen-year-old-girl-o n-the-phone speech, detailing the minutia of Henry's appearance which had informed the world's only consulting detective about Henry's morning and what that morning had to say about the night before. This time, the faster-than-light speech ended with, "Am I wrong?"

Henry drew in an overawed, shaky breath. "No," he said. "You're right. You're completely, exactly right. Bloody hell, I heard you were quick."

"It's my job," Sherlock smugly replied. "Now shut up and smoke."

John mentally sighed as he looked at the notes he'd taken thus far. "You parents died when you were just a kid," he said to their visitor. Henry was busy rolling a cigarette, but glanced up and nodded at John. "What makes you think that, well…" Henry lit the smoke and breathed in. After holding it a moment, he then exhaled, only to have Sherlock spring forward and suck the secondhand out of the air. Why? John valiantly resisted both the urge to plant an impressive facepalm and to swat Sherlock like a disobeying toddler. He cleared his throat with a significant glare at his flatmate. Sherlock shrugged, letting out the secondhand with a blissful little noise that John was convinced he'd last heard in the psychiatric research department back in med school. Only then, that noise came from the mice with the pleasure buttons implanted. Not my thirty-something flatmate. Wonder if I could get a recording next time? I think Greg'd crack a few ribs if he ever heard that. He returned his attention to Henry. "Losing your parents so young, that must have been quite a trauma. Haven't you considered that perhaps you invented this story," John paused as Henry took another drag off his cigarette and Sherlock immediately absconded with the secondhand, "to account for it?" On finally finishing his sentence, he twitched a disapproving eyebrow at his flatmate. "And you – quit shotgunning." John looked back at Henry with a small smile. "Sorry. We're still working on the concepts of personal space and appropriate behavior."

Henry did as he'd done all throughout his interview and simply blinked at the inexplicable. "Um… That's what Dr. Mortimer says," he replied to the question John had asked.

"Who?" John asked.

Simultaneously, Sherlock and Knight both replied with, "My therapist," and "His therapist." The only differences were in the possessive pronoun, and Sherlock ended with a small roll of his eyes and an 'obviously'. Henry continued with, "Louise Mortimer. She's the reason I came back to Dartmoor. She thinks I have to face my demons."

Sherlock gave a small nod as though he'd expected that precise reply. "And what happened when you went back to Dewer's Hollow last night? You went there on the advice of your therapist and now you're consulting a detective. What did you see that changed everything?"

"It's a strange place, the Hollow," Henry said, his voice indicating that he was mentally very far away. "Makes you feel so cold inside, so afraid –"

"Yes," Sherlock interrupted. "If I wanted poetry, I'd read John's emails to his girlfriends – much funnier." John let out a sigh. One of these days, I'm either gonna get used to having absolutely no privacy, or I'm gonna kill him. At least if I do wind up suffocating him in his sleep, I'm pretty sure Greg'd be on my side and help me to cover it up. Surely he knows of a good place to dump a body… Unaware of John's inner thoughts, Sherlock repeated, "What did you see?" at their guest.

"Footprints," Henry replied. "On the exact spot where I saw my father torn apart."

John poised his pen on his notepad and asked, "Man's or a woman's?"

"Neither," Henry said with a shake of his head. "They were –"

"Is that it?" Sherlock interrupted again. "Nothing else? Footprints. Is that all?"

"Yes," Henry looked back at the detective. "But they were –"

"No, sorry," Sherlock said. John was beginning to wonder if he would ever let their client actually finish a sentence. "Dr. Mortimer wins. Childhood trauma masked by an invented memory. Boring! Goodbye, Mr. Knight." He shot a tight smile at the man. "Thank you for smoking."

Frowning, Henry looked a little confused. "But what about the footprints?"

"Oh, they're probably paw prints. Could be anything, therefore nothing." He leaned forwards in his chair and made a little shooing motion at Henry. "Off to Devon with you. Have a cream tea on me." Sherlock stood and buttoned his jacket with a practiced flick of his wrist before striding into the kitchen.

Henry twisted around in his seat to follow him. "Mr. Holmes! They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

Sherlock stopped so suddenly, John wondered if someone had accidentally hit 'pause' on the universe's remote control. Then his flatmate slowly turned around and walked back to the doorway to stare down at Henry. "Say that again," Sherlock said.

"I found the footprints," Henry replied. "They were –"

"No, no, no," Sherlock corrected. "Your exact words. Repeat your exact words from a moment ago, exactly as you said them."

Henry thought for a moment, then haltingly repeated, "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a… gigantic… hound?"

Sherlock straightened a bit and the last lingering traces of mockery fell from his expression. "I'll take the case," he said.

What? John recoiled slightly. I mean – what? "Sorry, what?"

Steepling his fingers, Sherlock slowly padded back into the living room. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It's very promising."

"No, sorry – what? A minute ago, footprints were boring, now they're 'very promising'?" John – even as accustomed to Sherlockian logic as he was – was having difficulty following his friend's train of thought.

Sherlock paused near the sofa. "It's nothing to do with footprints," he said. "As ever, John, you weren't listening. Baskerville – ever heard of it?"

"I assume you mean prior to today," John said. At Sherlock's 'of course' eyebrow twitch, he nodded. "Yes. Why?"

"Sounds like a good place to start," Sherlock replied with a negligent prod in John's direction.

"Ah! You'll come down, then?" Henry said, sounding relieved.

"No," Sherlock said. "I can't leave London at the moment – far too busy. Don't worry," he stepped over to John. "I'm putting my best man onto it," he patted John's arm. "I can always rely on John to send me the relevant data, as he rarely understands a word of it himself."

"What are you talking about, you're busy?" John clenched his pen in order to keep from strangling Sherlock. "You don't have a case! Besides – this has gotta be at least a nine."

"Don't be absurd, John," Sherlock argued. "The vanishing body adds a point, as does the time since the disappearance-cum-death, but both those factors are negated by the fact that the location is so close to a secret military base. It barely ranks a six."

"Fine, the arbitrary allotment of points aside for the moment, you were complaining just an hour ago about –"

"Bluebell, John!" Sherlock interrupted. "I've got Bluebell! The case of the vanishing, glow-in-the-dark rabbit!" He looked around the room, his gaze landing on Henry with a faint shadow of surprise that the man was still there. "NATO's in an uproar."

Henry shook his head with a slow blink. "Sorry, no, so you're not coming, then?"

Donning a mock-regretful expression, Sherlock shook his head. John sighed. One of these days, I'm going to write up a Sherlock-to-English dictionary and charge our clients fifty quid a pop for a copy. I'll be able to retire in six months. "Sherlock!"

A broad grin surfaced on the detective's face. "You go on ahead, Henry. We'll follow later."

The subtle nuances of Sherlock's sense of humor were, as always, lost on the uninitiated. "Um," Henry looked confusedly from Sherlock to John and back. "Sorry, so you are coming?"

"A twenty year old disappearance? A monstrous hound? I wouldn't miss this for the world!"

Roughly five minutes later, after Henry Knight had – rather bewilderedly – left, presumably heading back to the train station, John let out a small sigh. Thinking of his aborted attempt to visit Dublin back in September, he meandered through the kitchen and knocked on Sherlock's open bedroom door. Sherlock was busily throwing things into a sturdily-built black garment bag that zipped shut around the edges into a standard suitcase. "Yes?" he asked, not bothering to look up from clipping two suit-hangers – the kind with the metal clips for trousers – into the case atop a small stack of folded shirts.

"Dunno if I'm going to be much help on this, to be honest," John said, leaning against the doorframe, marveling as he always did that Sherlock's bedroom was so neatly tidy when the rest of the flat was ever in a perpetual state of chaos.

Sherlock paused and looked up. "What makes you say that?"

"Just… I've noticed any time I leave London, I wind up back in last January."

It took a moment for Sherlock to actually understand what John was saying. "Oh – I thought your magic had solved your mobility problems?"

"Seems to be only when I'm actually in London." He let out another small sigh. "Makes sense, in a magic-twisted way, I suppose." Sherlock leveled his 'explain now' eyebrow in John's direction. "Well, nerve damage either heals on its own or not at all. Medicine can't do anything about it. Healing spells don't either, so I don't see why magic herself would be able to. Magic or no, I learnt a long time ago that some things are just plain impossible."

"Yet the impossible regularly happens around you," Sherlock commented, turning to his sock index. "It isn't out of the question that the damage might have healed itself during the intervening months."

John shook his head. "No," he said. "No, I don't think so. Back in September it was as bad as ever. Maybe even a bit worse, though that could simply be due to having had so long without needing to deal with it."

Sherlock added five pairs of socks to the suitcase, then zipped the garment portion shut. "When were you… Oh, of course. The boomeranged hiker." He sent an accusatory glare at John. "You might've mentioned something at the time."

John shrugged. "'Scuse me for thinking the cane gave it away."

"I had assumed it to be weather-related. I've noticed you tend not to walk far when the weather's like it was then – consistently dreary for more than a week at a stretch."

"Nah. That's more to do with the fact that I don't much like walking in the rain. People start to notice there's something off about me if I'm completely dry in the middle of a rainstorm." He made a vague sort of gesture. "And I don't much like umbrellas. Especially now I've met your brother."

Sherlock let out an undignified little snort at that, then sobered. "Still," he said, rummaging through his bedside table. "You survived quite well for, what was it? Four months? Prior to moving here."

"'Bout that, yeah," John agreed. "However, for half that time, I was doped to the gills in hospital, and for the remainder of that time, I was living on – what is it the papers call it? 'Hillbilly heroin'?"

With a small roll of his eyes, Sherlock tossed a couple of pens into his suitcase's side-pocket. "Most of the dealers I knew simply called it 'ox'." He added a notebook not unlike the one in which Greg took down case notes. "Much less of a mouthful." He looked up at John again. "I presume you still have some. Shelf life of three years, so it should still be usable."

"Yeah, I still have a bit left, but…" John trailed off, realizing that he wasn't going to get out of this trip. "How long are we going to be gone?" he asked, resigned to the inevitable.

"No more than four days, I would imagine, and that is entirely unlikely. I would say overnight at the most, but one can never be certain how smoothly a twenty year old disappearance is going to go." Sherlock finished speaking and packing at roughly the same moment, the sound of the zipper closing his suitcase underscored his last few words.

Another twenty minutes later, and John had a couple days' worth of clothes packed into a small suitcase he'd forgotten he'd owned until spotting it underneath his duffle; all while he'd been packing, the London avatar had stood in the corner of his room, emitting a complicated cloud of emotions, including disapproval and a general air of surrender to the inevitable. He hauled both his suitcase and Sherlock's – along with his satchel and that damnable cane – down the stairs and out to where Sherlock had hailed them a cab.

In the time he'd spent indoors, the majority of Speedy's breakfast run had moved on, but John could hear a very irate Mrs. Hudson – only slightly muted through the glass door and windows – shouting at Mr. Chatterjee. "…cruise together! You had no intention of taking me on it…" One of Mr. Chatterjee's crusty rolls, the kind he used for soup bread-bowls, ricocheted off the door with a dull thudding noise.

"Looks like Mrs. Hudson finally go to the wife in Doncaster," John commented to Sherlock.

"Mmm," Sherlock agreed. "Wait until she finds out about the one in Islamabad."

That explains a bit about my morning, John thought, snickering softly as he climbed into the cab.

"Paddington Station, please," Sherlock directed the driver, then settled into his own seat.

An hour later, their train pulled out of the greater London area. Almost immediately, John's knee began to ache with a steady thrum that John knew from experience was only going to get worse. It's come on faster this time, he thought retrieving the bottle of oxycodone from his jacket pocket. He tossed a tablet into his mouth and dry-swallowed it. I'm really not looking forward to this… "That settles it," he said, managing to drag Sherlock's attention away from his phone.

"What settles what, exactly?"

"Either you're gonna start taking cases solely within London, or you're gonna need to do it without me. I am never leaving London again."

The journey to Dartmoor took rather longer than expected, thanks to a lengthy unexplained delay at one of the smaller stations along the train's route. Despite this, or possibly in part because of the trip's length, John spent the majority of it snoozing. Not sleeping, not really, but dozing in and out of consciousness, often to the sound of Sherlock's rumbling 'thinking out loud'.

When the train finally reached their destination, John was pulled from his latest catnap by truly horrible burnt-smelling coffee and an insistent hand on his shoulder. Yawning, John let out a series of vowels. Amusement crinkled the corners of Sherlock's eyes. "Yes," the consulting detective said, "we're here." The train began to slow. "Here," he pushed a styrofoam cup with plastic sip-it lid into John's hands. "Drink this and be quick about it."

John scrubbed the back of his right hand across his eyes while Sherlock retrieved their bags from the overhead compartment. Even though the scent warned him it was likely the third-worst coffee he'd ever been subjected to – first prize on that score went to Major Franklin's 'A-for-effort-but-not-much-else' back during that three-day catastrophe of a mission during his second tour in Afghanistan – the sandpaper coating his mouth and throat welcomed its presence. He must've got this a while ago. It's nearly cold. John ignored the tepid temperature and chugged it down anyway. I'll need the caffeine.

Eventually, he and Sherlock made it off of the train. John parked himself on a bench, their suitcases at his feet, while Sherlock ran off to get them a car. He returned roughly half an hour later with a large black Land Rover. John levered himself to his feet and paused – a light rush of dizziness told him that he was well and truly under the effects of his prescribed medication. With their suitcases tucked into the back seat, John settled himself in the passenger seat and began fiddling with the radio.

Before they could even pull out of the parking lot for the train station, Sherlock smacked John's hand away from the buttons with an irritated, "Quit that."

John rolled his eyes and let out a huff as he flopped back against his seat. "Didn't know you could drive," he commented, his eyes tracking the scenery outside the windshield.

"No point in owning a car in London," Sherlock confirmed, skipping ahead in the conversation.

"You really need to stop doing that," John replied.

"Stop doing what, exactly?"

"Jumping over large parts of the conversation just 'cause you think they're boring."

Sherlock sighed. "Fine. 'Yes, John – I know how to drive'," he quoted from the conversation-that-never-was, then mimicked John's own voice, "'Then why take taxis everywhere? Wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run to own your own car?'" He switched back to his own voice, "'It would, yes, but there is the matter of parking.'" He maneuvered the Jeep around a man on a tractor, continuing in his own voice, "'And that's where things begin to get expensive. The nearest secure place to park a car is several blocks from the flat, so we would wind up taking just as many taxis to get to and from the parking garage as we currently do in getting to and from our actual destinations – ergo, there is no point to it.'" He glanced at John. "Happy?"

"Thrilled," John's reply was drier than the Registan. He reached out to start toying with the radio again, only to have Sherlock lightly smack his hand once more. John sighed for what was probably the millionth time since meeting Sherlock, then settled back to watching the scenery in silence.

"There's a map in the glove compartment," Sherlock broke the quiet about half an hour later, navigating the Land Rover into a roadside park populated by gigantic stone outcroppings. He parked the car and hopped out before John could reply.

John reached forward and rummaged around in the glove compartment. Rental agreement. Owner's manual. Ketchup packet. Broken biro. Broken lighter. Dried-out tube of superglue. Here we are! Maps – let's see… Scotland. Portsmouth. London. Belgium? Seriously? Ah, here we are. Dartmoor. He grabbed the right bit of folded paper and climbed out. Leaning heavily on his cane, he picked his way across the uneven ground to where Sherlock had scaled the tallest rock in the park. John took a moment to orient himself on the map, then looked up at his friend and flatmate. "There's Baskerville," he said, pointing to the cluster of buildings surrounded by several layers of fencing to the south. "That's Grimpen Village," he pointed north-by-northeast without bothering to turn around, though Sherlock did. "So… Yeah, that's Dewer's Hollow," he indicated a thickly forested patch of ground not far from the empty no-man's land nestled within the first row of fencing for Baskerville.

An undocumented side-effect of oxycodone, at least as far as John was concerned, was a lack of his typical level of control over his othersight abilities. So, in addition to the nearly high-definition visual imagery of postcard-worthy countryside completely lacking in London smog, John also was treated to the unfiltered bucolic tranquility of magical ebb and flow outside of a metropolitan area. The local leyline system had yet to 'notice' John, but John could see it without effort – it was, when compared to his London Lady, greener than her blue-white glow, tasted of chlorophyll and moss and dirt with an undertone of burning leaves, but put him in mind of the way pond scum smelt, and felt like a hike through a blackberry briar; prickly, in other words, very much unlike the smooth and comforting cloud-like presence of London. All-in-all, where London's leylines were very much on John's side, he had the distinct impression that Dartmoor's leyline system would prefer it if he were to go away.

"What's that?" Sherlock asked, interrupting John's magical assessment.

"What's what?" John replied, digging in his jacket for his field-glasses.

"That, there," Sherlock clarified, pointing to the no-man's land surrounding the Baskerville facility.

"Minefield," John replied, looking through his binoculars. "Baskerville's a level-five clearance army base," he said, "so I assume they've always been keen to keep people out."

John didn't notice, but Sherlock blinked thoughtfully in his direction. "Clearly," he said, then climbed down from his perch atop the outcrop. Ten minutes later, and Sherlock was pulling to a halt in the car park for the only accommodations in the area – the Cross Keys Inn, by name. "Get us a room, John," Sherlock said, then melted into a crowd of people listening to a lanky kid in his early twenties who had a sandwich board standing next to him that, in a rather melodramatic fashion, read Beware the Hound!, complete with a shadow-outline of a snarling wolf with blood dripping from its mouth.

Ignoring the equally-melodramatic patter of the kid trying to cash in on things, John made his way into the Cross Keys. Part of him noticed the 'vegetarian cuisine' sign and was both disappointed and enthused – his inner doctor knew the benefits of a vegetarian diet, but he was far too enraptured of bacon to ever accept it for himself. "Afternoon," he said, greeting the bartender with a polite smile. "You who I talk to about a room?"

The older man nodded. "Aye," he said, handing over another customer's change. "I'm Gary Taylor," he introduced himself.

"John Watson," John replied. "Need a double room for at least tonight, likely two or three."

Gary frowned, "Sorry, just gave away the last double. Only got a single left."

"That'll have to do," John sighed. Really, is anything going to go as planned? Almost as though the thought summoned it, the local leyline system seemed to take that moment to realize John's presence. Whereas London had – at first – manifested as a tentacle-like tendril of magical energy, Dartmoor put John in the mind of a vertical potato that had begun sprouting. It reached out and touched his aura, then violently pulled away. The overriding sense coming off of it was best summed up as 'go back where you belong'. Would if I could, John thought at it while Gary filled out the paperwork for the room.

The Dartmoor avatar slid back from John, avoiding even an accidental touch of his aura, only to be temporarily dispersed by Sherlock ducking in through the door. John's attention was pulled away from both the manifestation of the local leylines and his flatmate by Gary's voice, "Sorry we couldn't do a double room for you boys." He handed John a room key on a brass keychain.

"That's fine," John said, taking the key. He glanced at the 'don't worry, we get all kinds' smirk on Gary's face. He handed the man enough cash to cover the room. "We're really not," he said.

"I'll just get your change," Gary replied, but John could hear the 'so you say' undertone. While Gary's back was turned, John spotted a receipt spike snugged up next to the beer taps. He likely would have ignored it, save for the fact that he was still lamenting the probable lack of bacon come morning and the fact that one of the receipts was labeled with a handwritten Undershaw Meat Supplies. He quickly snatched the receipt off the spike and pocketed it just in time for Gary to turn around with his change. "There you go," Gary said, handing over a couple of coins.

John accepted his change. "I couldn't help noticing on the map of the moor – a skull and crossbones…?"

"Oh, that," Gary said as a customer came up to the bar with an empty larger glass. "Aye." He quickly refilled the customer's glass.

"Pirates?" John asked, not entirely capable of keeping the snark from surfacing. Though I doubt he noticed.

"Oh, no, no," Gary replied, handing the customer his refilled glass. "The Great Grimpen Minefield, they call it. Been going for eighty-odd years – it's the Baskerville testing site. I'm not sure anyone really knows what's there any more."

"Explosives?" John asked, watching as Sherlock wandered around the bar area.

"Oh, not just explosives. Break into that place and, if you're lucky, you just get blowed up, so they say… In case you're planning on a nice wee stroll."

John glanced down at his cane and let out an undignified snort. "Not likely."

"No," Gary agreed, seemingly just noticing his newest customer's mobility problem, "I don't suppose that'll be something you're interested in. The minefield buggers up tourism a bit, so thank god for the demon hound." He punctuated his last comment with a wide grin and a small chuckle. "Did you see that show? The documentary?"

John nodded, "Quite recently."

"God bless Henry Knight and his monster from hell," Gary proclaimed, his hands making an expressive 'there you have it' type of gesture.

"Ever seen it?" John asked. "The hound?"

There was no mistaking the tone of Gary's reply – it was identical to what John would have used had someone asked him if he'd ever seen a yeti. "Me? No. They say it's gigantic, though. Size of a small horse."

John quirked a disbelieving eyebrow at the innkeeper. "That's three times," he said. "Just who is this 'they' you keep mentioning?"

Gary looked a little taken aback at the question, but quickly shrugged it off. "Well, Fletcher, for one. He runs the walks – the Monster Walks for the tourists, you know? He says he's seen it. And that crazy bugger Knight."

"Anyone else?" John asked. "Any of the tourists, for example?"

Gary shrugged, and stepped out of the way of a small man – and John felt fully justified in using the description, as the man in cook's whites was fully three inches shorter than himself. "We're out of WKD," the newcomer said to Gary. Gary turned to scribble something down on a pad of paper along the barback with a muttered 'all right' while the cook took to chatting at John. "Lots of monster-hunters lately. Doesn't take much these days. One mention on Twitter and oomph," he paused for a moment, then said, "What with the monster and that ruddy prison, I don't know how we sleep nights. Do you, Gary?"

"Like a baby, Billy," Gary replied with an affectionate pat to the cook's shoulder. "Like a baby."

And that gets filed under 'things I never wanted to know'. Out loud, John couldn't help but correct the cook. "It's a military base, not a prison."

Billy gave a sideways shrug. "What's the difference?" he asked, rhetorically.

"For one, I don't imagine a prison would have a minefield," John replied. Oh, fan-bloody-tastic. The dissolving effect on my brain-to-mouth filter of the oxycodone has engaged. Marvelous – and it takes a solid couple of days to get it back, or did last time. This time, though… Who knows? "Though, if they did have, I would imagine escape attempts would probably take place far less often than they do. And successful ones would likely only wind up freeing bedspace, but not in the way intended…" He only just managed not to cover his own mouth with a hand to keep the words from spilling out. Billy blinked at him with a look John had last seen aimed at Sherlock mid-deductive-rant. "Nice chatting with you," John said, then fled the bar.

He took a moment to spot where Sherlock had wandered off to, then headed over to where the consulting detective was sitting on a picnic bench, talking to the kid – Fletcher – who had been spieling to the tourists when they'd arrived. "Bet's off, John," Sherlock said as John sank onto the other side of the bench. "Sorry."

Fletcher, who'd been about to leave, seized on the one word and asked, "Bet?"

Sherlock pretended not to hear him as he checked the time on his phone. "My plan needs darkness," he said, peering up at the sky. "Reckon we've got another half an hour of light –"

"Wait, wait, wait," Fletcher interrupted. "What bet?"

"Oh," Sherlock replied. "I bet John here fifty quid that you couldn't prove you'd seen the hound."

"Yeah," John agreed. Anything to get him to fork over his half of the grocery bill works for me. "The guys in the pub said you could."

Fletcher grinned. "Well, you're gonna lose your money, mate."

"Yeah?" Sherlock challenged.

"Yeah," Fletcher nodded, the motion making his oily aura swim dizzyingly around him for a moment. "I've seen it. Only about a month ago, up at the Hollow. It was foggy, mind – couldn't make much out."

"I see," Sherlock said, his voice practically dripping skepticism. "No witnesses, I suppose."

Fletcher puffed up a little at that. "No, but –"

"Never are," Sherlock commented, then looked over at John.

"Wait," Fletcher said, digging out his mobile. He toyed with it for a moment, then held it out to Sherlock. "There."

"Is that it?" Sherlock said, a disbelieving little chuckle dusting the words. "It's not exactly proof, is it?"

Fletcher shifted and showed the photo to John. John let out a snort. "I've seen better photos by an alcoholic on a six-day binge," he said, referring to his sister's favored hobby. "Is that a bear? Dog? Photoshopped squirrel?"

Sherlock shook his head. "Sorry, John – I win, I'm sure you agree."

"Wait, wait," Fletcher said. John was beginning to think it was the budding con-man's favorite word. "That's not all. People don't like going up there, you know – to the Hollow. Gives them a bad sort of feeling."

"Ooh, is it haunted?" Sherlock didn't damper his sarcasm one iota.

John chuckled, "Nah – if it were, I'd know about it."

Sherlock ignored the aside, "Is that supposed to convince me?"

"No," Fletcher replied. "Nothing like that," his own disbelief in ghosts bled through his words. "But I reckon there is something out there – something escaped from Baskerville."

Sherlock laughed. "What is it then – a clone? A super-dog?"

Fletcher gave a combined nod-and-shrug. "Maybe," he said. "God knows what they've been spraying on us all these years – or puttin' in the water. I wouldn't trust 'em far as I could spit."

It was John's turn to let out a doubtful laugh. "Oh, come on! D'you have any idea the level of bureaucracy involved in something that's used on people? Even for something as benign as a sonic – read: nonlethal – weapon? The regs listing on it's as thick as a combined phone directory for the entirety of London! And it just gets more and more involved if there's anything chemical involved, particularly if there's any chance whatsoever of accidental spillage into a civilian area. And genetic manipulation –"

Sherlock derailed John's combined medical/military rant with a nod at Fletcher's phone. "Is that the best you've got?"

Fletcher looked from Sherlock to John and back again. "Had me a mate once, he worked for the M. O. D. One weekend we were meant to go fishin' but he never showed up – not 'til late. When he did, he was white as a sheet. I can see him now. 'I've seen things today, Fletch,' he said, 'that I never wanna see again. Terrible things.' He'd been sent to some secret army place – Porton Down, maybe. Maybe Baskerville or somewhere else." He leaned down as though to ensure privacy. "In the labs there – the really secret labs, he said he'd seen terrible things. Rats as big as dogs, he said, and dogs," he paused, both for dramatic effect and to pull a casting from his bag, "dogs the size of horses."

The cast was of a large paw-print, roughly twenty centimeters from back-to-front. Sherlock stared at it in thinly-veiled surprise, but John just rolled his eyes. "Not convincing me there, 'Fletch'," he said, using finger-quotes around the kid's name. "That could be from a mastiff, maybe a St. Bernard or a Great Dane. Hell, could be any one of a dozen or more of the largest dog breeds. If it really was the size of a horse, the paw-print itself would need to be at least three times bigger than that. When I was a kid, our neighbor raised sheep – had a pair of Anatolian Shepherds. Their prints were half again that size."

Sherlock shot him a look that clearly said 'shut up now', but John just didn't care. He continued speaking to the 'tour guide'. "Now you, on the other hand – I appreciate a well-run con as much as the next guy, but you ought to polish yours up a bit. Get the right peppermint edge to it and you'll have a late-night infomercial before you know it. But this," he made a gesture that indicated the whole of the 'Monster Walk' experience, "has been done to death. Too many people out there with too much intel at the tips of their fingers – keep on with it, an' you're just gonna wind up a laughingstock."

Fletcher scowled at John as he returned the cast to his bag, then strode away. Sherlock finally managed to capture John's gaze. "So, you're not interested in money – contrary to all prior expectations."

John shrugged, "Sure. Wouldn't mind it if you actually paid your part of all the tea'n'milk we go through, but that kid?" He made a vague gesture with his hand. "Anyway – you were saying about a plan for tonight?"

Sherlock peered at him as though he'd suddenly grown a third nostril.

"What? Do I have something in my teeth?"

Sherlock shook his head. "No. Fatigue, bradycardia, miosis, an irritating tendency to babble – are there any other side-effects of you on ox I ought to know?"

"Hypotension, dizziness, dry mouth," John listed the other side-effects he suffered from with a cheerful 'fuck off' tone. "And it's only gonna get worse before it gets better because someone wouldn't let me sit this one out."

"Oh, don't be petulant, John," Sherlock said, climbing to his feet. "It doesn't suit you."

"That's rich, coming from you, Mr. There-Hasn't-Been-A-Case-Since-This-Morning-So-I'l l-Tear-Apart-The-Flat-And-Make-Mrs. H-Cry."

"Precisely," Sherlock nodded. "I've the practice for it, you don't. Now get up – we've a testing facility to break into."

As the sun sank towards nightfall, Sherlock pulled the Land Rover up to the main gate for Baskerville. A security guard met them, his hand never straying far from his standard-issue rifle. John's inner soldier approved even as the rest of him was thrumming with nervous tension, while John's inner mage scanned the area and found that the local leyline system – either by accident or design – completely avoided crossing the Baskerville grounds. "Pass, please," the guard said. Sherlock handed over a small card from his coat pocket. "Thank you," the guard said, then strode into the guard shack while another guard, holding the lead to a brown-and-black German Shepherd, stepped forward to inspect their car.

"You've got ID for Baskerville?" the whispered question hurled itself like a kamikaze pilot from his mouth before he could stop it. "How?" John shook his head. "No – Mycroft. Question really should be: Does he know you've got it?"

Sherlock sent him a sideways little smirk. "I acquired it ages ago, just in case. It's non-specific to location."

"Brilliant," John said, succumbing to the urge to roll his eyes. "Fan-fucking-tastic. We're gonna get caught."

"No," Sherlock argued. "Not just yet."

"Caught in five minutes," John stressed. "'Oh, hi. We just thought we'd come and have a wander 'round your top-secret weapons base,'" he did a fair impression of imitating himself when he wasn't standing on the cusp of panic, then switched to a slightly deeper voice for, "'Really? Great! Come in – kettle's just boiled.'" In his normal voice, he concluded with, "And that's if we don't get shot! What was it Jason used to say… 'Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt'. I definitely do not want to get shot again."

The guard with the dog interrupted John's hissing stream-of-panic with a not-quite-shouted, "Clear."

The original guard emerged from the shack and handed Sherlock the card. "Thank you very much, sir."

"Thank you," Sherlock said, apparently by reflex. The gate slid open and he put the car in gear.

"Straight through," the guard said.

John managed to stem the flow of words from his mouth long enough for them to move beyond the guards, then let out a small, high-pitched sigh through his nose. It wanted, very much so, to become hysterical laughter, but he managed to reign it in. "Mycroft's name literally opens doors."

"I told you," Sherlock rebutted, "he practically is the British government. I estimate we've about twenty minutes before they realize something's wrong."

"Oh, great. Fantastic. Wonderful. And if we're stuck down in the labs when that happens? Sure – you'll only need to spend however long it takes Mycroft to get off his arse to come and fetch you, but me? I'll wind up rotting down there while some new-age Dr. Frankenstein pokes me and dissects me to see if they can find out why I'm a mage and they aren't –"

"John!" Sherlock shouted. John got the feeling it wasn't the first time, either.

"What?" he shouted right back.

"Quit panicking! Nothing of the sort will happen, particularly not since they've no reason to suspect magic is anything other than the stuff of fairytales!"

John took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it slowly out through his nose. He opened his eyes as the car came to a halt, unsure as to when he'd closed them. Sherlock was already out of the car and striding through another manned checkpoint. John pried himself out of his seat and scrambled to catch up, valiantly ignoring the drug-induced dizziness he had on standing. On the upside, that minor freak-out's done more for my blood pressure than that coffee I had earlier. He managed to fall into step with his flatmate just as a military jeep pulled up and disgorged an overenthusiastic young corporal. "What is it?" the corporal said, "Are we in trouble?"

Sherlock leveled his best 'I am a Holmes' glare at the poor kid. "'Are we in trouble, sir'," he corrected.

"Yes, sir," the corporal replied, stepping up to block their way. "Sorry, sir."

"You were expecting us?" Sherlock asked.

"Your ID showed up straight away, Mr. Holmes," the corporal said, unintimidated by Sherlock's air of entitlement. "Corporal Lyons, security. Is there something wrong, sir?"

"Well, I hope not, corporal," Sherlock replied, subtly dialing back on his demeanor. "I hope not."

"It's just we don't get inspected here, you see, sir. It just doesn't happen," Lyons said, a slight pleading note underscoring the explanation.

"Who said anything about an inspection?" John asked, drawing Lyons' attention from Sherlock. He quickly displayed his ID. "Captain John Watson, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers." While speaking, the corporal came to attention and saluted. It was instinct – born of years of practice – that had John returning the salute. I will not babble incoherently. I will not babble incoherently.

"Sir," Lyons said. "Major Barrymore won't be pleased, sir. He'll want to see you both."

"I'm afraid we don't have time for that," John argued. He hoped 'don't interrupt me, Sherlock, I've actually got sort of a plan here' could be read by his flatmate. "Mr. Holmes needs a full tour – I'll deal with this Major Merrybore."

"Major Barrymore, sir," Lyons corrected, then winced a little. "I'll escort you myself, sir," he glanced at his watch. "Private Pipping ought to be just inside – she can escort Mr. Holmes to wherever he needs to be."

John gestured towards the door. "After you, corporal." I will not babble incoherently.

"Yes, sir," Lyons said, turning smartly around and striding towards the door.

Sherlock and John followed, the former shooting the latter a multi-layered look that John had no trouble decoding. He gave a little shrug in reply. Sherlock shook his head in the smallest of movements, then swiped Mycroft's ID card through the door reader. It let out a chirrupy double-beep, then displayed 'access granted' in white text across a green background. A moment later, Lyons disengaged the door locks and made a small 'after you' gesture. On entering the facility, Lyons removed his hat, shut the door behind them and said, "One moment, sirs," then hurried up to a redheaded woman. "Private Pipping," he greeted her. "Please serve as Mr. Holmes' escort." He pointed to Sherlock, then turned his attention to John. "And if you would follow me?"

John sent a quick 'be careful' glance at his insane flatmate before the somewhat homely private ushered him towards the elevator at the end of the hall. John was pretty sure that it wasn't his imagination that had him seeing a similar look aimed in his direction from the mad genius. John nodded, mostly to himself, then set to following Lyons deeper into the ground-level labyrinth. It's the same setup as that training facility in Nevada. I wonder – do they all use the same set of blueprints, or is this just a coincidence? "How far down does the lift go?" he asked. I will not babble incoherently.

"Quite a way, sir," Lyons replied, nodding in passing to another of the security team.

"And I imagine the secondary lift goes even farther," John commented, knowing that these sorts of places never had just one. "Generally, what's down there?"

"Well," Lyons said, glancing at John, "we have to keep the bins somewhere, sir."

John could appreciate the understated snark in the sentence – it told him far more clearly than the earlier 'it's just we don't get inspected here' just precisely what sort of base Baskerville was. I will not babble incoherently. "What goes on down there?" John asked.

"I thought you'd know, sir," Lyons replied.

Either you've been posted here too long, kid, or you're exactly the sort who'll do well at these types of postings. "I know – in broad strokes – the mission-purpose of bases like this. I was just curious as to specifically which branch of research Baskerville was currently dedicated to following."

"Mostly biological research of one breed or another," Lyons replied, finally seeming to recognize the experience John had at talking around a topic. "Everything from stem-cell research to trying to cure the common cold, sir."

"But mostly weaponry," John commented to himself. I will not babble incoherently.

"Of one sort or another," Lyons agreed. "Yes, sir."

"Biological, from what you've mentioned, rather than chemical. Boys at Porton Down were working the strictly-chemical side, last I heard," John said. And that wasn't even all that long ago, either.

"One war ends, another begins, sir. New enemies to fight. We have to be prepared," Lyons said, coming to a halt outside a pair of steel doors with a scan-to-access keypad much like the one on the door through which they had entered the building. Lyons slid his card through the reader and pushed his way into the security mains of the complex.

John glanced at his watch, recalling that Sherlock – who was usually pretty spot-on about these sorts of things – indicated they'd have twenty minutes. John figured that meant twenty minutes counting from when Mycroft's ID had been initially scanned out by the gate. About eight minutes left. I hope Sherlock is getting whatever it was he was after. Lyons led John past the soldiers sitting at the banks of security feeds over to an office in the corner of the room. It had a half-glass wall that looked over the main room.

"Major Barrymore, sir," Lyons said, knocking politely on the open door.

"Corporal Lyons," a tall man, roughly the same age as John, looked up from the paperwork he was reading. "What do we have?"

Lyons introduced John. "Captain Watson to see you, sir," he said, then stepped away. He walked over to one of the seated security team and began chatting quietly with him.

John stepped into the office and gave a small salute to the major. I will not babble incoherently. "Major Barrymore, sir."

"Captain Watson." Barrymore motioned to the chair that faced his desk. "Have a seat."

John closed the office door behind him and took the offered seat with a barely-concealed sigh of relief. "Thanks," he said. "Bloody knee hasn't been the same since Kandahar."

A measure of respect leaked into the major's posture as he sat himself down on his own chair. "What brings you to Baskerville, Captain Watson? My men have been tittering some nonsense about an inspection."

John let out a small chuckle. I will not babble incoherently. "No, not an inspection, major – and call me John, please. Just a small matter that falls under the jurisdiction of Article Forty-Eight."

Barrymore frowned. "If this is about the rash of aggression we've been experiencing the last couple of months –"

John shook his head. "No. At least, that isn't what brought us here," he reassured the major.

Barrymore let out a small sigh and relaxed a bit into his chair. "It's nothing untoward, I trust?"

"Not at all," John agreed. "Honestly, I personally don't see why we were sent, but the higher-ups must have their reasons."

Barrymore nodded, idly scratching his chin through his graying beard. "And they rarely see fit to inform the rest of us," he agreed. "Going to be here long?"

John shook his head. "I don't think so. The civvy they've got me partnered to thinks it won't take more than a day or two. This is just a small warning-visit. I'm hopeful that what we're looking for won't actually be found – not here, at any rate." John rubbed his palm over his aching knee. Even with the opiate at its peak efficacy, it still throbbed like an abscessed tooth. "Still, we have to be certain," he met Barrymore's gaze. "We should be out of your hair with a minimum of fuss." I will not babble incoherently.

"I'm going to hold you to that, Captain Watson," Barrymore said, pointing at John while speaking.

John gave his best smile. "I'm a five-November-foxtrot," he said. "My word's good as gold." Or, in this case, those foil-wrapped chocolate coins I remember from childhood.

Barrymore unbent enough to echo a faint copy of John's smile back at him. "Dealt with you boys before. Eases my mind a bit."

John glanced at his watch again. Six minutes and counting. "Would you excuse me for a moment, please," John said, retrieving his phone. He sent a text to Sherlock. Need to hurry up. I really really don't want to get caught here when Mycroft catches up to you. A moment later, his phone chimed a reply.

On my way up now. SH

"The government kid's on his way back," John said, returning his phone to his pocket. I will not babble incoherently. "Can I have your number, in case we need to return?"

Barrymore nodded and scribbled something down on a bright yellow post-it note. He handed it over with a more genuine smile than he'd worn earlier. "Let me know either way – just so I won't keep waiting for you to show up again."

"Will do," John promised, taking the note. He pushed himself to his feet. "Pleasure, Major Barrymore," he said, then opened the door. Lyons noticed him and motioned for him to wait a moment. John did so, rapidly sending Sherlock another text. If you can, stall Mycroft from sending out an alert on his ID use, will you? I think I managed to cover our presence here.

Lyons finished his conversation with the other security man and strode over. "Sir?"

"Think I'm done here, corporal," John said, readjusting his satchel's strap. He kept his phone out, though. "If you would…?" he made a motion towards the door. I will not babble incoherently.

"Sir," Lyons agreed, then set about leading John back through the maze of offices towards the main door.

They met up with Private Pipping and Sherlock just as they exited the lift. An older man wearing a white lab coat was with them. Lyons dismissed the redhead with a curt, "Thank you, private. Back to your duties."

"Yes, sir," she said, then headed down the hallway in the direction John and Lyons had come.

"If you don't mind, corporal," the white-haired man in the lab coat said, "I'll show them out."

"As you wish, sir," Lyons said, then waited until the man had led John and Sherlock into the rapidly-gathering twilight outside.

"This is about Henry Knight, isn't it?" the newcomer eagerly asked, easily keeping pace with Sherlock's giraffe-legs and John's own dogged desire to be well and truly away from the base. When neither of them replied, the man grinned. "I thought so! I knew he wanted help, but I didn't realize he was going to contact Sherlock Holmes!" Sherlock grimaced at the sheer fanboy enthusiasm flowing off of the lab-rat. John couldn't blame him. I've no need to babble with him around – he's doing enough for the both of us! "I'm never off your website," the man continued. "Thought you'd be wearing the hat, though."

"That wasn't my hat," Sherlock bit out.

The man looked to John, ignoring Sherlock's comment entirely. "I hardly recognize him without the hat!"

As generally irritating as the man was being, John couldn't help but smile a bit at Sherlock's continued displeasure over 'that hat'. "It wasn't my hat," Sherlock repeated, over-enunciating in the way he did when he was especially annoyed.

"I love the blog, too, Dr. Watson!" the man continued, as before, ignoring Sherlock's increasing frustration with his presence.

"Oh, ta for that," John said. "I didn't catch your name…"

"Robert Frankland," the man said, offering his hand. "Call me Bob, though." John shook the offered hand out of reflex while the man gushed on about his blog.

Sherlock managed to derail the praise by stopping in his tracks and turning to face Frankland once they were only a few meters from the Land Rover. "You know Henry Knight?" he asked.

Frankland also stopped walking and stood a comfortable conversation-distance away from John and Sherlock. "Well," he said, scratching the back of his neck, "I knew his dad better. He had all sorts of mad theories about this place." He dropped his hand and glanced at the ground. "Still, he was a good friend." He glanced over his shoulder. "Listen, I can't really talk now," he said, dipping a hand into one of his lab coat pockets. "Here's my cell number. If I could help with Henry, give me a call." He handed a standard business card to Sherlock.

Sherlock took it, and looked at it while saying, "I never did ask, Dr. Frankland – What exactly is it that you do here?"

"Oh, Mr. Holmes, I would love to tell you – but then, of course, I'd have to kill you!" he managed most of it with a straight face, but broke into chuckles on the last few words.

Sherlock brushed aside the poorly-told and vastly overused – in John's opinion – joke with a completely serous, "That would be tremendously ambitious of you." He then changed the subject. "Tell me about Dr. Stapleton."

Frankland shook his head and tucked his hands into his pockets. "Never speak ill of a colleague."

"Yet you'd speak well of one, which you're clearly omitting to do," Sherlock said.

"I do seem to be, don't I?" Frankland agreed.

Sherlock raised the business card and 'tapped' it on the air in Frankland's direction. "I'll be in touch," he said, then turned to complete the short walk to the car.

"Any time," Frankland replied.

John waited until the sound of Frankland's footsteps indicated he was heading back to the building, then asked, "What was all that about?"

"Not yet," Sherlock replied, pulling his Belstaff a little tighter and flipping the collar up.

John rolled his eyes. "Can you not do that? Just for one day?"

Sherlock paused next to the driver's door. "Do what?" he asked, seemingly honestly puzzled.

"You being all…" he gestured at his friend, almost literally groping for the right words, "mysterious with your cheekbones and popping your collar so you look cool."

Sherlock blinked slowly at John. "I don't do that."

"Yeah," John argued, opening the passenger door. "You do." He slid into his seat before Sherlock could reply.

While Sherlock navigated back to the gate, his phone chimed twice in quick succession. Using one hand to retrieve it from his pocket, he tossed it at John. "Take care of that, would you?"

John tapped into Sherlock's inbox and saw four unread messages from Mycroft.

What are you doing? M

What's going on, Sherlock? M

I'm tempted to ensure you stay there overnight. M

Don't think I won't, Sherlock. Answer me. M

John winced a bit. "What should I say?" he asked.

"I honestly don't care."

John chewed on his lip for a moment, then typed a reply. Sherlock's busy at the moment. Once he's free, I'll pass along your concern. He then hit 'send'. Without meaning to, John held his breath, tension increasing exponentially as they reached the gate, then passed through it. He didn't breathe again until it had locked behind them and they were on their way away from the base. The pressure seemed to evaporate as soon as they pulled onto the main road from the paved access to the base. "So…" he prompted. "What did you find out?"

"They apparently keep 'lots' of animals, but no one is admitting to any ever escaping. I'm also certain that Dr. Stapleton knows more than she let on about Bluebell."

John blinked at Sherlock. "Bluebell…?" he shook his head as though to dislodge water from his ears. "The kid who emailed you, the rabbit? Please tell me we didn't just break into a secure base on behalf of a missing rabbit!"

"The missing luminous rabbit, John, the luminous rabbit owned by a child whose mother just so happens to specialize in genetic manipulation."

"She made her daughter's rabbit glow in the dark?" John wondered why.

Sherlock nodded. "Probably a fluorescent gene removed and spliced into the specimen. Simple enough these days." Sherlock glanced at John. "We know that Dr. Stapleton performs genetic experiments on animals – the question at this juncture is: Has she been working on anything deadlier than a rabbit?"

"To be fair, that's quite a wide field," John said, then asked, "How many levels did the lift reach?"

"How is that relevant?"

John shrugged, then began kneading his injured thigh. "Just gives me an idea what they might be playing with, is all."

"Four primary sub-levels and one marked basement," Sherlock said, curiosity blatant in his tone.

John nodded. Exactly as I'd suspected. "Ah," he said.

"'Ah'?" Sherlock looked over at him. "'Ah'?"

"For cryin' out loud, watch the bloody road!" John scolded. He flexed his injured knee. A sharp stab of 'surely, you don't expect more of me today' issued from it with a loud cracking noise. John hissed, then checked his watch. Took the first one nearly nine hours ago. We get back to the inn, I'm hijacking the nearest tub for at least an hour. And if Sherlock wakes me up before eight tomorrow, I'm going to cast Sleep of the Dead on him and shave his head – eyebrows included. He pulled out his pill bottle and dry-swallowed another oxycodone tablet.

"'Ah'?" Sherlock repeated yet again.

"Yes, yes – biosafety levels one through three would be what that lift can access. One of the levels it reaches would be reserved for the base rec-room and canteen, possibly a few sleeper rooms, too. If it follows the standard format, the access to BSL four would be a separate lift in the marked basement, with the majority of any other space on that level reserved for storage and the computer servers."

Sherlock swept John with a quick, yet piercing look that John wasn't able to interpret. John ignored it. "Standard layout, from what I could see. How many levels down did you go? I'm guessing just to the first – most genetic manipulations are a BSL-one or BSL-two at the worst, and twos are only if they're working on something particularly tricky or tinkering with the genetics of basic bacteria. Of course, if they're toying with anything deadlier than say botulism or tetanus, they'd do so in the corresponding BSL lab for the parent disease, plus-one. Standard practice."

"You seem to know an awful lot more than I would have expected about places like Baskerville," Sherlock commented, not bothering to look in John's direction.

"Army doctor with a pretty impressive security clearance, Sherlock," John explained. "My first two years in the service were at places very much like Baskerville, though not actually at Baskerville."

"Hmm… This would indicate that your preexisting security clearance is what caused you to be selected for those black-ops teams you mentioned."

John nodded. "Yeah – well, that and the fact that I can hit what I aim at if you put a gun in my hand. Not many doctors out there that manage to score higher than the basic minimum in their firearms proficiency."

John could practically see Sherlock etching the new information into his brain. "If that is the case, then why were you so concerned about our visiting the base?"

John winced a little, recalling the slight panic-attack he'd endured on reaching the base. "It's not without precedent," he said. "A covert research facility 'detaining' a mage, I mean. I haven't any clue whether or not we've done it, but the Yanks have. Last time I was in the States…" he scrubbed a hand over his face. "It was… Well, there's this training facility in Nevada. I spent three weeks a year there, renewing certain certifications to maintain my security clearance. All was pretty normal until the '09 renewal…" he trailed off, lost in memory for a moment.

He abruptly switched topics. "I've told you that most mages are only really good at one or two areas of magic, right?" At Sherlock's nod, he continued, "Well, there's one area of magic that is extremely rare, only about one in a thousand mages wind up with it. It's called 'dreamwalking'. It's also one of those magical gifts that invariably ends up paired with nonmagical talents – things like precognition or empathy."

"You mean psychic talents," Sherlock clarified.

John nodded. "Yeah. I'm a little surprised – you don't seem all that skeptical about psychics…?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Though the vast majority of so-claimed 'psychics' are nothing more than attention-seeking idiots out to cash in by playing with people even more moronic than themselves, science has unearthed a few rare instances wherein certain individuals demonstrated unexplainable abilities. I had assumed, once I'd learnt of your own uniqueness, that those individuals were actually mages of one form or another."

"Not exactly. There are a handful of talents that have nothing to do with magic. Pre- and post-cognition, telekinesis, empathy, and thought-sensing are all in that category. A person needn't be a mage to have any of them, but in the rare case that they are magical, then those gifts are able to draw on the mage's magic for an added 'power boost'. Now, dreamwalking is a magical talent, but it is almost always paired up with one of the clairvoyant gifts – usually precognition."

"Yes, you said that already."

John's knee was finally starting to fade a bit in its insistence that it never wanted to move again. He manhandled his foot so that the ankle of his injured leg was resting on his uninjured knee, then set to massaging his calf muscle. "Sorry – I know you hate repetition. Anyway, back to '09 in Nevada… It was day four of my three-week rotation. It had been a particularly grueling day – the details aren't that important, but it was extraordinarily physically demanding. I was completely knackered by the time they released us – so much so, I bypassed both supper and a shower in favor of more sleep. That night, I was… Well, 'contacted' is the best way to describe it." It had felt more like his brain had been invaded, but John simply didn't have the words.

"If 'dreamwalking' is as intuitive in meaning as the name suggests, I believe I can imagine how. Who was it?"

John moved his foot back to the floorboards of the Jeep with a small sigh. "A kid. Was about fifteen or so. Panicked out of his mind and instinctively lashing out for someone – anyone – to hear him. I was the closest mage, so I was the first mind he latched onto. It took some doing," he said, thinking, Not to mention a dreamscape projection of the safest place I could think of at the time – Dad's old workshop. "Eventually, I was able to calm the kid down. Come to find out that he'd been orphaned three years earlier. He didn't have any other family, and so got shunted off into foster care. His foster-family freaked out after one too many inexplicable happenings, and – I don't know how on this part – but the government got wind of it. Some bureaucrat had the kid transferred to that Nevada base with orders that the scientists there 'find out what makes him tick'." John paused for a moment, lost in memory.

"Now, I don't have a problem with scientists researching psychic abilities. I wouldn't even have a problem with science looking into magic. However, I do have issues with performing what amounts to torture on anyone, particularly a kid, who hasn't consented to it."

"Torture?" Sherlock asked with a sidelong glance and a raised eyebrow.

"Sleep-deprivation, electro-shock, various and sundry drugs. The night Eddie contacted me was the first time in nearly ninety hours they'd let the kid sleep. I wouldn't have been able to do anything – not directly – but, fortunately, Eddie's a powerful dreamwalker. One of the best things about dreamwalking is that subjective time is up to the mage who initiated the 'walk, and he wasn't about to short himself on what he'd seen as his only possible escape. We used the time wisely. I taught him how to gate. Of course, he was on his own in finding chalk, but I taught him how to draw the door, how to pull his magic up and push it into the gate architecture, and I taught him the anchor key for Penny Kapstan's gate – she's an Arizona mage that worked with Mary on a dig in Choco Canyon."

"I presume Eddie was able to escape."

John closed his eyes and shook his head. "No. He didn't get the chance." He shivered with the memory of how it had felt. "They misjudged a dose of… I'm pretty sure it was an amphetamine. He was linked up to me at the time. I assume they were trying to wake him. They killed him instead." John swallowed hard, then cleared his throat. "So… If I'm a little paranoid about it, I've got good reason."

Sherlock didn't comment, but pulled the Land Rover to a stop. They were parked in front of a truly massive house – John could count four stories – that had probably been built at least two centuries before. The sound of the driver's door slamming shut jolted John out of his memories of what it had been like to be psychically and magically linked to another person as that person died. He unbuckled his seatbelt and followed Sherlock up the flagstone path, through a somewhat neglected conservatory, and up to the main door. John arrived just as Sherlock released the door buzzer. Moments later, Henry Knight opened the door.

A couple of minutes later, Sherlock, John, and Henry were settled in Henry's kitchen. Henry bustled about making coffee. Sherlock added sugar to his own mug. John could see a midsized leyline that streamed through Henry's back garden. It's only a matter of time before it senses that I'm here. Overtop the faint clinking sound of Sherlock's spoon tapping against the side of his mug, Henry said, "It's a couple of words, what I keep seeing." John glanced out the window as he reached for his notebook. "'Liberty'," Henry said.

"Liberty?" John queried, clicking his pen.

Henry nodded. "'Liberty'," he repeated, "and 'in'. Just that." He picked up the bottle of milk that had been sitting in front of John's place at the counter-island. "Are you finished?"

John nodded. "Yeah. 'Inn' or 'in'?"

"Pardon?" Henry paused as he returned the milk to the fridge.

"One 'n' or two? 'Inn' as in a hotel or 'in' as in 'in a box'?" John clarified his question.

"The second," Henry answered.

John marked it down in his notebook, then glanced at Sherlock. "Mean anything to you?"

"'Liberty in death' – isn't that the expression? The only true freedom," Sherlock said, sipping at his coffee.

John nodded, then glanced out the window again. The leyline had finally noticed him and sent out its avatar. The spiky, green tuberous magical growth seemed to be glaring at him. It's worse than when Mum caught me and Harry roughhousing in the living room that time we broke Grandmum's piano.

"What now, then?" Henry's voice cut through John's thoughts.

"Sherlock's got a plan," John replied, tearing his eyes away from the presence outside to Henry.

They both looked at Sherlock, who had a faint smirk on his mouth. "Yes," he agreed.

"Right," Henry said.

"We take you back out onto the moor –"

"Okay," Henry's voice carried a touch of nervousness.

"– and see if anything attacks you," Sherlock concluded. "That should bring things to a head."

"At night?" Henry asked. "You want me to go out there at night?"

Sherlock nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. "That's your plan?" John asked. He let out an amused snort. "Brilliant," the word practically dripped with sarcasm.

"Got any better ideas?" Sherlock asked.

"That's not a plan. That's the sort of last-ditch idea that denotes a marked lack of a plan. I mean, I've not really noticed anything all that out of the ordinary – other than the fact that Grimpen actually seems to actively dislike me." He wrinkled his forehead in thought. "And what's that about, really? I've never known a particular web to actively dislike me before. It's not like having a strong opinion about someone who's abused the system, after all – crap like that leaves a lasting mark, one that even you could read. But it does and it's taken to watching me, so I suppose that's rather extraordinary, but I doubt it's anything to do with what happened to Henry's father or the footprints he found yesterday…" John trailed off when he realized that both Sherlock and Henry were staring at him as intently as the leyline was, though in Henry's case, it was with a combined sense of both fascination and confusion, and Sherlock was obviously amused.

"Listen," Sherlock said, visibly attempting to not laugh at John's latest babble, "if there is a monster out there, John, there's only one thing to do – find out where it lives." He shifted his gaze to Henry and smiled at him before taking another drink of coffee. Henry looked like John imagined a worm would look after being informed of its imminent upcoming role as 'fishing lure'. Or would, if a worm had, you know, a face, or any sort of understanding of communication. Fantastic. I'm coming up with weird metaphors now. What's next? Blending languages? Probably. John repressed the urge to grin. That could be fun. 'Salam, esmee John. Nemidanam if usted tiene cualquiera, but amem some lionn.' I wonder if anyone would understand it? Might be worth keeping in reserve, though, for the next time Sherlock hacks into my laptop or decides that the food-fridge is where he needs to keep orange slimes that seem to share my taste in yogurts. (1)

Henry looked outside for a moment, then back at Sherlock. "You… You're actually serious."

Sherlock nodded. "Have you any torches?"

Knight slumped a little, nonverbally conceding defeat. "I'll go get them," he said, then exited the kitchen.

John looked at Sherlock. "This is not your best idea."

"Well," he glanced at his watch. "I estimate you've about two minutes to come up with a better one." Sherlock drained his coffee and sat the empty mug on the counter. "And what did you mean – Grimpen hates you? How can a village hate anybody? I thought I told you once to quit anthropomorphizing."

John shook his head. "Not anthropomorphizing, Sherlock. Just like London's got a leyline system, so, too, does the countryside. I'm just calling this one Grimpen because I don't know how far the local 'lines stretch. It's the 'lines out here that don't seem to like me any, and no – I've no idea why. Remember the last time you used othersight?" John was referring to a few weeks earlier when Sherlock had decided to alleviate his boredom by dipping into the emerald-colored eye drops that John had concocted for him. He'd managed to do so at a time when the London avatar was 'visiting' with John and subsequently spent the next three hours alternatively in contemplative silence and aggressively – not to mention loudly – musing on why John wasted time with dating when he already had 'the perfect girlfriend'.

Sherlock nodded, but didn't say anything.

"Well, it's like that, only the leyline here seems to have taken an instant and intense dislike to me." John realized something and let out a little chuckle. "It's actually a bit like how you instantaneously prickle whenever Mycroft shows up."

"I do not 'prickle'."

John snorted. "Tell that to your aura."

Footsteps in the hall interrupted any further magical discussion as Henry reappeared carrying three torches. "Will these be okay?" he asked, looking up from testing the smallest's beam against his palm.

"Those will do," Sherlock said, holding out his hand.

Henry handed the detective a flashlight and then offered one to John. John shook his head. "Ta, but no – I've got kinda scary-good night vision. Torch'll just mess it up."

Henry shrugged and sat the odd torch out on the counter, then grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair at the breakfast table. "You sure about this?" he asked Sherlock.

"Absolutely," Sherlock replied with his very best fake smile.

Reluctantly, Henry gathered his coat and led them out into the night, choosing a path that paralleled the flow of the leyline that ran through his yard.

John allowed them to get several yards ahead of himself to enforce the small lie he'd told Henry – flashlight beams had no actual effect on his othersight, but with the painkillers screwing with his control over said sense, he simply didn't need an additional light source; the various levels of magical output of the surrounding area was more than enough for him to navigate safely. He split his attention between following Sherlock and Henry into the forest surrounding the Hollow and attempting to figure out why the local leyline system didn't like him. He stretched out a small thread of his own magic and tentatively connected with the 'line; not its avatar, which was following him with the same 'get out now' presence with which it had been 'staring' at him, but the 'line itself.

The instant he touched the line, a jolt of magical energy flooded back through the connection, making him feel like he'd suddenly been dipped in rancid pond water whilst being electrocuted. John stopped in his tracks and waited for an intense neon green flare to fade from his eyes – it was very much like waiting for a camera flash afterimage to go away – and for the high-pitched tinnitus-esque white noise to wash out of his ears. Sadly, he could do little about the feeling of phantom ants creeping across his skin, nor about the flavor/stench lingering at the back of his throat. "Why?" he muttered to the local magic. "Why do you want me to leave? You've no other mages in the immediate vicinity – I can tell. So why do you not want me here?"

His only reply was an intense emotional burst from the magic of concentrated distaste before the leyline writhed out of his grasp.

John let go of the wrong-feeling leyline, manipulated his own aura to 'scour' around himself, and then took a long breath and let it out slowly. "Yeah, that wasn't particularly helpful." He sighed, then looked in the direction Sherlock and Henry had been headed, only to find that they had already disappeared into the forest's underbrush. "Damn it. How is it that the guy who can tell that I had an egg sandwich for breakfast by the way I buttoned my cuffs can't notice when I'm no longer shadowing him?"

He shook his head and attempted to filter out the 'magical noise', hoping to pick up on the trail his friend's aura would have left. It didn't work. "So much for that idea," he grumbled, then simply began walking in the direction he'd seen them go. He took three steps, then halted again as a physical light caught his attention. It was flashing intermittently off in the distance. John watched it for a moment. "Is that Morse?"

He retrieved his notepad and pen without looking away from the flashing light and scribbled down the letters it was spelling out. A moment later, the flashing stopped. He looked down and read, "U, M, Q, R, A." He squinted at the letters on his notepad. "Umqra? No, that's not a word. Doesn't even sound like it could be a word." Mentally, he tried rearranging the letters, much like he did any time he utilized his Scrabble tiles to answer a question. "Only way those make any sense at all is 'rum QA', which actually doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And why would whoever it is be sending an anagram, Watson? On what planet does that make sense? Okay, not an anagram." He tucked the notebook back into his pocket. "Think about it later. For now there's really only one relevant question: Where the hell did Sherlock disappear to?"

He resumed walking in the direction Henry had been leading Sherlock. He'd managed half a dozen steps before a gravelly howl split the night, overpowering the fox-screams, night-birds, and cricket symphony for a solid five seconds or so. John halted again and closed his eyes. The magical resonance which typically manifested itself within John as visual glowing shifted slightly, colors becoming more pure and the entirety taking on a variety of barely-audible noise ranging from the faint bass hum of the grass beneath his feet to a high-pitched oscillating warble of the moss on the trees, overlaid with a thousand microscopic variations in temperature and humidity and pressure, and intertwined with a million new scents which didn't normally reside within the Devon countryside, including the clear tones of vanilla wafting from the oak trees and the more intense, sharp scent of mentholatum drifting off the wings of moths. Even though he now had to deal with more sensory input than was usual, closing his eyes also managed to focus his ears to the point wherein he actually had a slim chance of triangulating the direction from which the howl had originated.

Or that was the theory.

Instead, the sheer amount of magical interference attempting to manifest through means other than his visual processing centers managed to drown out where, precisely, the howl had come from.

"So much for that idea," John reiterated, then opened his eyes. Immediately, the additional sounds and scents and flavors and so forth shifted back to being primarily visual. He steadied his grip on his cane and once more stepped forwards. "Sherlock!" he called out, hoping that the others hadn't managed to get too far ahead of him.

Almost as though it were answering him, a second howl split the air. Instead of attempting to locate its source, John quickly checked in with his knee. It informed him that if he wanted to run, that was fine, but he'd definitely pay for it later. John nodded to himself and broke into a sprint.

With every jarring step, it felt as though his knee was going to explode. It sent stabbing throbs of lightning down to his big toe and up to his hip, where it then lanced across his back to ignite a steady, burning throb in his scarred shoulder – but he pressed onwards. After about ten yards, the leyline veered sharply off to the right, leaving the disapproving Grimpen avatar behind. "Sherlock!" John shouted.

A heartbeat later, the dancing beams from a pair of torches began to flicker in and among the trees. John slowed, much to his knee's relief, and altered his course slightly to intercept his friend and their client. "Did you hear that?" he asked, a little out of breath.

Sherlock barely even glanced at John before pushing past him, intent on exiting the forest. Henry sounded both terrified and vindicated as he said, "We saw it. We saw it."

"No," Sherlock argued, "I didn't see anything."

"What?" Henry asked, confused. "What are you talking about?"

"I. Didn't. See. Anything," Sherlock repeated, over-enunciating, then picked up his pace in order to leave the forest that much quicker.

John held his tongue. He could tell that something had managed to spook Sherlock – the man's aura, normally a coruscating cloud of golden, teal, and green specks that drifted out to approximately eight or ten inches from his body, had gone into protective, self-defense mode. The green portion had constricted to hover just above his skin, with the teal congregating in centimeter-thick 'shields' over his eyes, pulse-points, and throat, with the golden part forming defensive spikes at semi-regular intervals that reached out nearly a full meter from his body. That, John thought, is way beyond 'prickly'. He looks like a cartoon porcupine that's gotten electrocuted. What the devil did he see?

By the time they exited the forest, Sherlock's mile-long legs and ground-eating pace had gotten him far enough ahead of John and Henry that John had lost track of his friend. Henry kept muttering about how Sherlock had to have seen the hound, since he'd seen it himself. John paid him little mind, instead focusing on ensuring that he wouldn't lose his footing. As they arrived back at Henry's house, John noticed that the Land Rover had disappeared. "I'm gonna bloody kill him," John grumbled to himself as he followed Henry up the path to his house.

"Look," Henry was saying, not noticing the flash of anger from John, "he must have seen it! I saw it; he must have. He must have. I can't…" Henry unlocked his front door and finally landed his gaze on John. "Why?" he asked. "Why? Why would he say that?"

John nudged Henry to get him inside. "It– It– It was there," Henry stumbled over the words. "It was."

John maneuvered Henry to the sofa. "Henry, I need you to sit down. Try to relax, please," John said.

"I'm okay," Henry said, looking up at John. "I'm okay."

"No, you're not," John argued. "You've had a pretty bad scare. And that is why Sherlock said he hadn't seen anything. It's nothing personal, mind – he just doesn't do all that well with things he can't weigh and measure, and emotions top the list. Particularly emotions that surface when he's managed to prove himself wrong. He'd convinced himself that this hound of yours couldn't possibly exist, so of course he's gonna be a little freaked out that it isn't just the manifestation of a delusional mind." John rummaged in his jacket pockets for a moment. He managed to come up with a small travel-sized bottle of ibuprofen and his healing charm. That'll do.

Henry smiled. "This is good news, John," he said, unwinding his scarf from around his neck. "It's– It's good. I'm not crazy. There is a hound. There– There is. And Sherlock… he saw it, too. No matter what he said, he saw it."

"Of course he did," John assured him. "Listen, I'm gonna give you something to help you sleep, all right?"

Henry nodded. "That's fine."

John surreptitiously slid his mistletoe ring into place on his hand and then gave Henry two ibuprofen and the bottle of water that had been sitting on a side table. "There you go," he said. Henry downed the pills without even looking at them. "Now, let's get your coat off. Those should kick in pretty quickly."

John helped Henry off with his jacket, zapping the man with mild taps of his healing magic while he did so. Henry was slumped and snoring on the sofa by the time his coat was fully off. John lingered long enough to remove Henry's shoes and prop him more fully on the couch before leaving.

He pulled the front door latched behind him, then stared out at the night. Even with his ability of being able to see/sense all the life present, the night felt both serene and vaguely sinister – though that last bit might have had more to do with the local leylines' avid dislike of him than anything else. John looked up at the sky for a moment. "Gonna hafta walk," he grumbled to his knee. It ached in reply, the sharp, stabbing pain it usually screamed out nicely dulled by a haze of synthetic opiates. His right shoulder was also murmuring in complaint – it had grown unused to the additional strain of cane-duty – as was his bullet-scarred left, but John barely noticed either voice, drowned as they were by the louder grievances from his knee. He let out a long sigh, then set off across the landscape, heading towards the small cluster of sodium-vapor streetlights of Grimpen.

By the time he arrived at the Cross Keys Inn, he was more than ready to call it a night. Unfortunately, he knew he wouldn't be best pleased with himself if he didn't at least try to ensure Sherlock was alright. John clumped his way into the inn, steadfastly attempting to ignore the presence of the Grimpen avatar that was still following him and staring at him with an extremely strong 'get out of my territory' glare. Pausing in the pub, he closed his eyes and reached out with his othersight. Sherlock's presence was – thankfully – on the ground floor, in the restaurant, though his aura was still locked into defense-mode.

John made his way to where his friend sat in a brown leather wingback chair, facing the stone fireplace in the restaurant. He eased himself down onto the matching chair next to Sherlock, then took a good long look at his friend and flatmate. Beneath the spikes of his aura, Sherlock was staring into the flames of the fire, his eyes flat and glassy, his skin slightly more pale than normal. He had his hands steepled in front of his mouth in his typical 'thinking' pose, but John'd lay even money that he wasn't doing much actual thinking. "Well," John said to break the silence. "Henry's in a pretty bad way. He's manic, totally convinced there's some mutant super-dog roaming the moors." Sherlock's eyes flicked over to him, then returned to the fire. "There isn't, though. Ignoring the whole fact that if there'd been something weird out there, I'd have noticed it – if people knew how to make a mutant super-dog, we'd bloody well know about it. It'd be for sale. I mean, that's how it works." Sherlock clasped his fingers together and took a couple of deep, measured breaths. "Well," John amended, "maybe not for sale, but we'd definitely know. After all, they couldn't wait to brag about it back when they cloned that sheep. It was in all the journals immediately. Hell, it even made the evening news! So if someone bred some specialized breed of dog through genetic manipulation, it'd be known. Just like any time a zoo winds up with a liger or zonkey. Or that sea life attraction in Hawaii that has a wolphin. Weird stuff like that's always news."

Sherlock took another measured breath, letting it out through his nose. John abruptly changed the topic – he was getting absolutely nowhere in calming Sherlock down with reason, so he figured a distraction might prove useful. "Listen, when we were out on the moor, I saw someone signaling. Morse. At least, I think it's Morse, though it doesn't make much sense." He dug out his notebook. "U. M. Q. R. A. That mean anything to you?"

Sherlock blinked rapidly, then took another deep breath through his nose. He was still staring at the fire as though it contained the secrets to the universe and his aura was still wildly spiked in all directions. John returned his notebook to its place and spun a tendril of his own aura out to attempt to soothe his friend's frazzled nerves. "So, okay. What have we got? We know there's footprints, 'cause Henry found them, so did the tour guide bloke – but I still maintain they could've been from any of the larger dog breeds out there. We all heard something. Henry's adamant that he saw something. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, though – no traces whatsoever of anything I've never sensed before, at least, so I highly doubt that whatever this is is at all related to my sideline." John let out a small sigh. "Maybe we ought to look for whoever's got a big dog, because I can't for the life of me imagine it could be anything but a big dog. Perhaps one gone feral, but still just a dog." He blinked and added, "Maybe a wolf-dog at a stretch," as an afterthought.

"Henry's right," Sherlock finally said something. John checked Sherlock's aura to see that the golden spikes had shortened to about half the length they'd been.

"What?" John prompted, hoping that additional conversation might actually get his friend calmed down.

"I saw it, too," Sherlock admitted, a faint tremor shaking his words.

John directed his aura to continue smoothing Sherlock's and repeated, "What?"

"I saw it, too, John," Sherlock said again, this time it came out a little steadier than before.

"Just a minute – you saw what, exactly?" he leaned forwards, his hands folded over the handle of his cane.

Sherlock finally looked away from the fire and at John. His expression was one John had never before seen on his face – fear and anger and something that lingered rather close to the self-loathing end of the emotional spectrum. "A hound, out there in the Hollow," he said through gritted teeth. "A gigantic hound." He snapped his eyes back to the fire burning cheerily in the grate.

One of John's eyebrows crept a little closer to his hair line. "Look, Sherlock – we've got to be rational about this, okay? Let's just stick to what we know. Stick to the facts."

"Once you've ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true," Sherlock muttered, his words falling from his mouth alarmingly fast, yet still crystal-clear. Though he wasn't quite as wound-up as he'd been before John had arrived, his aura was still locked in self-defense mode. Were it not for the dozen or so other people present in the restaurant, John would have utilized his mistletoe ring to a similar effect on Sherlock as he'd used on Henry. Unfortunately, that simply wasn't an option at the moment; having Sherlock suddenly pass out would undoubtedly wind up causing alarm among the other customers and someone would insist on calling for an ambulance. Sherlock reached out for a tumbler of liquid the distinct golden color of really good whiskey. He stared at the trembling glass for a moment, then said, "Look at me. I'm afraid, John. Afraid," the word was said with the same level of distaste that most people reserved for descriptions of maggoty road-kill. "Always been able to keep myself distant," he said, taking a drink from the glass. "Divorce myself from feelings," he took another drink, and again, the word was said with a level of disgust that bordered on the absurd. "But look," he held up the glass, showing how it was still shaking, amplifying the tremors coursing through his hands, "body's betraying me. Interesting, yes?" He slammed the glass back on the side table while spitting, "Emotions," like an epithet. "The grit on the lens. The fly in the ointment."

"Yeah, all right, Spock, just take it easy," John said. "You've been pretty wired lately – you know you have. I think you've just gone out there and got yourself a bit worked up."

"'Worked up'?" Sherlock mocked.

John ignored it. "It was dark. You had Henry's descriptions of what he'd seen running through your head, coupled with that rather melodramatic tale from that tour guide kid… It's only natural that you managed to freak yourself out a bit," he let out a small, self-depreciating grin. "Just like my first tour in Afghanistan. Heard all these stories, most of which had been exaggerated all out of proportion, about camel spiders, so by the time I saw one in the flesh, I'd been half-expecting to see something out of a B-level horror flick. Damn thing had gotten into the canteen. When I heard about it, I just had to go see. Just about laughed my damn arse off when I got there. This wicked-looking tarantula was sitting in the middle of the floor, looking a little confused and forlorn and frightened, while eight career soldiers had retreated to sitting on the tables – one was even crying rather hysterically at the time. Sure, it was big for a spider, but it wasn't that big! Only about sixteen or seventeen centimeters across, not even half the size of the giant bird-eating spider I saw as a kid at the London Zoo. But it had all these urban legends surrounding it that made everyone scared of it." He chuckled. "Managed one helluva reputation-boost when I picked it up and took it outside. They can, and do, bite, but I had my additional abilities to pull on and it's not at all hard to soothe something so simple-minded." Quite unlike a certain consulting detective I know.

"As fascinating as your little anecdote is," Sherlock sarcastically spat, "it holds no bearing on the situation. There is nothing wrong with me."

"I never said there was," John said, still directing his aura to attempt to smooth out Sherlock's.

The other man's aura surged, then 'exploded' back to an approximation of its regular self, the individual particles of green, teal, and gold whipping about him in a whirlwind of anger. "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!" the detective shouted, glaring at John. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" Sherlock glanced around the room, seeing that everyone had paused and was staring at him. He took a quick breath. "You want me to prove it, yes?" he continued in a more location-friendly tone of voice, though it was still clearly angry in tone. "We're looking for a dog, yes? A great big dog – that's your brilliant theory? Cherchez le chien. Good. Excellent. Yes, where shall we start?" John was grateful that Sherlock had managed to push himself past his fear, but was disappointed that he'd strolled directly into angry scorn. "How about them?" Sherlock flung a pointed finger in the direction of an elderly woman seated across a table from a middle-aged man in a jumper even John wouldn't have worn in public. "The sentimental widow and her son, the unemployed fisherman. The answer's yes. She's got a West Highland terrier called Whiskey. Not exactly what we're looking for."

"Oh, for god's sake, Sherlock –"

"Look at the jumper he's wearing – hardly worn," Sherlock cut off John's concern before it could really get going. "He's clearly uncomfortable in it. Maybe it's because of the material, more likely the hideous pattern, suggesting it's a present, probably Christmas. So, he wants into his mother's good books. Why? Almost certainly money. He's treating her to a meal, but his own portion is small. That means he wants to impress her, but he's trying to economize on his own food."

"I don't doubt it," John said, infusing his aura with a light dusting of magic. Now that he'd managed to get Sherlock out of self-defense mode, he needed to shift that giant brain around to its typical level of analytical reasoning. "But dissecting the personal lives of random strangers isn't likely to solve this case, now is it?"

Sherlock continued as though John hadn't said a word. "Small plate, starter. He's practically licked it clean and she's nearly finished her pavlova. If she'd treated him, he'd have had as much as he wanted. He's hungry all right, and not well off – you can tell that by the state of his cuffs and shoes." Sherlock shifted slightly and then mimicked John's voice, "'How d'you know she's his mother?'" He returned to his regular voice and rapid-fire deductions, "Who else would give him a Christmas present like that? Well, it could be an aunt or elder sister, but mother's more likely. Now, he was a fisherman. Scarring pattern on his hands is very distinctive – fish hooks. They're all quite old now, which suggests he's been unemployed for some time. Not much industry in this part of the world, so he's turned to his widowed mother for help. 'Widowed?'" he again mimicked John, then continued normally. "Yes, obviously. She's got a man's wedding ring on a chain around her neck – clearly her late husband's and too big for her finger. She's well-dressed, but her jewelry's cheap. She could afford better, but she's kept it – it's sentimental. Now, the dog: tiny little hairs all over the leg from where it gets a little bit too friendly, but no hairs above the knees, suggesting it's a small dog, probably a terrier. In fact it is – a West Highland terrier called Whiskey. 'How the hell do you know that, Sherlock?'," he mimicked John for the third time. "'Cause she was on the same train as us and I heard her calling its name and that's not cheating, that's listening. I use my senses, John, unlike some people, so you see – I am fine. In fact I've never been better so just leave. Me. Alone."

"Yeah," John said, skepticism blatant in his voice. "You're just peachy, aren't you? Panic must be a normal mode of operation for you, because otherwise you're lying through your teeth – and speaking of, you must've eaten an Altoid before I got here, so that'd explain the peppermint pouring off of you. Either that or you're lying. And you've no cause to be lying, not to me, and particularly not to yourself." Sherlock just glared at him. "Fine. Why listen to me? I'm just your friend."

"I don't have friends," Sherlock spat.

John jerked his aura back from Sherlock's at that. "Nah," he said, more than just a little hurt at the proclamation. "I wonder why?" He pushed himself to his feet and left Sherlock to calm down on his own. "Bloody prat, so caught up in the fact that the almighty Sherlock freakin' Holmes actually managed to get scared that he couldn't reason his way out of a wet paper bag right now," he muttered to himself, not seeing the sidelong glances from a couple of people he passed on his way out the inn's back door.

The ever-present Grimpen avatar followed him outside and stood there, 'glaring' at him. John leaned against the stone of the building and scowled right back at it. "Wish you'd bloody tell me what your problem is. This watching me is getting on my nerves right proper."

The avatar's prickly presence rippled and an intense wave of hatred washed over John, coupled with a powerful sense of 'go away'. "Be happy to," he growled at it, "but we gotta finish this case first. Which we'd do a mite faster if you'd quit bloody staring at me."

The avatar quivered, then doubled in size. John could tell it was working it's way up to an attack – something he'd only ever heard about, and only that in the oldest of Ajay's collection of journals. Acting on instinct, John flung out a bolt of his own magic. It was similar to a levinbolt, only it wouldn't affect anything living. The avatar batted it out of the air like a pesky mosquito, then lashed out with one of its tentacle-like tendrils. It snapped across the back of John's right hand, raising a combined welt and burn in its wake. John hissed and dropped his cane.

"Oh, you fucking shite," he said, then physically reached out with both hands and his magic. He wrapped his magic around two of the larger tentacles on either side of the avatar and pulled. Sweat popped out on his forehead as he wrestled with the wild magic. After what felt like ages, but in reality was only a couple of seconds, the avatar split down the middle with a spectral ripping noise that sounded similar to the noise made when a cook pulled the skin off of a raw chicken. He then 'spun' the two halves into rope-like patterns and tied them into a complicated knot.

Once finished, he let go of the leyline and left it twitching in the grass of the inn's garden. He failed to notice the severe burns on the palms of either hand until he stooped to pick up his cane. His hands were bright red, easily seen even in the limited light available, with large blisters popping up on the pads of his fingertips and the fleshy bits of his palms. They looked like they should be excruciating, but all he could feel was the residual tingly thrum of unfamiliar magic. He rummaged in his satchel for a moment before coming up with some gauze from the medical bits he carried about, then carefully wrapped his right hand. It actually hurt, from the fire-brand lash the avatar had managed, but the rest of it was as numb as his left. Wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing? He taped off the loose end of the gauze, then checked the contents of his bag again. Last of the gauze. Gonna need to restock. Once he'd finished clumsily wrapping the worst of the blisters on his left hand, he picked up his cane. Glaring at the still-twitching ruined avatar, he pushed off the inn's wall and began walking across the garden.

Halfway to a small park bench nestled among some sort of flowery shrubs, he noticed the blinking light from earlier was back. He altered his course and walked towards it. The adrenaline from his anger and the short battle with the leyline, coupled with the remaining oxycodone in his system kept most of the pain from his knee from registering.

Roughly five minutes later, he crested the hillside to find several parked cars, most with steamed-over windows. The flashing lights were coming from a red Peugeot that was rocking slightly on its springs while a couple spoke quietly within. As John realized what he was seeing, he sighed, then turned around and began the trek back to the inn. "Fan-bloody-tastic," he muttered. "So, weird message? Not so much."

His phone chimed a text-alert. He thought briefly of ignoring it, then decided not to – it might be his sister or Mary or Sarah or Mels. He was disappointed.

Henry's therapist currently in Cross Keys pub.
S

"So what?" John said, then typed it as his reply. A heartbeat later, his phone chimed again.

Interview her?
S

He got halfway through his reply of Interview her yourself, when he managed to accidentally place the tip of his cane in a small hole in the ground. The sudden change in his stability caused him to trip, which made him lose his grip on his phone and the instinctual reach to break his fall caused several of the blisters on both of his hands to rupture painfully. To top it all off, he landed awkwardly on his injured knee, which let out a shriek of agony that shattered through the oxycodone he'd taken.

Cold sweat broke out all over his body, and for a moment, John thought he'd be sick. He closed his eyes and waited for the queasiness to pass, then rolled over and sprawled on his side, clutching both hands to his chest and his injured knee pulled up into a semi-fetal position. He forced himself to take several deep, even breaths. Eventually, the pain receded to something a bit more bearable, though still agonizing. He rolled himself into an upright position and spotted his mobile. The pain in his left hand sharpened intensely as he picked it up and returned it to his pocket, not bothering to finish the text to Sherlock.

Shaking, he simply sat in the grass for a bit and waited for the world to quit its nauseating rocking around him. Once it was back on a somewhat even keel, he braced himself and grabbed his cane. He managed to get partially upright before his right leg gave out entirely. "Daga me ra wazbaisha," he mumbled through clenched teeth. "Fuckin' dislocated it again." He placed his hands on either side of his misaligned knee, but the slightest pressure on the blisters had him letting out a high-pitched whine more appropriate to a whistling kettle than a human throat. (2)

"Fuck!" He nearly shouted it. "No way in hell am I gonna reduce it on my own."

John looked at the lights of the inn that stood roughly a kilometer away and weighed his options. They were horribly few. "Can either wait here 'til someone notices, try to get a hold of Sherlock, or call 999 on my own. I really don't wanna wait out here all night. Calling emergency services just 'cause I can't get up would simply be mortifying. And I'm far too angry at Himself right now to want to see him, let alone need his help – and that's assuming I could even get him to answer his bloody mobile!" He took a deep breath and held it for several long seconds. As soon as he felt himself become lightheaded, he released it. "Nothing for it, then. Gonna hafta do this one myself."

He grit his teeth and retrieved the bottle of oxycodone from his pocket. It took him three tries to get the cap off, by the end of which he was panting harshly through his nose. He tipped the bottle onto his bandaged palm with a shaking hand. There were three tablets left. Closing his eyes, John mentally calculated the dose of one versus the half-life remaining of the last one he'd taken, then held the resulting number up against the burning agony of his hands and stabbing throb in his misaligned kneecap. He tipped two of the pills back into the bottle, then crunched the fifth pill between his teeth. The intensely bitter flavor helped to distract from the pain until it kicked in.

Once the opiate haze managed to dull the complaints of his traitorous flesh, John pulled himself into a sort of half-standing position. Even with the painkiller flooding his system, he was unable to straighten his right leg. So, leaning heavily on his cane, he managed one slow, agonizing step after the other.

His entire world narrowed to the cane in his hands, the ground directly in front of him, and the barely-muted throbbing that kept pace with his pulse.

By the time he reached the inn's garden, he felt like he'd just run two marathons back-to-back. He was shaking with exhaustion and the world felt like it was spinning off without him. He nearly didn't notice the pretty brunette perched on a picnic bench, smoking, until she spotted him and let out a low whistle. "Jesus, what happened to you?" she said, tossing her still-smoldering butt into the grass.

John closed his eyes and twisted his head in her direction, then opened them again. "D-dis-" his tongue felt thick and unwieldy. "Dislocated m'right patella. T-tripped. Landed badly."

Before he could catalog what was happening, the brunette had manhandled him over to a bench situated almost directly under the garden light. She knelt in front of him and gave him a tight smile. "I haven't done this since med school, but I think I remember how…" without warning, she popped the kneecap back into its normal position.

John couldn't stop himself – he let out a little shriek. However, painful though it was, most of the pain faded entirely once the bone was back where it belonged. He closed his eyes and took steady, measured breaths through his nose.

"You're not going to sick up on me, are you?"

"No. Don't think so, at any rate." He opened his eyes. The woman's smile was a touch more genuine now. "Thanks," he said. "Dr. John Watson," he offered her his hand.

She started to reach for it, "Dr. Louise Mortimer," only to halt on seeing the stained gauze. Not only had the blisters broken open, but the ones on his right palm had begun to bleed during his trek back to the inn, and there was a fine crust of dirt and grass stains overlaying everything else.

John glanced down and let out a mirthless little chuckle. "Yeah – it's been rather a spectacularly bad day."

"So I see," she said, standing. "I don't have much, but I do keep a first aid kit in my car. I'll be back in a mo." Before John could reply, she'd already ducked into the inn.

John let his gaze drift over to the still-knotted mass of leyline avatar twitching a few meters away. Instead of attempting to escape from its current predicament, waves of amusement seemed to be emanating from it. "Yeah, laugh it up, you da spi zo," he growled at it. (3)

"Pardon?" Dr. Mortimer's voice startled John.

"Nothing," John immediately said, wondering if it was the barely-muted pain from his injuries or the oxycodone that had skewed his time-sense all out of joint. "Just… Well, 'frustrated' is as good a word as any right now." He noticed that Dr. Mortimer was carrying a small blue duffle bag, not dissimilar to the ones he imagined people took with them to the gym, in addition to a standard first aid kit. "What's all this, then?"

"I ran into Nigel Hobbs – he's a paramedic with the local fire service. He keeps a bit more on hand than I do." She sat the duffle on the bench next to John.

"I'd imagine so, what with you being a therapist and all," John said.

Dr. Mortimer leveled a sharp look at him. "How did you know that?" she asked.

"Henry Knight mentioned you," John said as she took his right hand and unwound the soiled bandage. "He hired this detective I work with to look into his dad's death." He let out a hiss as the bandage pulled away from the abused skin beneath it.

"Sorry," she said, wincing in sympathy.

"Don't worry about it. Was my own damn fault."

"Can I ask…?"

John shrugged. "Just did something stupid, Dr. Mortimer. Don't particularly want to bandy about the details, especially not to a beautiful woman."

She let out a small giggle, then turned her attention to his left hand. "Call me Louise, please."

"John," he replied.

"Well," she said, gently working at the gauze, "you know what I do for a living. How about you? You don't have one of those useless degrees in underwater basket-weaving or some such, do you?"

John grit his teeth as she came to the last layer above the broken skin, but it wasn't as bad as the other one had been – fewer blisters had broken, and none had started bleeding yet. "No, not useless. Was a surgeon in the army up until September of 2010."

"Was?"

"Got shot," he said simply. Louise looked up at him, a little surprised. "Shoulder," he clarified, making a vague gesture to the area with his hand. "Did enough nerve damage to kill my career. Now I do a bit of locum work at a surgery in London, when I'm not chasing after my flatmate and keeping his sorry arse in one piece."

"Sounds like you keep busy," she commented, rummaging in the blue duffle. She came up with a chemical cold pack.

"That I most certainly do," John agreed wholeheartedly.

Louise squeezed the chem-pack to activate it, then took a closer look at John's knee. His jeans had torn when he'd fallen. She ripped the hole a little wider. "Nothing seems too awfully serious," she said, then grabbed an elastic bandage out of the duffle. She wrapped a layer around his knee through the gash in his jeans, then used the rest of it to secure the ice pack in place.

"I'll still need to have my doc take a look when I get back to London. Dislocated it before," John explained. "Combined with a starburst fracture of the patella. Dr. White will wanna MRI it to see if there's been any additional damage."

"I don't envy you if there is. My brother crashed his motorbike a couple of years ago and wound up needing his knee and ankle replaced. I wouldn't wish that on anyone." Louise returned to his hands and examined them a little more closely with the aid of a penlight.

"Yeah, that's all I'd need – another couple pounds of titanium in my skeleton."

"'Another couple pounds'?" Louise tore open a packet of alcohol swabs. "Sorry, this is gonna sting."

"Go for it," John replied. "Yeah. My left scapula was replaced when I was shot, and there's more than a dozen surgical pins holding adjoining bones together."

"Sheesh. What'd you get shot with, a bazooka?"

"Close," John said, wincing as she swabbed the broken blisters on his left hand. "An anti-tank gun." He could see her next question swimming up within her eyes and answered it before she could give it voice. "Was on my way with a squad to a little village that needed a doctor pretty badly. We got caught in an ambush. Otherwise, yes, the army tends to keep their surgeons well away from active combat. Unfortunately, the bad guys don't always follow the rules."

"I would imagine," she said, trading the swab for a tube of antiseptic cream, "that would be why they're called 'bad guys'."

"Likely so," John agreed.

They fell into a companionable silence for a few minutes; long enough for Louise to finish up rebandaging his hand. As she switched to his right, she glanced up at his face and asked, "So… The painkillers – they for your shoulder?"

John let out a startled chuckle. "You ever get tired of talking to people for a living, we could use you in the clinic."

She shrugged a little, tearing open the packaging for another alcohol swab. "I've treated my fair share of patients with both pain-management and addiction issues – I know the signs. And I don't think I'd do well with clinic-work; I can't stand sick people."

"That's an odd," John hissed as the swab came into contact with the bleeding blisters on his right palm, then continued, "odd opinion for a therapist."

It was Louise's turn to chuckle. "Not so odd. Mental illnesses rarely present with runny noses and projectile vomiting."

"'Rarely'? Something tells me I don't particularly want to know."

Louise switched over to the antibacterial cream. "Well, everyone gets the flu every now and then, don't they?"

"Indeed," John agreed.

She finished with the cream and began bandaging John's hand. "So… Henry told you about me?"

"In passing, just mentioned you were his therapist is all."

"And you're looking into his dad's disappearance?"

John nodded. "Yeah, though I was under the impression his dad had died."

"They never found Mr. Knight's body," she said, finishing with the bandage.

"So you don't believe he's dead?"

Louise gathered up the various wrappers and tucked them into a net pocket on the outside of her first aid kit. "Oh, I didn't say that." She resumed her perch on the picnic bench's tabletop.

"Then what do you mean?" John asked, lifting his injured leg up to rest on the bench.

She retrieved a battered pack of menthol lights from the pocket of her floral-print dress and lit one with a new plastic lighter that still had the price-tag on it. After taking a long drag, she answered, "Well, it's not commonly known, but the memories we carry with us out of childhood are nearly always invariably wrong in at least one detail if not conjured completely out of wholecloth. Nobody does it on purpose, it just happens and we don't yet know why. As to Henry in particular, I'm afraid all I could really say on the subject are those parts which are a matter of public record. Something happened the night of October twelfth, back in 1992. His dad was never seen again."

"Didn't Henry report that his dad had been killed to the police?"

Louise nodded and flicked ash from the end of her cigarette. "He did, but their investigation never turned up anything. To be quite honest, I'm not altogether certain they tried all that hard – even now, the Knight family has something of a reputation around here."

"Mr. Knight was some sort of conspiracy nutter, wasn't he?" John was pretty sure there was a better way to phrase that, but it was all he could do to keep some sort of brain-to-mouth filter in place. "Got fixated on Baskerville, what they might be doing there, and what have you."

"So the local story goes," Louise agreed. She glanced at her watch. "Eek. I gotta get this back to Nigel," she tossed her half-smoked cigarette under a nearby bush and grabbed the blue duffle. "You need any help getting inside?"

John shook his head. "Ta, but I'm good. Thanks for your help, by the way." Steeling himself, John rummaged in his satchel for a moment. He came up with his notebook and a pen.

"No problem," she replied with a smile. "If you change your mind…"

John nodded, "I doubt it, but I'll keep it in mind." He scribbled his mobile number on a sheet of paper and handed it to her. "Likewise, if you think of anything else about Henry's problem that you can share, gimme a call."

Louise borrowed his pen just long enough to provide her own number, then disappeared back into the inn, with a friendly 'good night'.

John sighed for what, he was sure, was approximately the billionth time since meeting Sherlock Holmes. He looked up at the sky, so much clearer than it ever was in the heart of London. "Could nearly reach up and pluck a few stars to take home with me," he mused, then shook his head and moved his gaze to the knotted mass of leyline. Waves of animosity drifted from the avatar. "Yeah, yeah, yeah – I know. If you've not sorted yourself out, I promise I'll untie you before I return home. Wish I knew what it was that I did before I tied you up that had you hating me on-sight." A single free tentacle of green energy waggled lethargically in his direction. John got the distinct impression that the avatar was flipping him off.

John ignored it and focused on cleaning off the handle of his cane. When it was a little less blood-crusted, he silently checked in with his hands and knee. They were all pleasantly numb. Not that it's going to last. I'm sure they'll start up screaming again the moment I move… but I can't stay out here all night.

He moved slowly, more like an arthritic old man twice his age than his normal self, and managed to pull himself through a spate of dizziness and into the inn's pub. The man behind the bar was neither the inn's owner nor the tiny cook he'd met on arriving in Grimpen, but a tall kid who was about twenty or so, with shaggy blonde hair that sported violently violet streaks in the fringe. John paused long enough to request a couple of bottles of water that he tucked into his satchel before beginning the long, arduous journey up the stairs to his room.

Both his right palm and his much-abused knee were singing loudly through the opiate haze by the time he arrived at his door, but the oxycodone was doing its job in making him simply not care. His pulse thudded along, providing a bass accompaniment to the pain-symphony. John closed the door behind him and slumped against it with naked relief. After taking a moment to simply breathe, he opened his eyes. The only sign of his mad flatmate was the man's suitcase resting on the foot of the bed. John ignored it as he headed to the only good thing about having been given the inn's last available room – the en suite bathroom, complete with an antique cast-iron bathtub coated with worn white enamel.

John sat his satchel in the sink, then turned on the hot water tap to set the tub to filling while he carefully divested himself of his jacket, jumper, and flannel shirt. As the tub filled and the room steamed up, John hobbled back into the main room, flung the jacket across the back of a wooden chair snugged against the room's desk, and then rummaged in his suitcase. With clean boxers, his old blue-and-cream striped t-shirt, and a pair of flannel pajama pants (which had once been black, but had long since been washed to a fuzzy, faded grey) in hand, he returned to the bath. A gurgling, sucking noise told him the water had reached the overflow vent up under the spigot, and so he shut the water off, then stripped out of his vest and boots. The ripped jeans were sighed over, but kept, and his dirty socks and underwear joined the small pile behind the bath door.

Focusing on his satchel, he removed the water bottles he'd purchased from the bar and drained half of one in a single go, then sat the bottle on the back of the toilet, seating himself on its lid. Next, he sorted through the magical contents of his bag, smiling to himself when he located three of the five items he'd hoped he had with him: a ziplock packet of dried arnica, a similar baggie of comfrey root, and a small dropper-bottle of lavender essential oil. John added half of each baggie of herbal components to his bathwater, then carefully unwrapped his knee. The chemical icepack had warmed to merely 'cool' and so he tossed it in the trashcan under the sink. The elastic bandage he re-rolled for later use. Fumbling with the buckle, he then removed his wristwatch and sat it next to the water bottles.

"Wish I had some Epsom salts with me," he muttered, inspecting his black-and-blue knee. Clumsily, he managed to undo the bottle of lavender oil's top, then working drop-by-drop, he slowly worked ten drops of the oil into the bruise that used to be his right knee, using his unbandaged wrists and the insides of his forearms to massage the oil into his skin. He checked the tub as he finished up – it looked like the world's largest cup of weak green tea. Nodding, he returned the dropper to the bottle of oil. "Lucky thing I had you with me," he said to the bottle. "But, then again, hope springs eternal." After replacing the packets of herbals and the vial in his satchel, John levered himself up and slowly eased into the steaming contents of the tub. "Even though I've only seen one woman out here that I'd be even remotely interested in," he concluded the thought with a hiss of air through his teeth as hot water hit bits of him that weren't quite expecting the change of temperature. He spared a slightly guilty moment of thought for his girlfriend back in London, but… I really don't think that's going anywhere. Hellfire, last time I slept at her place, I slept on her lilo. Not exactly what I'd been aiming for.

The hot water felt heavenly on his stiff and sore muscles. Bit by bit, he slid down in the tub until the water was lapping at his chin, with his bandaged hands kept dry by hooking his wrists over the rim of the tub. "Only good part about being short," he mumbled, feeling knots he hadn't even known he'd had loosening. "I can fit in a tub without bits of me sticking out."

Heat, herbs, and the blissful hypnotic haze of his oxycodone soon had him taking longer and longer blinks until finally sleep slipped up on him, though he didn't realize it until he found himself wandering down Baker Street.

It looked much like it had after Moriarty's explosive invitation to Sherlock at the beginning of the five pips 'game' – rubble strewn about, the air thick with smoke and dust. The only real difference was that it was, presumably, daytime, though there were no other people around; diffuse, yet over-bright light illuminated the street, much like sunlight as filtered through thick fog. John leaned against the remains of a ruined taxi and stretched his othersight. It was more than just Baker Street – his dream self couldn't find another single person as far as he could sense. The utter stillness was unnerving.

Despite the fact that some part of him knew this was a dream, he couldn't help himself as panic began creeping up on him. He reached for the leyline only to find that it had vanished. No trace of it remained.

The scream of a falcon split the air. John startled and spun around in time to watch an impeccable example of a peregrine land with precise precision on a large chunk of destroyed brickwork resting atop the ruined taxi's roof. "What's going on?" he asked, more to himself than to the falcon.

The falcon replied in Sherlock's voice, "As ever, John, you see yet fail to observe." It took off in a muffled explosion of feathers before John could reply. Eerie quiet quickly erased any sign that the falcon had ever been there; all John could hear was his own pulse hammering in his ears.

Mrs. Hudson's voice called out from the direction of 221B's battered door. "Would you just look at this mess! I'm not your housekeeper, you know!"

"Mrs. Hudson!" John shouted into the stillness, hurriedly picking his way around the rubble. "Where are you?"

"Oh, don't mind me," came the reply as he arrived at the flat's front door. A peacock butterfly slowly flapped its wings while clinging to the knocker. It sighed. "All the marks on my table – and the noise! Screeching violin at half past one in the morning! Bloody specimens in my fridge! Imagine – keeping bodies where there's food!"

"Mrs. Hudson?" John asked, peering at the butterfly.

"It's okay, John," she said, her voice oddly tinged with sadness, and then flapped off into the bright gloom shrouding the ruins of Baker Street.

"Evening, Mrs. Hudson," Lestrade's voice sounded from John's right as the butterfly faded from sight. John looked, but didn't see anything on first glance. "Leave it, John," he said, and finally John managed to pick out the shape of a small chameleon lounging on the remains of one of Speedy's outdoor tables.

"Leave what?" John asked, confusion overtaking the disturbing reality of a dream wherein magic seemed to have abandoned London.

"Don't try to interfere, or I shall arrest you, too!" the chameleon growled the order, then scuttled off, disappearing under a pile of bricks.

A rattling noise dragged his attention back to the ruined taxi. He half-expected to see the falcon again, but was surprised to find a savannah cat instead. She wore a pastel pink collar. She groomed a bit of fur to the sound of the falcon's scream, but was unperturbed as it landed next to her. "What do you need?" the cat asked in Molly Hooper's voice.

The falcon cautiously stepped closer to her. "If I wasn't everything that you think I am," Sherlock's voice seemed oddly fitting coming from the bird of prey, "everything that I think I am, would you still want to help me?" The bird ended up standing just in front of the large cat, his head ducked slightly towards his breast in a strangely submissive, pleading posture.

The cat crouched down and looked the falcon directly in the eyes. "What do you need?" Molly's voice repeated, carrying an overtone of stubborn determination.

The falcon jumped up and wrapped his talons around her collar. "You," replied Sherlock.

The cat, with her falcon passenger, sprinted off, leaving John with more questions than he knew how to voice. Even if he knew where to start, he didn't get the chance. "Oh, Johnny," Mary's voice sighed through the sunlit haze of smoke and dust. "You're going to drive yourself mad if you keep on like this, you know. He's gone. You know it – you saw it with your own two eyes!"

A giant schnauzer ambled out of the haze, a rhesus macaque riding on its back. The dog paused next to John long enough to stare dolefully at him while the macaque hastily climbed his legs and settled on his shoulder. The dog then continued on its way. The macaque leaned close to John's ear and whispered in Ajay's voice, "I normally wouldn't deny the evidence, but I think you might be right about this one, kiddo. Things just aren't adding up the way they should. Granted, you've got some of the worst luck I've ever heard of when it comes to necromancy, but to have turned up a giant goose-egg on this? You, of all people? Keep trying, John – and I'll look through my collection, see if I can't find something a bit more reliable than what you've been using." With that, the monkey swung himself off of John and quickly vanished back into the haze.

"Wait! Ajay! What the hell is going on!" John shouted, sprinting after the monkey. He made it to the corner of Marylebone before giving up. He stood there, staring at more destruction, for quite a while – how long, exactly, he wasn't sure – before a strange grinding noise registered on his mind. He strained his ears to pinpoint the direction it was coming from, then cast his eyes about for a decent hiding place.

He settled for hiding behind the crushed remains of a city bus and waited. Somehow, he doubted this was another familiar voice waiting to emanate from an animal source. The grinding noise came closer and closer and held the distinctive tones of machinery. He felt small pebbles rattle down from atop the bus as it approached.

"Get in the car, Dr. Watson," Mycroft's voice was loud and larger than life, filtered through what seemed to be a PA system, though it maintained the man's air of disinterested politeness. The grinding, scraping noise had ceased, but an underlying growl of an engine continued. John looked around and spotted a pristine CCTV camera atop a tall pole that he knew didn't exist in the real world; fastened next to the camera was an antique WWII air raid siren. A small red light glowed in the camera's lower right corner. Slowly, John stepped away from the bus. The camera followed his movement.

One of Mycroft's Non-Descript Vehicles™ had parked itself next to the crushed bus, only this particular example could, in no way, be considered non-descript. It had treads like a tank and sported a pointed dozer-blade in lieu of a front bumper. The grinding noises had been the sounds of the blade pushing debris out of the vehicle's way.

The rear passenger door opened by itself and between one heartbeat and the next, John found himself seated within the saloon-cum-tank. From the inside, it was impossible to notice that there was anything at all odd about this particular automobile. The only real difference between this car and the ones he'd ridden in before was the addition of a tinted glass partition, much like the ones found in limousines, that kept him from being able to see the driver.

"Where are we going?" John asked, not really expecting an answer.

And he wasn't disappointed. The drive, as impossible to guess at the duration as had been his wait behind the bus, was concluded in silence. As the door opened – again, on its own – Mycroft's voice came through the car's speakers in a rough approximation of a whisper. "I'm sorry," he said. "Tell him, would you?" He sounded honestly apologetic, and there were threads of guilt and sorrow wound around the words. It was more honest emotion than John had ever before heard from Mycroft.

"Tell who?" John asked, but the car dissolved from around him before he could finish the question.

Looking around, he found that the carnage that had been prevalent in his London dreamscape hadn't followed him to… Wherever it is that I am now. It looked vaguely familiar, but it took him longer than he would have liked to recognize it as the Grimpen cemetery. "Although, since I've only really noticed it in passing, I suppose it's not that big a deal," he muttered. He pulled his jacket a little tighter around himself and waited for the next inexplicable voice to appear.

When it didn't, his feet took it on themselves to begin walking.

They followed a small path through the tombstones, winding among the dead with respectful silence. John looked down, watching his feet take one step after another – much like he had during his painful journey back to the inn, only this time marveling at the lack of agony. As his feet halted, John finally pried his gaze from the ground and looked up.

He was standing directly in front of a shiny black headstone. No wear at all obscured the white letters and a lack of weathering had the rest of the stone polished to a mirror-finish.

The name on the stone read Sherlock Holmes.

It's all because of you.

The words echoed in his head even after he'd startled awake to cold bathwater and the thick, oily taste of chlorophyll and moss and dirt heavy in his mouth. Gooseflesh prickled its way across every spare patch of skin he possessed while his right knee readied itself to begin screaming at him for his clumsiness the moment he made any demands of it at all. The dream itself faded, though the words lingered.

Shivering, both with the chill of the water and with the aching remnants of his dream, John blindly groped with his left foot to unplug the drain. As the water level lowered, John braced himself and then grit his teeth as he pulled himself out of the tub. His knee began its protestations, joining in on the chorus in his hands. It didn't hurt quite as bad as being shot, but it was a close second. Hard to say which hurts more, the backlash from that first run-in with Moran or this.

He sat on the toilet lid, feeling like the two-foot distance from the edge of the tub had been part of a triathlon. Swimming, running, and hurdles. A grim smile tugged on the edges of his face before being chased away by more pressing concerns. He gave himself a quick rubdown with one of the inn's towels, then reached for his satchel. Luckily, he knew that the items he now wanted were secured within its depths.

John retrieved the fist-sized piece of obsidian from a corner of the bag, then used his cane to hook his jeans so he could 'rescue' his pocket-clutter – including his penknife. The coins and assorted bits of paper he sat next to the half-empty water bottle behind him. Holding the obsidian loosely in his right hand, he used the handle of his penknife to chip a small flake off the stone. The knife joined his change and such while the obsidian was returned to its place in the satchel. "Normally, I'd do this to one of my fingers, but they hurt too much right now," he said, unaware his thoughts were being vocalized. He took the sharp shard of obsidian, a part of the back of his mind idly grateful for the presence of the bandages around his left hand that protected his fingertips from its edges, then selected a spot on his right arm that would bleed well enough for what he had in mind without cutting into a vein.

The slight sting of parting skin was barely noticeable among the louder protestations from his hands and knee. He waited for several drops of blood to well up from the small cut – it wasn't even an inch long – before collecting them on the point of the obsidian blade. "Too bad I can't heal myself," he mused, reaching for the elastic bandage he'd rolled and sat aside before his bath. "It would make this so much easier…"

He closed his eyes and reached for his magic. "Sun-warmed rock on a summer's day," he said, drawing the bloody point of his obsidian 'pen' along the coiled edge of the bandage, "flickering fire in a winter's grate; a drop of blood the price I pay, to hold a bit of peace and the pain abate." He finished the rhyme as he ran out of both bloody 'ink' and bandage. His magic reached out and twisted, making the obsidian shard dissolve into a faintly grey mist that soaked into the bandage. It immediately began to heat up in his hands.

"Not quite as good as an electric heating pad, but it'll do," he muttered, wrapping the bandage back around his damaged knee. It had warmed up to roughly sixty-five degrees Centigrade or so, and felt better than the hot bath had, if only because the rest of him had managed to become so chilled from staying too long in the tub.

He took a moment to allow the heat to sink into his knee before wriggling his way into a pair of clean boxers. John collected his dirty clothes and his satchel, then hobbled out to the main room. There was no sign that Sherlock had been back at all during the night. "Typical," he muttered, taking a moment to glance out the window. The stark blackness of night had begun to fade. Dawn was likely only an hour or so away. "No sense in trying to get any more sleep at this point."

John laid his satchel on the bed, trading it for his suitcase. He stuck his unused pajamas back in his bag, exchanging them for a clean plaid shirt and jeans. Looking from the buttons on the flannel to his bandaged hands and back, he let out a small groan, then limped over to the desk. John snagged his jacket and returned to the bed, fishing out his precious bottle of synthetic opiate while doing so. He managed to retrieve the pills just as he hit the edge of the bed. It took him three tries to get the cap off the bottle, but eventually he managed to dry-swallow a bit of relief. On an empty stomach, it didn't take long to kick in. "If we're gonna be here much longer, I'm gonna need to see about getting a refill." He had only one tablet remaining. "Had I realized how few I'd had left, I woulda done it before leaving London. Not that I'm ever gonna make that mistake again. I don't care if Himself decrees it to be a solid ten on his silly points scale, I'm never leaving London again."

John wriggled himself into his clean clothing, then picked up his jacket, intending to put it on, but wrinkled his nose at it. "Smells like a gym," he mumbled, recalling the excruciating and exhausting journey back to the inn last night. Instead of wearing it, he quickly emptied out the pockets and stuffed it into a plastic bag he'd brought along to pack away his dirty clothes. He grabbed his backup jacket – the olive green one – and began stashing his various charms and assorted other pocket-clutter in it. "Damn it," he grumbled on reaching the last one.

His abalone shell, etched with a Celtic knot, had partially shattered when he'd tripped the night before. "Suppose it's a miracle I didn't wind up waking the whole ruddy inn. Then again, it's been almost a full year since the last really bad one…" John collected up all the shell-shards and tipped them into a small rubbish bin resting between a bedside table and the room's outer wall. "Gonna need to make a new one, though. I'm definitely not a fan of nightmares."

Almost as though the word called it into being, the memory of his strange dream burst through his mind in a flash. A small portion of his mind marveled at the animal associations his subconscious had concocted for the people he knew, but the larger was more than slightly alarmed at the overall feel of the dream – and that same bit of himself was disturbed at the final scene, the tombstone bearing Sherlock's name.

Doesn't happen often – can count the number of times on both hands with fingers left over – but… could it be a warning-dream? Ignoring the crop of gooseflesh that prickled out on his skin, John stuffed his feet into his worn boots, doing up the laces on auto-pilot and not even registering the twinge of pain from his hands spiking through the oxycodone. Sherlock didn't come back to the room last night… Is it his typical disregard for sleep while on a case? Or did something happen? Grabbing his cane and slinging his satchel across his chest, John hurried out of the room as quickly as his injuries would permit and headed for the last place he'd seen Sherlock.

The bar was lit by a few dim lights and the glow of banked coals from the fireplace, but it was more than enough light for even a non-mage to see that the room was empty – save only for the Grimpen avatar, lurking in the shadows near the chairs where John and Sherlock had sat but a few hours earlier. "I see you managed to untie yourself," John whispered to it.

The potatolike representation of the local leyline system nodded at him; the motion seeming to say 'no thanks to you'.

"I told you – I would've released you before I left. I can't concentrate when you're staring at me all the damn time!"

A wriggle of one of its tentacles clearly said, "So go back to where you came from!"

John clenched his jaw. He took a deep breath and said, "I haven't got time for this." He ignored the avatar and set to crossing the room, intent on checking the inn's garden for his missing flatmate. The avatar fell into step right behind him. John managed three steps before noticing his magical tail. Growling under his breath, he spotted a salt-shaker sitting on one of the tables. It wasn't anything special, just the same plain, white plastic favored by restaurants the world over, but it sparked a small memory.

"Mostly, what you hear in folktales is nothing more than imagination," Ajay said, setting a stack of books into their place on a shelf. All six books were brand-new copies of To Ride a Silver Broomstick, by Silver RavenWolf, and they were shelved next to three copies of a thirty year old book about traditional folk-remedies out of Scotland; it was these latter books which had triggered the current topic of conversation.

"But what isn't, then?" Mary asked, slicing through the tape holding more new merchandise for Ajay's store.

John, enjoying the last few shining days of his summer hols between his junior and senior years at uni, nodded in agreement. "Yeah – you said 'mostly'. And we know you well enough now, siksaka, to know that you don't say anything you don't really mean." (4)

Ajay grinned at his students. "You're learning," he said, pride in his pupils shining through his expression. "But," he returned to the topic at hand, "you are right. There isn't a whole lot that actually works out of folklore… not that I've seen, at any rate. However, one thing I know for a fact does work is salt."

"Salt?" John's skepticism was blatant in his tone and smirk. "Why not pepper? Or ketchup?" He let out a snicker of amusement at the thought. "How about parsley? Or chocolate syrup? Maybe those little silver sprinkles Mum loves to spray all over fairy cakes?"

Ajay smacked him on the shoulder with a copy of the book on folk-remedies. "Shut it, you! No, one of the exceptions to the whole problem of using crystals in magic is salt. I don't know how or why it works, but salt can – temporarily – dispel any malevolent magics. All you need do is toss a bit on the source."

"Is that why Dad throws a bit over his shoulder when he knocks the salt-shaker over?" Mary wondered.

Ajay shrugged, "I'd imagine so – but I think I've got a book on superstitions around here somewhere that goes into more detail…"

John blinked hard, removing himself from his memory and returning to the here-and-now. With a small, bitter grin, he grabbed the salt-shaker off of the table. "Damn it," he growled at the avatar. "I told you to leave me well alone!" He ended by flinging a small spray of salt from the shaker at the avatar's tuberous form.

It disappeared in a whirling puff of green smoke.

With one less irritation to take up valuable mental processes, John gratefully slipped the shaker into his pocket. I'm pretty sure that won't hold for long. He limped his way through the door to the inn's back garden.

There was no sign of Sherlock. John frowned, then closed his eyes. Using the fullest extent of his concentration, he filtered through the massive influx of undampened othersense, searching for any trace of his flatmate's distinctive and familiar aura. The chair back in the bar glowed softly with remnants of his friend's energy, but the trail – looking like nothing so much as footprints in glittery dust the same collection of colors as the man's living aura – was rapidly drowned-out by the sheer number of other people's similar trails.

Giving up on tracking him with othersight so close to the inn and its plethora of people, John retreated back inside. He cut through the bar to the inn's front door and checked the parking lot. The black Land Rover was still there.

Nebulous worry initiated by the strange dream coalesced into something far more substantial. John retrieved his mobile and scrolled to Sherlock's number. Where are you? he sent via text, needing to make two attempts at typing it clearly. It took longer than normal for the phone's animation of sending a text to complete, and once it ceased, the normal 'message sent' wasn't anywhere to be seen. Instead, the screen said message delivery failed. John double-checked his signal – he had full bars showing. He dismissed the message on the screen and called Sherlock directly. It rang straight through to voicemail.

"Either he's forgotten to charge it," John muttered, putting his mobile away, "or the coverage out here is slightly dodgy." Considering the trouble he'd just had in trying to send a text, he was relatively certain it was the latter. Besides, he thought, picking his way across the gravel parking lot, in the year-plus that I've known him, Sherlock has never forgotten to charge his phone. Left it behind – sure. Had it broken and/or drowned – yeah. More than once on that last. But forgotten to charge it? He'd sooner use the Strad as kindling.

A thought occurred to him and he changed the direction his feet were taking. "Maybe the dream was a warning, but of where I can find him now, not that he's actually in any sort of danger. I mean, it's not like the dream was particularly frightening – just really, really weird." John had no difficulty locating the Grimpen cemetery; it was just across the street from the inn.

He canvassed the rather small area twice before admitting defeat. Taking a seat on the steps of an elaborate memorial, John shivered a little. He pulled his jacket tighter around himself and looked around. The early-morning fog was beginning to take on the pearly glow that heralded pre-dawn. The avatar was back, too, though it lingered outside the boundary of the cemetery itself. "Wonder what that's about?" John mused, then dismissed it from his thoughts. As long as it's clear over there, I'm not going to worry about it. Where can he be? It's not like Grimpen has much in the way of night-life!

John found himself toying with his phone. Maybe he went over to Henry's? John scrolled through his contacts to see if he had their client's number. He didn't. Just to be sure, he checked the notes he'd taken back at Baker Street. No luck. A quick check with information indicated that there was no listing in Grimpen for anyone by the name of 'Henry Knight' or any variation thereof. Another try to Sherlock's number yielded the same straight-to-voicemail response.

The worry for his flatmate was gaining strength at the back of John's mind, managing to overtake the physical complaints of his burned hands, dislocated knee, and of muscles protesting the awkward position in which he'd slept. He couldn't get the image of that shiny black tombstone out of his head. He scrolled through his contacts once more, stopping on a very familiar number. The clock in the upper corner of his screen told him it was only a quarter past five in the morning. He's answered at odder times before, though… But that was only when he was hip-deep in a case. Was he working anything in particular when we left? I don't recall…

You awake? John sent a text, his much-abused fingers protesting the act. If he doesn't reply inside of twenty minutes or so, I'll assume he isn't.

He needn't have worried – a reply came mere moments later. Yeah. Do I need to post bail again?

John smirked a little at the reply – Greg had been referring to a small series of humorous misunderstandings which had taken place during an uninspiring, teensy case roughly six months earlier; one which had seen both he and Sherlock needing Greg's bail-posting skills an astonishing nine times within a single twenty-four hour block – but didn't send one of his own. Instead, he simply called back, much to the relief of his dominant hand. "Not this time," he said once the ringing on the other end ceased.

"Good," Greg said. "That got old really quick. What's got you calling this blasted late in the day? Or should I say, early in the morning?"

"Has Sherlock contacted you at all in the last twelve hours or so?"

"Just to say that you boys would be down in Dartmoor for a bit. Why?"

"I've lost track of him," John admitted. "And I can't get a hold of him – his phone goes straight to voicemail."

"Thought he preferred to text." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah. Coverage is a bit dodgy here. I'm honestly surprised my text to you went through. Besides, texts are something of an issue for me at the moment."

"Oh?" John could hear the DI's curiosity had engaged full-force with that single syllable. "How so?"

"Burned the hell outta my hands last night. Spee bachee local 'line hates me, but hell if I know why." (5)

"I'm not even gonna pretend I know what that means," Greg replied. The sound of rustling papers echoed through the connecting. "Listen – I just finished up the last of the paperwork on my last case. I can be there in about four hours."

"What about work?"

"Got the rest of the week off, thanks to the case I just finished. Had all hands called in. Some damned group of idiots were growing enough cannabis to supply Amsterdam for a month in a warehouse out by the airport; had the place's fire-sprinklers rigged, those special sunlamp bulbs in all the fixtures, all that. Even with everyone working 'round the clock, it took better than three days just to clear the place out. I'm just grateful I wasn't in charge – it's gonna take the better part of a month just to get all the paperwork done!" Greg chuckled, but there was an undertone to it that told John that he'd managed to actually worry the man by calling him. "As a result, my team's on stand-down until Monday morning. Like I said, I can be there in about four hours."

John was going to insist that wasn't necessary, then changed his mind. He could be useful, particularly since I'm far from being at my best at the moment. I don't much care for leaving Sherlock without someone trustworthy watching his back. "Okay," he replied. "I'll let you know if Sherlock shows up."

John could faintly hear the sound of muted speech in over the line. "Make sure these get filed with the evidence," Greg said, obviously speaking to someone that was in his physical presence. "Hang on a mo, would ya, John?" John waited patiently while there was more muffled speaking, followed by the sound of cloth rustling and keys rattling. A minute or so later, Greg's voice echoed oddly through the connection – it's peculiar timbre was enough to tell John that the DI had made it into the elevator at NSY. "Okay, I'm done here. I'll send a text to the kids; they're old enough to look after themselves for a day or two. Maybe I ought to contact Mrs. Kelsie, too, have her keep a discreet eye on them…" Greg trailed off for a moment; John knew he was double-checking that the idea of having his work-from-home neighbor ensure that neither Jack nor Rosie managed to burn the house down in his absence was a good one. A heartbeat later, John could practically hear the man nod. "Yeah, that'll do. Donna and me had another to-do a few days ago – she's been staying with her mum since – but I'll still let her know where I'm off to, too." The sound of the elevator's ding on reaching the lobby filtered through to John. "Now that's done," Greg indicated the whole being-at-work by a slightly relieved sigh, "you wanna tell me just why Sherlock slipping his leash has you so worked up?"

John's forehead wrinkled a little at the persistent implication that he was far more responsible for his flatmate than he felt he actually was, but he ignored it with the ease of long practice. "Couple of things, really," he said. "First off, Sherlock managed to scare himself witless last night."

"Wait, what?" Incredulous surprise could not have had a better aural definition than the tone with which Greg managed those two words. "Mr. Emotion-is-a-Disadvantage did what now?"

A small smile managed to work its way onto John's face. I'm glad I called him. "Yeah, I know. But it's true. This case we're working, it's… Well, to put it bluntly, it's downright weird."

Faint noises of early-morning London traffic told John that Greg had exited the building and was on his way to the car park where he left his beloved vehicle during working hours. Much to John's initial surprise, Greg's ride-of-choice wasn't a cheap econobox or a morbidly-expensive 'mid-life crisis mobile', nor was it even a wife-induced people carrier, but – of all things – an '09 Honda Insight. Greg had named 'her' Cherry, even though 'she' was a dark silvery-black, and John had remained utterly confused about the choice until his first visit to the Lestrade home, where he'd found bio-degradable soaps the rule, strictly-sorted recycling bins, a total lack of anything resembling a paper towel, and LED bulbs in all the lights. He further understood the choice when Greg had taken him home that night – the Honda's control panel put John in mind of that irritatingly addictive video game, Plants vs. Zombies, which he'd caught Greg playing on his phone more than just a few times over the past few months. "Weird?" Greg prompted, interrupting John's musing on Greg's darling Cherry.

"Yeah, weird," John repeated. "Client's name is Henry Knight. He dropped by yesterday morning. His dad had disappeared about twenty years ago – the guy's convinced some sort of mutant doglike monster ripped him apart – and wants Sherlock to…" John chewed on his lip a moment, not entirely sure how to phrase it. "I guess," he eventually said, "he wants us to verify he's not completely barking. He said his therapist's convinced he invented the memory of seeing his dad torn apart." John let out a little sigh. "To tell the truth, Greg – I'm not convinced she's wrong. I've been here long enough now that anything new should have registered."

The tweedle-beep noise of Greg disengaging Cherry's alarm drifted through the connection. "How d'you mean?" The question was punctuated by the sound of a car door closing.

"I mean that everything – and I do mean every-bloody-thing – has its own presence to othersight. And nothing out here has come up as anything I've never seen before."

"Oh-kay…" Greg let the word hang for a moment as he searched his memory. "Okay," he repeated. "Lemme see if I've got the right of this – your own eccentricity," he used his own preferred word for John's magical abilities, "lets you know when there's something around that you've not seen before?"

"Exactly."

"Nope. Still not getting it, mate. Sorry."

John let out a huff of air. "How about a few examples, huh? Roaches, for instance. Even if I can't physically see the little blighters, I know if they're around. They leave behind this waxy chocolate smell, like the cheapest Easter bunnies – you know the ones I mean?"

"Think you're looking for 'carob' there, John," Greg said. An irritating chime temporarily erased all other noises coming from his end of the line. When Greg's voice resumed speaking, it held the distinct hollowness that informed John that Greg was now conversing through the Bluetooth adapter he'd installed in Cherry. "And I happen to like carob, by the way."

"Gross," John commented. "But then again, there's no accounting for taste. Another example – most butterflies leave this astringent lemony flavor at the back of my throat, a little like if you accidentally breathe in some mist from a kitchen spritzer. Cats, even if I'm not touching them, feel fuzzy and warm and kinda vibratey, but all that's threaded around this rusty barbed wire feel. D'ya understand?"

"Think so," Greg agreed. "So, you've not sensed anything out there you've not come across before. What's that got to do with your case and Sherlock catching a case of the willies and haring off into the night?"

"It means – top-secret bio-weapons research lab at Baskerville aside – that there is no way a mutant creature showed up out here, regardless of what Henry and Sherlock seem to think they saw!"

"Ah!" Greg exclaimed. "Finally, you're getting to the good bits! So, Sherlock saw something he couldn't reason away, huh?"

"Thinks he did, yeah. But, I'm telling you, Greg – there's nothing at all out of the ordinary out here!" John's eyes drifted over to where the Grimpen avatar still stood, watching him from the boundaries of the cemetery. "Well, not nothing, but there aren't any mutant dogs running about. One of the locals is running this Monster Walk for the tourists, has a plaster cast of a paw-print. It's pretty big, but not mutant-big. I've been thinking it's from somebody's lost Great Dane or maybe a Saint Bernard. Big, yeah, but not 'horse-sized' like the kid wanted us to believe."

"Sounds more like a job for animal control than anything else, John," Greg said. "And I think I'm getting the picture here… Sherlock thinks he saw whatever it is that Henry thought he saw, right?"

"Yeah. He had Henry take us out to the place he claims to have seen it – the same spot he supposedly saw his dad die twenty years ago – last night. It was dark, the moor was starting to spit out fog. I got separated from them, but I did hear something howl. Not five minutes later, Henry came tearing outta the woods, panicked. Sherlock trudging right alongside and about as freaked-out as I can imagine him ever being. Just guessing here, but I'm thinking that Henry freaked himself out, thanks to that probably-wrong memory he's got of the place, and Sherlock, caught in the tangled underbrush of a baby forest – something so far from London's back alleys that I can't think of anything more different, outside of a tropical rain forest – and Sherlock wound up with a case of mirror neurons."

Greg let out a rueful chuckle. "Sorry," he said.

"For what?"

"I keep forgetting you're likely just as smart as Sherlock. Since you don't rub it in all the time, it's easy to forget."

Another small smile twitched into place on John's face. "Yeah, well… They don't tend to hand out medical degrees to complete idiots, you know."

"But… I think you're right about the cause. Sherlock isn't as immune to emotion as he likes to claim and his mirror-responses increase if he's feeling wrong-footed. He'll likely make his own way back to wherever you're staying before noon."

Some of the worry-induced tension leaked out of John's spine. "You think so?"

"Yeah," Greg assured him. "He's done this before. Not for a long while – think the last time was about three years ago, and was sparked by a hit of LSD – but he has freaked himself out before. Is it wrong of me to be grateful you're not in town?"

"Depends on why."

"Last time, he broke into the house and just about wound up with the fireplace poker lodged in his skull for his trouble – he considered my sofa the safest place he could think of." Greg let out a fond chuckle. "Scared the bejesus outta Donna. He curled up on our couch for a bit, then disappeared completely for a solid twelve hours or so. When he came back close to lunchtime the next day, it was with a pizza box of Donna's favorite in one hand and a six-pack of my favorite beer in the other."

John chuckled. "That's… Not good, but reassuring nonetheless."

"Listen – I'm about to get on the M4. I'll see you soon, alright?"

"Yeah. See you soon. And Greg?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"No problem," Greg replied, then ended the call.

John returned his mobile to his pocket feeling slightly more at-ease than he had all morning. He glanced through the rapidly-lightening gloom of oncoming morning at the local avatar standing outside the cemetery's fence. The weight of its dislike for John wasn't nearly so heavy – nor so irritating – a force with several dozen meters separating them. A little more tension evaporated out of John's spine. He shifted to a bit more comfortable a position on the memorial's steps.

Time passed more quickly than he'd had any reason to expect. The fog had gained a bright glow, that rapidly faded, as the sun rose. The fog itself also rose, high into the sky, crafting a patchwork layer of intermittent cloud cover that skittered and danced above Grimpen without seeming to actually go anywhere. Crickets changed over to birdsong. Much of the overnight chill managed to dissipate as the morning waxed, though it still lingered in the shadows. All-in-all, John was somewhat grateful he'd switched to his olive-colored canvas jacket – the heavier one with the strategically-placed leather patches would have been much too warm for the day.

The sun, come-and-go though it was, shining through his dark jeans also lent a bit of relief to his abused knee. The warming spell he'd put on the elastic bandage had worn off, but the sun was a good enough substitute that he couldn't be bothered to re-set the spell. And thinking of magic… I ought to contact Ajay, see if he knows why the leyline out here is acting so… Out of the ordinary. John retrieved his notebook and jotted a reminder to himself to do just that, then spent a few minutes looking over the notes he'd acquired on the case.

The sound of approaching footsteps made him pause for a moment, realizing that he actually recognized the specific sound of Sherlock's shoes, but he still doubted his own ears long enough to reach out with othersight and verify that, yes, Sherlock's aura was accompanying the familiar footsteps. John tucked the notebook back into his satchel as Sherlock rounded the corner of the path and came to a halt in front of him.

"Did you, uh," Sherlock shifted his shoulders in a gesture somewhat similar to an awkward shrug, "get anywhere with that Morse code?"

Dr. Watson took a hard look at Sherlock; No injuries. Bracing himself, John managed to lever himself to his feet. "No," he replied, his eyes closed, waiting for a spate of light-headedness to pass. Once he was in no danger of tripping over himself, he stepped down from the memorial and began to limp in the direction of the inn. Now that he knew that Sherlock was fine, the bitter anger he'd felt at his summary dismissal the evening before came roaring back.

He could feel Sherlock's gaze sweep him from the tips of his hair to the soles of his shoes while saying, "U. M. Q. R. A., wasn't it?" Sherlock fell into step a pace or two behind John.

"It was nothing – just my pareidolia acting up," John insisted, wincing as his right hand levied another string of complaints about its treatment.

"You sure?"

"Yeah," John replied. He halted in his steps and leaned against a low brick half-wall that stood directly in front of a family mausoleum. The name 'Knight' was carved into the stone above the building's archway.

"How about Louise Mortimer?" Sherlock asked, leaning himself against the mausoleum's iron handrail. "Did you get anywhere with her?"

John sat on the low wall, hooking his cane over his left elbow, and shook his head. "No."

"Too bad," Sherlock retorted, a vague level of teasing in his voice. "Did you get any information?"

"You being funny now?" John asked, glancing at his flatmate, while working to unwrap the bandages from his right hand.

"Thought it might break the ice a bit," Sherlock admitted, then leveled his laserlike gaze on John's hands. "You seem to have had something of an eventful few hours…?"

It was telling, that significant question-pause. He's still not quite back to himself, not yet. John ignored the implied order to fill his flatmate in on what he was unable to deduce for himself. I know he wasn't himself, but that doesn't make what he said… "Damn it," he growled at the stubborn bandage on his hand – the tape wouldn't peel off. "Funny doesn't suit you. I'd stick to ice." He lifted his hand to his mouth, intending to use his teeth to worry the tape loose, when his peripheral vision caught the barest wince from Sherlock before the other man closed the distance between them and took John's hand in his own.

"John…" he said, focusing on undoing the rather too-excellent job that Louise had managed rather than on John himself. He looked to John's eyes more unsure of himself than he had the evening before, than he ever had, and it…

It's painful, is what it is. "It's fine," John said, allowing his magic to infuse his voice in a way he didn't typically need to use – it wasn't the shut up and listen of Captain Watson, nor was it the trust me of Dr. Watson. Instead of compelling in any way, it was more like an auditory version of hot tea and fuzzy jumpers and bright orange blankets lit by flashing lights. It said 'you're forgiven' and 'I suppose I'm a little sorry, too' and 'you scared me, you idiot' and 'don't ever disappear like that again'.

Sherlock finally managed to pick apart the tape and began to unwind the soiled gauze bandage from John's hand. "What happened last night…" He shook his head in the minutest of motions. "Something happened to me – something I've never really experienced before…"

"Yes, you said. Fear," John said, his voice still caught somewhere between 'soothing a friend' and 'I'm still angry about what you said last night'.

"Not just that. It was more, John. It was doubt. I felt doubt," Sherlock hissed a little as he removed the final layer of gauze and finally caught sight of the injuries on John's hand. He finally looked John in the eyes. "I've always been able to trust my senses – the evidence of my own eyes. Even with all the other that you've brought to my awareness, I could believe what my senses were telling me; all I had to keep in mind was that I wasn't seeing everything there was. Until last night."

"You can't actually believe that you saw some kind of monster. Monsters don't exist. Besides, if you'd managed to actually listen to me last night, I told you I haven't sensed anything new out here."

"You've got cotton wool with you, yes?" Sherlock asked in an aside, then said, "No, I can't believe I saw a monster, John, but I did see it. So the question is: How?"

John fumbled with his satchel for a moment before coming up with a plastic baggie of cotton balls. He handed it to Sherlock. "Good question. D'you know the answer yet? 'Cause like I said, there's nothing unusual out here. Just the leyline that's taken an extreme dislike to my presence. Otherwise, it's all the same as everywhere else: Bass humming from grass, this high-pitched warbling noise from moss, vanilla flavor-scent from oak trees, the fuzzy-electric treacle of squirrels, and so on. I can't sense anything at all new."

"Tape," Sherlock demanded as he finished unwinding one of the cotton balls. John ignored the protestations of his left hand as he came up with a roll of tape from the medical portion of his satchel's contents. "Would you register something new, though, if it were comprised of components with which you were already familiar?" Sherlock asked, gently laying the cotton over the worst of the ruptured blisters on the palm of John's hand.

John thought about it for a long moment, during which Sherlock taped the cotton into place, before slowly nodding. "Yeah. I think I would, at any rate. That woman at Baskerville – you said she made her daughter's rabbit glow in the dark, right?" Sherlock nodded, unwinding another cotton ball. "I could sense some weirdness within the complex. I know they've got rats and mice and rabbits and guinea pigs and rhesus monkeys somewhere in there, even though I didn't see them personally. Not even the best filtration system money can buy can all traces of what I sense, not when I'm looking through unfiltered othersight. And there were a couple of bits floating in the air that weren't entirely familiar. There isn't anything like that, though, outside the gates to the base."

Sherlock blinked a bit at that. "How is it, I wonder, that you manage to stay sane? I admit I see… Well, everything, but you… What you can sense at times makes me feel truly blind."

"Usually, I can control it," John said. "Usually, I can push all the extra info aside, dial it back, and ignore it."

"But not now," it wasn't exactly a question, which told John that Sherlock was pretty sure that he'd worked out why for himself.

John nodded. "But not now," he agreed while his flatmate secured the cotton ball over another ruptured blister on his right hand. "The painkiller for my knee's screwing up my controls," he explained, noticing the slightest twitch of 'I knew it' that flashed across Sherlock's face. "I don't remember it being this bad before, but maybe it's just because it's been so long since I've needed the oxycodone…"

"Possible," Sherlock allowed, then started working on another of the blisters on John's hand. "How, exactly, did this happen?" he asked, indicating the mess of John's hand, finally just coming right out with his curiosity.

John flinched a little as Sherlock inadvertently pressed just a shade too hard on one of the blisters. "The local 'line and me had something of a disagreement."

"A 'disagreement'?" an incredulous eyebrow twitched towards Sherlock's unruly hair. "Typically, a 'disagreement' does not result in second-degree burns."

"It does when the local leyline's taken an active and intense dislike to you," John replied, then went on to explain how the local system's avatar had been shadowing him and generally being a nuisance. He went on to describe what had happened the night before, including the additional damage he'd managed to do to his knee; he finished his tale with how the avatar seemed reluctant to follow him into the cemetery just as Sherlock finished taping one last cotton ball over the blisters on the back of his hand.

"From what you've said previously, this is atypical behavior for a leyline. Have you any reasons why it's acting oddly?" Sherlock asked, retrieving an expensive linen handkerchief from the inner pocket of his Belstaff.

John shook his head and looked over the job his flatmate had done. "No clue," he said. "But then again, I can't explain why London's system acts the way she does around me, either. Up until that day I bumped into Mike at the park, the leylines I've been around never took much notice of me. I noted where they were, but never really interacted with them myself… except for once, but that was more than twenty years ago. It can't have much bearing on why they've all suddenly gone weird on me now. I mean, I admit that what happened then probably has something to do with London's 'lines acting like they do, but I can't see how it would have had any effect this far from there."

The sound of ripping fabric underscored a somewhat rueful chuckle from Sherlock. "I doubt I can be of much help in puzzling out their motivations," he said, tearing another strip from his handkerchief. "I would think, however, that you might want to discuss this with Ajay when we return home."

John nodded in agreement. "It's already on my to-do list," he said, watching Sherlock rip one last strip from his handkerchief. "Right alongside restocking our med-kit."

Sherlock reached for John's hand once more and began gently wrapping the injured appendage with the strips he'd torn from his handkerchief, using small bits of tape to secure them in place over the layer of cotton. He had nearly finished before he broke the silence by clearing his throat. "Listen," he said, "what I said before, John – I meant it." He used the last bit of tape to make sure the whole makeshift bandage wouldn't fall apart. "I don't have friends." He looked up at John's face. "I've just got the one."

Really, what could John say in reply to that? Instead of commenting, he just held Sherlock's gaze for a moment, hoping that his friend could read from his expression that he wasn't going to hold a grudge, that they were still friends, that it would take more than mere words said in anger to drive John off at this late stage. When the wordless exchange grew to be too much, it was John's turn to clear his throat. "Right," he said, looking away. "Umqra was a complete dead-end, so have you come up with anything?" He pushed himself off of the low wall, and resumed his interrupted journey back to the inn; Sherlock once more falling into step with him, only at his left elbow instead of behind him. The additional padding of the cotton against his blisters quieted most of the complaints from his cane-hand and John couldn't help but be grateful for it.

They'd almost reached the cemetery gate when Sherlock halted completely. "Oh!"

John stopped and looked at Sherlock – his friend's face was a study in sudden understanding; John half-expected to see the word 'eureka' hovering in cartoon letters over his head. "What?"

"You are fantastic!" Sherlock enthused. "Amazing, really, and altogether astonishing!"

The last lingering remnants of the unease which had haunted Sherlock had finally faded from the man's aura. John let out a small sigh. "Come on – you were fine with what you said already. No need to overdo it."

Sherlock ignored him and began walking again, but still keeping pace with John. "You might not be the most luminous of people, John, but as a conductor of light, you are unbeatable!"

"So I'm a bit of fiber-optic cable now, am I?" John almost – but not quite – managed to keep the amusement out of his voice.

Sherlock snatched his own notebook out of his pocket as they exited the cemetery. "Some people who aren't geniuses themselves have a remarkable ability to stimulate it in others –"

"Shut it, Sherlock – you were saying 'sorry' a minute ago, don't spoil it." At the faint irritation that flashed across his flatmate's face at the interruption, John sighed and said, "Go on, then. What have I done that's so bloody illuminating?" The local avatar slid into place a few paces behind them as the cemetery gate squeaked shut behind them.

Sherlock scribbled something down in his notebook and showed it to John. It simply read HOUND. "So?" John said. "What about it?" He reached into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around his stolen salt-shaker.

"What if it isn't a word, but individual letters?" Sherlock asked, scribbling on the paper once more. When he revealed it to John, it now read H.O.U.N.D.

"An acronym? What for?" John asked, halting halfway across the parking area for the inn and spinning around. "And I told you," he spat at the avatar, "to leave me be!" he punctuated it by spraying it with salt. It disappeared into a cloud of green smoke that quickly faded.

"Do I want to know?" a familiar voice asked from the direction of the parked cars.

Sherlock, momentarily startled by John's actions, switched his attention to the obviously just-arrived Detective Inspector Lestrade. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Greg removed his sunglasses and finished climbing out of his beloved Cherry. "Well, nice to see you, too," he said. "I'm on holiday, would you believe?"

Sherlock strode over to Greg. "No, I wouldn't," he all but growled at the DI.

John sighed to himself and hurried after him as fast as his aching leg would let him, not failing to notice that despite Sherlock's words, tone, and aggressive body language, the younger man still gave off a burst of emotional energy that smelled of cocoa butter to John's othersight.

"I heard you were in the area," Greg said. "What are you up to? After this Hound of Hell, like on the telly?" John managed to reach the other two just as Greg finished his question. "Hullo, John."

"Greg," John gave the man a tight, pained smile of greeting.

"I'm waiting for an explanation, Inspector – why are you here?" Sherlock seemed unaccountably angry at Greg's arrival in Grimpen. John wondered why. I thought they were… Well, maybe not 'friends', but I wouldn't've thought Sherlock would be this upset to see him here.

Greg shrugged. "I told you – I'm on holiday."

Sherlock's frustration was easy to read – even if John wasn't watching the man's aura, it was clear from his expression alone. "You're brown as a nut – you're clearly just back from your 'holidays'!"

Greg glanced at John before looking back to Sherlock. "Yeah, well, maybe I fancied another one."

Sherlock's posture wilted some as his 'I've figured this out and I hate it' expression shouldered its way onto his face. He straightened. "Oh, this is Mycroft's doing, isn't it?"

"No," Greg said, "look –"

Interrupting, Sherlock continued, "Of course it is! One mention of Baskerville and he sends down my handler to spy on me 'incognito'. Is that why you're calling yourself 'Greg'?"

"That's his name, Sherlock," John said while thinking, They've known each other how long now? And how many warrant cards has Sherlock stolen from Greg and he never bothered to read the name on them?

Sherlock frowned. "Is it?"

Greg looked as nonplussed as John felt at the look on Sherlock's face that indicated Greg's first name was actually something he'd not bothered to learn before. "Yes," Greg ground out, "if you'd ever bothered to find out." He tucked his sunglasses into his jacket pocket before he could manage to break them. "Look, I'm not your handler, and I don't just do whatever your brother tells me."

"Besides, Sherlock," John chimed in. "Mycroft didn't send Greg – I called him."

Sherlock shifted his eyes from the DI to John. "You? But… Why?"

John rolled his eyes, How is it that he's the smartest person I've ever met, yet regularly manages to sound like a bratty six year old?, and gestured to himself with his cane. "I'm hardly in top form right now. Besides – you'd buggered off and I couldn't get a hold of you this morning. I'm not too proud to admit that I was worried. I'd called Greg," he couldn't help but give Lestrade's name a slight emphasis, "to see if you'd contacted him at all, in hopes of figuring out where you'd gone off to." He didn't mention his dream. I'm pretty sure that, weirdness or no, it wasn't at all prophetic. Just an odd dream. Nothing more. "He offered to come down and lend a hand, since I'm down a pair at the moment." John saw some of the same faint concern resurface on Sherlock's face that had been lurking there all while he'd been rebandaging his hand. "Besides…" John continued in a slightly more thoughtful tone of voice. "He could be just who we need." Sherlock's 'explain' eyebrow twitched into place. "I've not been idle," John said, rummaging in his pockets for what he needed. "Ah, there it is." He pulled out the receipt he'd snagged on checking in the day before. He showed it to Sherlock before handing it to Greg. "That's an awful lot of meat for a vegetarian restaurant, isn't it?" A small, somewhat manic grin broke through Sherlock's expression. "Nice scary inspector from Scotland Yard who can put in a few calls might come in very handy."

The trio had to wait nearly an hour before the last of the morning breakfast crowd cleared out; much to Greg's amusement, much of that hour was spent by having Sherlock repeatedly attempt to get John to partake of something other than coffee in a role-reversal he hadn't ever expected to see. Unfortunately, though John managed to successfully get Sherlock to eat, sometimes even during a case, the reverse was most assuredly not happening. Greg, himself possessing some rather odd side-effects to prescription medications, understood the lack of hunger, though he was a little unclear as to why John had taken anything to begin with, just like he was somewhat confused as to the presence of the cane. It took him nearly the whole of the hour to recall John had shown up at that first crime scene with it before it had disappeared entirely.

Just as the last of the breakfast crowd left the dining area surrounding the bar, Sherlock got up to refill their coffees from the self-serve pot at the end of the bar. While he was fixing the cups to their various tastes – John preferred black, Sherlock himself took sugar, and Greg couldn't stomach coffee without copious quantities of both milk and sugar – the owner of the Cross Keys finally wandered over. "Sorry that took so long," he said. "Billy'll be out in a moment."

Greg nodded and motioned for the man to take a seat. Not long afterwards, Sherlock returned to the table with their coffee refills, and just as he was sitting down, Billy arrived with a thick stack of papers. Greg donned one of his best 'serious' faces, then got down to business.

After sorting through the general licenses for the inn – just to make sure everything was in order – he asked for their invoices. Roughly twenty minutes later, Gary was futilely attempting to defend their having kept a vicious dog around to scare the tourists. "It was just a joke, you know?"

"Yeah, hilarious!" Greg sarcastically replied, pushing the stack of paperwork at the pair. "You've nearly driven a man out of his mind. Really top-notch humor right there!"

Abashed, Gary and Billy quickly gathered up the papers, and then scurried off to other parts of the inn. Once they were safely out of hearing-range, Greg slumped in his chair and rubbed lightly at his temples. "I'll have a word with the local force about this, but, to be frank, I honestly don't know if anything they did was technically illegal."

"They didn't have the dog put down, though. Couldn't that be something…? I mean," John paused, groping for the right words. "Isn't there something in the laws about keeping dangerous animals?"

Greg bit back a small grin at John finally speaking – all through the interview with the Taylors, he'd literally been chewing on his lips to keep from blurting out whatever'd been on his mind. "Those are only if the animal in question has actually hurt anyone," Greg replied, then downed the last bit of coffee in his cup with a grimace at its lack of a palatable temperature.

Sherlock was frowning to himself, not really listening to John and Greg, but then shook his head and focused on his flatmate. "What makes you so certain the dog is still alive, John? Gary certainly believed he was telling the truth, and Billy's body language was consistent with regret."

John didn't even need to look at Sherlock to know that the man's face was likely sporting an expression caught somewhere between puzzlement and disgust – his typical reaction to anything that could even remotely be labeled as 'sentiment'. "One of these days, Sherlock, you're gonna realize that 'sentiment' isn't actually a dirty word, you know." John gave a small combined shrug-and-sigh and finished off the last of the now-cold sludge in the bottom of his own cup. "Lies taste like peppermint," he explained, glancing from the mug to Lestrade and finally to his flatmate. "They always taste like peppermint – 's why I don't much care for the taste in toothpaste and what have you. I taste it enough as it is, I certainly don't need to deal with it as part of my grooming routine."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at his flatmate even as Greg's expression shifted to one of complete confusion until he recalled how John had described how he 'saw' the world. "Do you realize you're more observant on opiates than you are sober?" Sherlock asked, either unaware or uncaring of Greg's own inner thoughts.

John shrugged again. "Nah," he countered. "Not really. Like I told you earlier, I just can't turn it off right now. I can't ignore the bits'n'pieces that aren't important – and ninety percent of the time, lies aren't that important. Everyone winds up tasting like peppermint sooner or later. Women in particular, because makeup and hair-dye might not solely be used by prostitutes any longer, but they surely aren't honest." Greg had to chuckle a little at that, but his laughter didn't even register with John. The doctor continued without breaking for breath, "I've been meaning to ask, Sherlock – is this what it's like for you all the time? Only less glowy, of course. Seeing every-bloody-thing, I mean. But less glowy and without the synesthesia. Pretty sure it's magical synesthesia, at any rate, why I hear and taste and smell and feel what everyone else only sees –"

All the while John had been speaking, Greg's grin kept growing and growing. Having had more than a few work-related injuries over the course of his career, he knew that strong painkillers, if one was seated relatively comfortably and not overtaxing the afflicted body part, had a tendency to loosen one's tongue, but this? This was priceless. Particularly as Sherlock interrupted John's rambling with, "You're babbling again. It's becoming rather annoying," and a hard scowl.

"And you're a poncy git who thinks popping his coat collar makes him look cool," John snapped back.

Sherlock opened his mouth to argue the point, but Greg beat him to it. "Boys! I get enough of the childish name-calling from my kids, I'm not about to put up with it from you two."

John opened his mouth to say 'Fine, let's get back to the task at hand, then, shall we?', but as his eyes landed on the Grimpen avatar, staring at him from a corner near the bar, it switched over to, "Damn it!" He pulled himself to his feet and glared at the avatar. "Do I need to tie you up again? Because I swear, you da spi zo, if you don't bloody well leave me the fuck alone, I don't care if I wind up burning myself down to the bone – I will leave you in so many knots, you'll be a millennia untying yourself!" (6)

The avatar simply stood there. John had the distinct impression it was smirking at him. John stared right back, his posture and expression clearly shouting 'don't fuck with me' in every line.

Greg edged away from John. He looked at Sherlock and saw that the man's forehead was furrowed, but not with worry – he had the look on his face that, rare though it might be, usually indicated he wasn't seeing what he knew he should be. Greg peered in the direction John was glaring, but saw only the corner where the bar's top joined with the outer wall of the building. There wasn't even any dust, let alone something that could be causing the normally level-headed ex-soldier any concern.

John didn't notice Greg's own distress, nor Sherlock's intense scrutiny. His attention was wholly engaged by the avatar; the memory of its attack the night before foremost in his mind. The air around the avatar shimmered to his othersight, much like heat-waves bouncing off of hot pavement. It quivered, a slight shudder that traveled from the outermost tips of its tentacle-like protrusions to the green, tuberous mass of its main 'body'.

Greg could feel… something. Something building, like the pressure-change just before a sudden summer thunderstorm. Something that made every hair on him stand up. Something that left a taste not unlike ozone at the back of his throat. He tore his eyes from John and looked again at Sherlock. The younger man's hands were pressed palm-down against the tabletop, but so hard that his knuckles were white, and was breathing in short little gasps, like he wasn't getting enough air, but he was still staring intently at the corner where John's own gaze was fixed. Greg had the sudden urge to duck under the table, but couldn't bring himself to move more than his eyes.

John's sense of time skewed out of alignment with reality, but it had less to do with his magical nature than the finely-honed instincts he'd acquired whilst living in a war zone. In slow motion, he saw the avatar increase in size, just like it had done the night before.

John dipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket and grabbed his 'borrowed' salt-shaker.

They both attacked simultaneously; the avatar lashing out once more with a whip of its own tentacles, and John with the last of the salt. The salt hit first, however, and so John was spared another burned welt. As time suddenly slotted back into its normal rhythm, John realized that had the avatar managed to land the blow, he likely would have wound up losing one, if not both, of his eyes.

Greg had absolutely no idea what John just did, but the tension snapped with all the suddenness of a crack of thunder, taking with it his unease. He cleared his throat. John and Sherlock both startled and looked at him. "Um… What the hell just happened?"

John opened his eyes, unsure as to when he'd closed them, and looked at Greg. His pulse had gone from the steady thud, thud, thud of imminent conflict to the hummingbird thrum of 'fucking hell, but that could've been really, really bad'. He let out a small, shaky breath, and sank back onto his chair. "That," he said, "was the local leyline's latest attempt to get me gone from here. He doesn't much like me, and I've no bloody idea why. It's the reason my hands are burned." John indicated the bandages wrapped around the appendages in question with a small nod.

Greg grimaced. John could see several questions floating in his friend's eyes, but Greg didn't bother voicing any of them; it simply wasn't the time. Instead, Greg said, "I'm sure I'll probably want to know more about that, but it can wait for now."

"Indeed," Sherlock said, then changed the subject. "The sooner I can figure out what's going on out here, the sooner we can return to London."

"Yeah," John nodded. "Okay, then. So it's their dog that people keep seeing out on the moor. But if they've only had it for two months, then it can't be what Henry saw twenty years ago."

"Nor was it what I saw last night," Sherlock said, his gaze focusing inwards, on the memory of what he'd experienced with Henry. "That was immense… It had burning, red eyes, and it was glowing. Its whole body was glowing…"

The strong, sharp flavor-scent of peppermint briefly flared into existence around Sherlock, and John peered a little closer at his flatmate. Sherlock might be speaking to him, but his body language clearly indicated that he'd meant the words he'd just said for Lestrade. Instead of asking for clarification on the lie, John decided to let Sherlock run with it. "What's next, then?" he asked.

Sherlock blinked hard, then gave himself a small shake. "I've got a theory, but I need to get back into Baskerville to test it."

John frowned. Is he completely insane? He managed not to smack himself in the forehead. Come on, Watson – of course he's that bloody nuts. "How?" he asked instead. "I doubt you'll be able to use Mycroft's ID again."

Sherlock allowed a slow smirk to surface on his face. "Might not have to," he said, pulling out his mobile. "Excuse me for a moment," he muttered, thumbing through his contacts and getting up from the table. John and Lestrade followed him outside, but at a distance of several dozen paces. "Hello, brother dear. How are you?" they heard Sherlock say insincerely.

John and Greg lingered in the vicinity of the inn's door while Sherlock paced back and forth a few meters away, arguing with his brother. "You know he's actually pleased you're here," John commented, glancing at Greg, before returning his gaze to the bandages wrapping his hands. "Secretly pleased, I mean."

Greg let out a snort of amusement. "Sure he is," the sarcasm wasn't quite as thick as Sherlock could manage, but it was pretty damn close.

John shrugged. "Believe me, don't believe me – it's all the same to me, Greg, but that cocoa butter scent he gave off when you showed up only ever means one thing: relief."

Now Greg knew that the vast majority of what John could do was greatly out of his depth, but he had read more than his fair share of fantasy novels in his time – primarily thanks to Rosie; Greg made a point of reading all the same books that either of his kids read and Rosie's favored genre was sword&sorcerery – and as a result, the more that John talked about his abilities, the better Greg understood them, even when the former soldier wasn't actively explaining things. John saw a small vertical line appear between Greg's eyebrows. It was very similar to the expression he got just before he caught up with Sherlock while on a case, but not quite so intense. "So, you've got that what's-it-called? Empathy? As well as the whole magic-thing?"

John shook his head. "Not exactly. Empathy – the skill, is what you mean, right? Where a person actually feels what others are feeling?" Greg nodded. "Yeah, okay. No, that's a psychic gift like clairvoyance. My othersight's not quite as good, and I don't actually feel the emotions. I can just identify a few of them because of how they register in othersight. Some have specific scents or flavors, but most I have to identify by how they affect your aura."

Greg grimaced. About a year before Rosie had been born, Donna had gotten intensely interested in the alternative scene – crystals, pyramids, 'astral' travel, and so forth. "Aura." Greg said the word with a tone and expression that both would have been more at home on his face had he just bitten into a rancid lime.

John snickered. "Yeah," he said.

"…No! Absolutely not!" Sherlock shouted. "Five cases! It's barely worth three! And none of those 'national security' ones, either! Three interesting cases, Mycroft, or I'll figure out some other way."

John waited for the shouting to die down before turning to face Greg. "Yeah," he repeated. "Auras. Something tells me you've read some of the nonsense out there about them."

Greg shook his head. "Not personally. Donna got really into that crap a while back. Luckily, it only lasted a few months, but if I never have to hear about aligning energies or how something's bad for my karma ever again, it'll be too soon."

John grinned. "I'm not about to argue with you," he said. "I'm probably more frustrated with all the misinformation out there on the topic than you are. It doesn't help that modern thinking's got auras all lumped in with crap like phrenology and palmistry and astrology." The grin disappeared as he noticed the Grimpen's avatar reappear. It lingered in the doorway of the inn, though, keeping a respectful distance from him. As long as you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone, John thought at it.

"Odd lot of superstitious nonsense, if you ask me."

John nodded. "That they are, mate. However, auras exist. Around everything. Anyone with othersense can 'see' them, but it's not at all like in the books. Auras don't change color-distribution with emotion. They're more of a baseline of the personality of their person. Take Sherlock and his brother, for example. Their colors are gold and teal and green. Everything I've seen links green with 'inquisitive', teal with 'intelligent', and gold with…" he trailed off.

"With what?" Greg asked, curious despite himself.

"It's kinda hard to describe, but it boils down to… Well, 'goodness'. Not sweetness-and-light, of course, but the type that… It isn't kindness," John abruptly changed tracks. "At least, not traditional kindness – that's more of a yellowish-green color. It's more like a parent allowing a little kid to burn himself on the stove, knowing that a minor injury will do more to make the kid respect fire than all the words in the world. Or sacrificing a squadron of men in the short term to ensure that thousands of others won't be injured or die. To someone unable to think that far ahead, it often comes across as cruel, but it isn't, not really." He leveled an 'are you following me?' look at Greg.

Greg nodded. "I get what you're saying."

"Good," John replied. "But back to emotions… Like I said, they don't affect the colors present, no more than feeling happy or sad or tense is going to change your basic personality. I see auras as a cloud that suffuses a person, and how that cloud acts is how the emotions typically reveal themselves. If someone's pissed off, the cloud whirls around them, like they're standing inside their very own tornado. If they're feeling threatened, it gets 'prickly', like a cactus or porcupine."

Any further discussion on the topic ground to a halt as Sherlock disconnected his call and let out an explosive sigh. "We've got twenty-four hours," he said, walking back to John and Greg. "Unrestricted access."

"You don't sound particularly happy," Greg said.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but John just shook his head. "What did you have to promise Mycroft?"

"Four cases, though he did promise they would, at least, be marginally interesting," Sherlock replied.

John sighed. "Joy," his sarcasm clearly showed what he thought about that.

Sherlock ignored it and subtly began herding Lestrade and John towards Greg's car. John followed along willingly enough, but took a moment to search his pockets for the post-it note Major Barrymore had given him. He climbed into the passenger seat while retrieving his phone. 01647 523771 is his office number, and it's, he checked the time, closing in on eleven o'clock. He ought to be in. John dialed the number and patiently waited for the call to connect.

The major was, understandably, unenthused about the impending visit, but – when reminded of John's earlier assertion that what he and Sherlock were looking into fell under the jurisdiction of what was in essence an internal criminal investigation (blatant lie though it may have been), he resigned himself to allowing them access. John could tell he didn't much appreciate it, but Mycroft's influence had managed to enforce the false idea. For once, John found himself somewhat grateful for the elder Holmes' rather overbearing, meddling attitude – not to mention his still-unnamed position within the British government.

Half an hour later, John was once more wrestling with keeping his understandable, though still rather inconvenient, paranoia in check while maintaining an air of 'what can you do?' as Sherlock traded sarcasm with Major Barrymore and Greg wandered towards the lab levels. Eventually, Barrymore left. John immediately claimed the most-comfortable looking chair in the security office and shot a questioning look at Sherlock.

"What?" Sherlock snapped, dragging another chair over to the bank of security cameras.

"Just wondering why you sent Greg down to the labs. It's not like he's got a whole lot of experience with them. I'd figured you'd either want to snoop around yourself or send me."

Sherlock made short work of forcing the CCTV system to show him what he was looking for. "Again, you see, yet do not observe," Sherlock replied, typing commands into the keyboard at his fingertips. Keeping one eye on the monitors, he then dug out his phone and began messing about with it.

"What don't I observe this time?" John asked, crossing his forearms to rest over the handle of his cane.

"Simple: I mentioned the main question at this juncture was how was it possible for me to have seen what Mr. Knight claims to have seen on at least three separate dates thus far? Also, what we saw was definitely not a normal dog. What conclusions might be drawn from those two lines of thought?" Sherlock glanced up from his phone.

John met his gaze. "Magic isn't the cause, so it's something normal. So…" he thought hard for a moment before the answer dawned on him. "You think you were drugged?"

"Very good, John," Sherlock returned to toying with his phone for a moment, then returned it to his pocket. "Yes – I believe that both Henry and myself have been drugged. Though my experience with hallucinogens is somewhat limited, it is one of the few theories which fit the data at hand. Since you yourself have not and are not exhibiting any of the symptoms which I and Mr. Knight have endured, whatever chemical cocktail is being used is not something to which you have been exposed. Since we have partaken of the same air, drinks, and so forth, I was forced to evaluate where differences lay."

"And?"

"To my knowledge, the only difference is that you take your coffee black, John. Both Mr. Knight and I take sugar in our coffee. Ergo, this morning I borrowed a sample of the sugar from his kitchen."

John could feel a headache coming on. "And you made coffee for us at the inn… So, you drugged Greg?"

Sherlock peered at the monitor. Lestrade had just exited the elevator and was looking around the BSL-1 lab with a bored sort of curiosity. "Yes," he said, unapologetic. "I did."

"You do realize, don't you, that he's gonna bloody well kill you for this, right?"

Sherlock shrugged. "I fail to see how he would find out."

John just stared at him.

Eventually, Sherlock looked at John and sighed. "Oh, yes, very well. Tell him if you must. I thought it better than risking a potentially problematical interaction with the oxycodone in your own system – something I am unable to predict without knowing the precise chemical mixture involved."

Which, in Sherlockian, means that he didn't want me getting hurt from his experiments. Something inside John uncoiled. He absurdly felt like laughing, but kept the urge safely bottled up. If I doubted it at all before, this would have been enough to erase any lingering thoughts that he's actually the sociopath he claims to be. Still, though – I hope Greg goes easy on him when he figures out what Sherlock's gone and done.

John settled back in his chair and watched Sherlock run his experiment on their friend. At one point, Greg disappeared off the monitor by going through a door into another room. John wondered why Sherlock didn't instruct the security system to 'follow' him, but received his answer without having to actually voice the question: One of the scientists – John thought he had the peculiar, half-starved look of someone working on their first thesis – hurried into the lab and positioned a large, rolling rack of powerful lights just outside the door through which Greg had gone. He then plugged it into a bright red outlet before leaving the lab.

Sherlock queued up a string of text-based commands in a DOS prompt on the computer screen set in the desktop, then hovered his finger over the 'enter' key on the keyboard. The moment Greg returned, Sherlock hit 'enter' and the rack of lights flashed on. Sherlock then typed in another command and the sound of an alarm buzzed through the CCTV feed.

Without wasting much time – though he did take a moment to curse inventively – Greg all but ran across the darkened lab to the elevator. Sherlock was a step ahead, however, and the security checkpoint buzzed out an 'access denied' message. "Damn it!" echoed clearly from the CCTV speakers.

John saw Greg retrieve his mobile, and moments later, Sherlock's phone rang. Sherlock, of course, ignored it. "Quickly, John – your phone," Sherlock demanded, holding one hand out. Too conditioned to these sorts of requests from his flatmate, John tossed his mobile to Sherlock. It began to ring a moment later. Sherlock denied the call, and began typing into it with one hand, while his other dealt with the computer keyboard. "I would use a digital recorder," Sherlock said, 'thinking out loud'. "However, there is always some loss of sound quality when recording from another recording."

John opened his mouth to ask what Sherlock meant, but clicked it shut. I'll find out soon enough, I suspect. The noise of the alarm cut out, drawing his attention back to the security monitor. Greg had pulled out a small flashlight and was using it to cut back the gloom of the lab. It looked to John as though he were searching for the light switches.

"No, no, no, no, no! The cages, Lestrade – look to the cages!" Sherlock sat with one hand holding his own phone, the other holding John's. After a moment of fruitless searching, Greg did indeed wander to the bank of sheet-draped cages. The first two were empty, but the monkey housed within the third managed to make Greg startle. John might've laughed, but decided it wasn't advisable – he could have very easily wound up in Greg's place had but a few small details changed. As Greg checked the fourth and final cage, Sherlock smiled and tipped back in his chair. He pulled the microphone for the intercom system into his lap, swung his feet up on the desk, and waited. On the screen, Greg suddenly became unaccountably nervous. The torch beam began to waver all over the lab.

"Finally," Sherlock breathed out. He hit a button on John's phone, then held it to the microphone of the intercom, switching it on with the pinky of his other hand.

A fierce growl emanated from the speakers on both the phone and the CCTV monitor.

Is it wrong of me to be really, really glad that Sherlock isn't using me for this experiment? John wondered.

Sherlock's phone began to ring again, and again, the consulting detective ignored it. More growls echoed through the intercom, accompanied by the sound of claws clicking on tile.

John could see that Greg was beginning to panic. The DI tried the card-reader at the nearest door, only to receive the 'access denied' again. The recording Sherlock was using let out a vicious snarl and Greg jumped.

As Greg rushed back to the cages, tucking himself into one of the empty ones, Sherlock hit 'send' on his mobile with his thumb. The faint, tinny sound of Lestrade's ringtone sounded from the monitor. A moment later, Greg's voice came from Sherlock's phone. He was speaking quietly enough that the CCTV mics couldn't pick up on it. "There's something in here," he said.

"Where are you?" Sherlock asked, all business.

"Get me the hell outta here, Sherlock," Greg replied. "You know damn well where I am – first floor down in the main elevator. Exactly where you fucking sent me, you bastard." It was a measure of how unsettled Greg felt, how much his language had degraded. Under the relatively normal stresses of his job, John had noticed that the DI didn't tend to swear much or often. 'Hell' and 'damn' were usually about as salty as he got. "Now get me the fuck outta here." Sherlock hit 'mute' on his phone and held John's next to the intercom mic. Another vicious growl came from John's phone, and immediately thereafter, an odd sort of strangled squeaking noise emanated from Sherlock's. Sherlock smirked and hit a quick succession of buttons on John's mobile while simultaneously unmuting his own.

"Alright," he said. "Keep talking – I'll find you."

"Are you out of your bloody mind? It'll hear me."

Sherlock stood and motioned for John to follow him. "Keep talking," he insisted. "What are you seeing?"

"Seeing?" Greg echoed. "Not seeing a fucking thing, Sherlock. But I can hear it."

The discussion – if you can really call it that – continued between Greg and Sherlock as John followed his flatmate to the elevator and down to the BSL-1 lab. Halfway down, Sherlock took his phone off of 'speaker' and held it to his ear. He sent a series of texts from John's phone while encouraging Lestrade to describe what he was seeing. By the time the elevator reached the lab, someone – probably the same poor grad student from earlier – had taken up the task of playing that stupid recording over the intercom.

Sherlock sent one last text as they crossed the lab. They were now close enough to Greg that John could actually hear him. "I can see it," he was whispering fiercely. "It's here."

Sherlock returned John's phone, then tucked his own against his shoulder. He looked up at the CCTV camera, raised his arm, and grabbed the corner of the sheet covering the cage in which Greg was hiding. He gestured to the camera as he flipped the sheet back, and his unnamed accomplice turned on the lab's lights at the same moment. "Still in one piece, I see, Inspector."

Greg glared at Sherlock and tucked his phone back into his pocket. "Gimme one damn good reason why I shouldn't black your eye right this moment," he growled, levering himself out of the cage. "'Oh, I've got to check in with the head of security – I'll catch up in a moment'," Greg mockingly repeated Sherlock's instructions on reaching Baskerville. "'Nothing to worry about – just check the main lab, we'll all go through the sub-labs together'," he continued, then switched over to his own, very angry, tone. "Damn you, you asshole! 'Nothing to worry about' my aunt's hat! Giant, glowing, man-eating dogs! Where the hell'd it go?" Greg looked around, finally noticing that the lab was mostly empty, save for the angry little rhesus in the third cage.

"Calm down, Lestrade. I need you to focus – what, exactly, did you see?"

"I told you!" Greg yelled, "Giant, glowing, man-eating dog!"

One of Sherlock's eyebrows twitched upwards. A slow smile spread across his face. "I was right."

"Oh, that's just bloody marvelous! You were right! Fantastic. What were you right about this time, you damn nuisance?"

"You have been drugged. You, me, Henry Knight – we have all been drugged," Sherlock explained, though it didn't escape John's notice that he didn't really explain at all. "Come," the brunette barked. "It's time to lay this ghost." Sherlock's Belstaff flared out behind him as he strode towards the pair of double-doors that led deeper into the BSL-1 laboratory maze.

An hour later and the three of them were settled in Dr. Stapleton's lab. Sherlock was availing himself of the various bits of equipment, specifically the microscopes and spectrometer. Greg and John were seated at a table on the other side of the room, and Dr. Stapleton herself leaned against one of the worktops nearby.

Once Sherlock was obviously entangled with his self-appointed task, and Stapleton had reassured herself that the madman actually knew what he was doing, she turned her attention to the other two men. "Are you alright?" she asked, aiming the question at both of them.

Greg nodded and John shrugged. "Well enough, I suppose," John said.

She gestured to his hands. "Might I ask…?"

"Burns. Second degree," John explained. "Nothing too serious."

"Can't be easy," she replied.

John blinked at her. "What can't?"

"The cane," she clarified. "Must hurt."

"Nothing to be done about it. I'm already taking something for my knee. It takes the edge off."

"Does it contain paracetamol?"

"Why?" John asked. Greg stifled a yawn and shifted to a somewhat more comfortable position. He looks like he's about to pass out, John thought. Of course, if he was still at work this morning when I called, it's likely been at least a full twenty-four since he's last had any sleep.

"We've got a pretty decent topical medication for burns. It's going to be released to the public this November. Proven to speed healing by close to eighty percent and reduce scarring by ninety percent." Stapleton turned and rummaged in a cabinet for a moment. "But it contains a hefty dose of topical paracetamol. Wouldn't want to use it if you've already taken some – paracetamol can be rather hard on the liver."

"Yes, I know," John said. "I'm a medical doctor. And no, by the way. I'm taking forty-mil oxycodone on a twelve-hour rotation."

Stapleton winced at that. Locating what she was looking for, she closed the cabinet and turned around. In one hand, she held a small white tub with a plain label that simply read Burn Fix Compound 27-A, and a plastic first aid kit in the other. "Nasty stuff," she commented, the question she didn't ask lurked in her expression.

"Ongoing pain issue from some nerve damage in my knee," John explained, glancing at Greg. The DI had indeed fallen asleep, his head pillowed on his arms. John didn't envy the crick he was bound to have in his back on awakening, but didn't want to interrupt what was likely the man's first chance at a nap in god-only-knew-how-long. It's likely a miracle he made it down here in one piece as it is – he should know better than to drive when he's that tired.

Stapleton's curiosity faded away as she sat herself down on the remaining empty chair at the table. She opened the first aid kit and efficiently laid out the supplies she wanted: scissors, gauze – both pads and rolled, tape, and a few other items. Without looking, she snagged a pair of exam gloves from a box on the counter behind her, and pulled them on. "Here," she said, motioning for John to give her his hands. Despite her rather brusque way with words, she had a gentle touch. John barely felt the coldness of the steel scissors as she cut away the much-abused bandaging from his left hand and the remains of Sherlock's handkerchief from his right.

John bit his lip in an effort to keep from babbling, mainly to keep from waking Greg, but also because he didn't want to interrupt Sherlock. Still, though, he couldn't help but let out a small hiss as Stapleton carefully and methodically peeled the unraveled cotton balls and tape away from the broken blisters on his palm.

"Sorry," she said, keeping her voice low.

"No, don't worry – I've had worse, I assure you."

Once everything was removed, Stapleton gathered the soiled bandages and tape and disposed of them in a bio-waste bin. "You'll want to wash those," she said. "Use that sink," she pointed to the one in the opposite corner to where they were sitting. "And use the pink soap, not the green."

The reasoning behind the soap recommendation was clear by the labels on the bottles – the green one contained pumice. Definitely not something I'd want to use on blisters. Once he finished, he limped his way back to Stapleton, using his forearms and the counter in lieu of his cane. His left hand was better off than his right; fewer blisters had broken and, of course, was only burned on the palm. His right, however, would have made him wince even if it wasn't one of his own hands. Parts of it looked like undercooked pork, and the fleshy bit under his thumb resembled nothing so much as a bit of raw mince.

After reseating himself, Dr. Stapleton took his left hand and inspected it. "The salve will work best if we excise the covering of the blisters."

John frowned, but nodded. While Stapleton set to first draining the blisters, then cutting away the excess skin, he asked, "What else is in the salve?"

"Paracetamol, like I said, antimicrobials, vitamins A, D, and E, and extracellular matrix," she replied.

John nodded, suddenly understanding how it could reduce healing time and scarring by so drastic a percentage – extracellular matrix had a tendency to attract a body's own stem cells to the wound where it was applied, discouraging scar tissue from forming. "And you say this will be made public come autumn?"

Stapleton nodded. "Yes. Though how much it will cost remains to be seen. I suspect that prices will be rather low until its worth is proven in the public arena."

"Isn't that always the case?" The question was rhetorical. "Is it going to be prescription?"

Stapleton shook her head. "No need. There aren't many ways it could be abused, after all. Though clinical trials did indicate it needs to include a warning not to use it on fresh body modifications – some of our participants wound up needing to be compensated for tattoos which failed to 'take' due to the salve's interference."

John let out a quiet laugh. "I can see why they'd be upset. Tattoos aren't cheap."

Stapleton finished her minor surgery on his hand and opened the jar of salve. "You sound as though you speak from experience."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Was a present to myself on graduating medical school."

"May I ask what? And where?" The salve was cool, but didn't sting as she gently rubbed it into the tender new skin that had been under the blisters' protection.

"RAMC insignia, on my right bicep," John replied. "Joined the army a week after I was accepted to med school." He twitched as Stapleton accidentally pressed a shade too hard against one of the more sensitive spots along the heel of his hand. "What about you?"

She shook her head. "Just pierced ears. I never really understood why anyone would want to pierce anything else, nor what the appeal of tattooing could possibly be."

"I agree on the piercing thing, and as far as tattoos go, I could give you a list of excuses, but no real reasons."

Stapleton acknowledged his comment with a strange little head-bob that wasn't quite a nod. "Are you right or left handed?"

"Left," John replied.

She frowned. "Then I'll need to wrap both hands. It would be best if you could leave them exposed to the air, however. But if you're left-handed, then you'd simply be risking further injury. Likewise, to your right, because of the crutch." Stapleton unwrapped the paper from a packet of gauze pads and began bandaging the worst of the former blisters.

John nodded in agreement. "I'd planned to let them air out once I got back to London. Hopefully, that'll be in the next day or two." They fell silent for a short while, the only sounds those of Sherlock's science-ing, Greg's soft whuff snores, and the rustle of medical supplies. Eventually, John asked, "Do you know what they're going to call it? Come November's release, I mean."

"No idea," Stapleton replied. "I'm sure it will be thoroughly advertised, however."

"Will it contain the paracetamol? Or are they going to release versions both with and without it?"

"The last I heard, the plan was to release it with the painkiller, though in a rather reduced capacity than we use here in the lab." She taped the last trimmed piece of gauze into place and set to wrapping his hand in rolled gauze as an extra preventative measure.

John heard Sherlock let out an irritated huff behind him. Almost as though in reply, Greg let out a mumbled jumble of sounds that sounded suspiciously like 'duck, you daft bugger'. Stapleton finished with his left hand and gestured for his right. It received similar treatment, though fewer of the blisters had managed to survive intact.

Stapleton had just finished taping the last bit of bandage into place when Sherlock let out a furious, "It isn't there!" and threw a glass slide across the room to shatter into pieces against a bit of bare brickwork in the wall. "There's nothing there!" he growled, ignoring John's exclamatory curse and Greg's startling awake with a confused, bleary 'wha?'.

"What were you expecting to find?" Stapleton asked, collecting wrappers and disposing of them in a trashcan.

Sherlock ran his fingers through his hair while pacing in a short arc, the microscope he'd been using serving as the midpoint. "A drug, of course. There has to be a drug. An hallucinogenic or a deliriant of some kind, but there's no trace of anything in the sugar."

"What?" Greg repeated, this time a bit more intelligibly. "Sugar?"

Sherlock barely glanced at Lestrade, but gave a brief nod nonetheless. "The sugar, yes," he said. "It's a simple process of elimination. I saw the hound – saw it as my imagination expected me to see it, as a genetically engineered monster. But I knew I couldn't believe the evidence of my own eyes. So, there were seven possible reasons for it – the most probable being narcotics. Henry Knight – he saw it, too. However John did not. John and I have partaken of precisely the same things since arriving in town," he paused for breath, and John suddenly realized that, apart from some coffee, tea, and water, he'd not had so much as a breath mint since arriving. Which means that Sherlock's had even less. John repressed the urge to sigh. One of these days, he's going to realize that, transport or not, he can't live on air alone. "The only difference in what he and I have eaten is that I take sugar in my coffee," Sherlock continued, unaware of John's inner thoughts. "I took a sample from Henry's kitchen." Sherlock glared at the microscope as though it had insulted him. "It's perfectly all right." His tone of voice shifted slightly and he ceased his pacing. "It has to be a drug, but how did it get into our systems? How?" he asked no one in particular and perched back on the stool in front of the microscope. "There has to be something," he muttered, closing his eyes. "Something… something buried deep…"

Ten minutes later, Stapleton was showing John and Greg to the main break room on sublevel two, while listening with rapt attention to John's explanation of just what a 'mind palace' entailed. Greg, still exhausted, followed them, grinning to himself at the mental image of an animated, cartoon Sherlock Holmes wandering around a Disney-style fairy princess castle – he blamed his daughter for the plethora of imagery from which he could draw for that type of imagining, but it was his son's fondness for Japanese cartoons that was to blame for the fact that the Sherlock in his imagination only held a passing, caricaturish resemblance to the detective.

The break room was far and above anything even remotely close to rooms with which Greg had had experience in the past; it contained a ping-pong table, three pinball machines, a bank of vending machines along a wall shared by a fully-functional kitchen with two large refrigerators, several tables with four comfortable-looking chairs at each, and an arc of three overstuffed sofas surrounding an HDTV that sported two separate gaming consoles in addition to a Blu-ray DVD player. Greg flopped onto the nearest sofa with a grateful groan and a creak of the sofa's fake-leather upholstery. He was asleep in minutes.

John wished he could follow suit, but there were other things that needed doing. Not the least of which is actually attempting to eat something, regardless of the fact that food holds all the charm of a week-old corpse right now. God, I want to go home. London. Where I don't have to choke down chemicals in order to walk without feeling like my leg's going to explode…

The break room's coffee pot wound up with plenty of exercise over the next few hours, as Dr. Stapleton came and went. John busied himself with slowly eating a somewhat stale donut from the vending machines, channel-surfing on the TV, reading – and immediately forgetting the contents of – articles in the collection of newspapers scattered around the room, and finally giving up on attempting to be somewhat productive and playing solitaire with a deck of battered playing cards he'd located in one of the cupboards. It took him nearly an hour to realize the deck was missing the six of clubs. Giving up on the cards, he then spent the next hour reading through his spellbook, idly noting those spells he thought he might actually need by the end of the case.

When the oxycodone in his system began to fade, John took himself over to the cluster of couches and stretched out on the one next to where Lestrade softly snored. He watched the minute hand tick around and around on his watch until it finally read five-thirty. John pulled the bottle of opiate from his pocket and stared at the single pill rattling forlornly within. His hands had started to itch; the deep-seated irritation of mending tissue telling him more than the distinct lack of pain that Dr. Stapleton's salve was working as advertised. He debated not taking that final pill, but the pain from his knee – his overworked, much-abused knee – was steadily getting worse. I'm probably going to need that one spell before all is said and done here. Good thing I memorized it.

A loud yawn interrupted him. "D'you think they'd notice if I took this home with me? It's more comfortable than my bed," Greg said, shattering John's blank assessment of his last remaining tablet of relief.

John let out a small chuckle. "Probably, but if you really wanna try…"

Greg echoed the laugh and shook his head. "Nah – won't fit in my car." He yawned again, then pushed himself into a sitting position and stretched, wincing when his shoulders and the top part of his spine crackled noisily. He scrubbed his palms across his face, then took a deep breath. "There still coffee?"

"Should be, yeah," John motioned to the industrial pot next to the sink. As Greg got up and helped himself, John fumbled the lid off the bottle and dry-swallowed the pill. If we're going to be here much longer, I'm going to need to see if there's a chemist's nearby. He tucked the empty bottle back into his pocket and hobbled after Greg.

They were just finishing up their coffees when Dr. Stapleton returned once more, Sherlock on her heels. "I've got it!" the consulting detective exclaimed, then proceeded to shepherd Greg, John, and Stapleton back to the elevator and up to the security office without any further explanation.

Once the four of them were settled within the office, Dr. Stapleton at one of the computer consoles, Sherlock paced the length of the room. "Project HOUND. Must have read about it and stored it away. An experiment at a CIA facility in Liberty, Indiana." He paused in his pacing and stood behind Stapleton. "H. O. U. N. D," he spelled out, looking over her shoulder. She typed on the keyboard, but the computer sounded a buzzing noise that was recognizably a 'denied access' alert even without needing to look at the screen.

"That's as far as my access goes, I'm afraid," Dr. Stapleton said, looking at Sherlock.

"There'd be an override," John supplied, stretching his injured leg and wishing that time-release oxycodone kicked in a little faster.

"I'd imagine so, but that'd be Major Barrymore's," Stapleton agreed.

Sherlock spun on his heel, almost bowling over Greg, as he hurried over to Barrymore's office. "Password, password, password," he muttered. Switching on the office lights, Sherlock flopped down on Barrymore's chair and peered around the room, his hands folded in front of his mouth. "He sat here when he thought it up." John didn't bother walking over to watch Sherlock's process – he'd seen it enough in his day to day life that he could have predicted exactly what Sherlock was doing, down to how his hair was arranged. Greg and Stapleton, however, hovered in the doorway. "Describe him to me," Sherlock demanded of the scientist.

Stapleton shrugged. "You've seen him."

"But describe him."

Something in the tone must have clued Stapleton in on the fact that Sherlock was looking for personality, not physical description with his order. Stapleton thought for a moment, then said, "He's a bloody martinet. A throw-back; the sort of man they'd have sent into Suez."

"Good," Sherlock replied. "Excellent. Old-fashioned, traditionalist. Not the sort that would use his children's names as a password. He loves his job, proud of it, and this is work-related. So, what's at eye-level?" He looked around the room. "Books. Jane's Defense Weekly, bound copies. Hannibal, Wellington, Rommel, Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples – all four volumes." Sherlock stood. "Churchill – well, he's fond of Churchill. Copy of The Downing Street Years; one, two, three, four, five separate biographies of Thatcher." He shifted his attention to a framed photograph. "Mid 1980s at a guess. Father and son: Barrymore senior. Medals. Distinguished Service Order," he said that bit a trifle louder than the rest of his observances.

"Mid-eighties? Probably Falklands veteran," John replied, knowing his role in Sherlock's brainstorming routine with a level of familiarity only performers in long-running plays and musicals could sympathize with.

"Right," Sherlock said. "So Thatcher's looking a more likely bet than Churchill." He brushed past Greg and Stapleton and headed over to the computer Stapleton had abandoned.

"So that's the password?" Greg asked with a tone that revealed a dawning understanding of how it was that Sherlock managed to hack into the Met's files anytime he pleased.

Sherlock began to slowly, deliberately type on the keyboard, then paused and shook his head. "No," he said. "With a man like Major Barrymore, only first name terms would do." He hit backspace a few times and re-typed the password. He hit 'enter', and the computer let out a string of irritatingly cheerful tweets.

Using his cane to push against the floor, John rolled the chair he'd commandeered over next to Sherlock, nudging Greg back a step. An overview of Project H.O.U.N. onto the computer screen. John's eyes managed to latch onto several important phrases in the first few paragraphs: extreme suggestibility, fear and stimulus, conditioned terror, aerosol dispersal. Sherlock quickly scrolled down and a photograph of a group of thirteen scientists, all wearing the same sweatshirt showing a snarling wolf over the legend H.O.U.N.D. Liberty, In, appeared on-screen. The caption below named the five project leaders: Elaine Dyson, Mary Uslowski, Rick Nader, Jack O'Mara, and Leonard Hansen.

John's imagination latched on to the first letter of the last names and printed them on Scrabble tiles. It only took half a second for him to rearrange them into HOUND. He looked over at Stapleton, who was staring in stunned disbelief at the screen. "Hound," she whispered. John glanced over his shoulder and saw that Greg was frowning at the screen. John returned his attention to the computer. Sherlock had scrolled past the photo and now new phrases jumped out at John: paranoia, severe frontal lobe damage, breach of the blood-brain barrier, gross cranial trauma, dangerous acceleration, multiple homicide. Several were accompanied by equally-alarming photographs.

"Jesus," Greg whispered.

Sherlock ignored the sentiment and focused on scanning the file. "Project H.O.U.N.D. – a new deliriant drug which rendered its users incredibly suggestible. They wanted to use it as an antipersonnel weapon to totally disorient the enemy using fear and stimulus; but they shut it down and hid it away in 1986."

"Because of what it did to the subjects they tested it on," Stapleton said, though it was more than half-question.

"And what they did to others," Sherlock agreed, paging back to the horrifying photos. "Prolonged exposure drove them insane – made them almost uncontrollably aggressive."

"So someone's been doing it again – carrying on the experiments?" Greg asked.

Sherlock continued scrolling back through the file until he reached the group-shot of the scientists involved. "Attempting to refine it, perhaps, for the last twenty years."

"Who?" Stapleton asked, focusing on the photo. "Who would possibly want to do something like that?"

Sherlock clicked the photo to bring up a larger copy of it. "Five principal scientists, twenty years ago… Maybe our friend's somewhere in the back of the picture – someone who was old enough to be there at the time of the experiments in 1986, but…" he trailed off. "Maybe somebody who says 'cell phone' because of time spent in America." He looked to John. "You remember?"

John closed his eyes and nodded. "Dr. Frankland," he said. "He gave us his number in case we needed him."

"Bob? Bob Frankland?" Stapleton was obviously having a difficult time believing it. "But Bob doesn't even work on… I mean – he's a virologist. This was chemical warfare," she nodded to the screen.

"It's where he started, though, and he's never lost the certainty – the obsession – that the drug could really work," Sherlock said, retrieving his mobile and the card Frankland had given him the day before. "Let's arrange a little meeting." Sherlock abandoned the computer and focused on his phone.

Before he could connect his call to Frankland, John's own phone began to trill out the ringtone it used for numbers not listed in his contacts. Frowning at it, John hit the button to answer. "Hello?" All he could hear was the sound of a woman crying. "Who's this?"

"You've got to find Henry," the woman said.

John blinked in recognition at her voice. "It's Louise Mortimer," he said to Sherlock. "Louise, what's wrong?"

"Henry was," she sniffled, "was remembering, then… He tried…" The hitching, crying breath interrupted for a moment before she could continue. "He's got a gun. He went for the gun and tried to…"

Adrenaline seeped into John's blood, pulling him to his feet and forgetting the pain in his knee. "What, Louise?"

"He's gone," she said. "You've got to stop him. I don't know what he might do."

"Where are you?" John asked.

"His house – I'm okay. I'm okay."

"Right," John replied. "Stay there. We'll get someone to you, okay?"

"Yes," she said, then dissolved into tears again.

John hit 'end', then looked at Stapleton. "You know the Knight house?"

She nodded. "Bloody huge place on the edge of town, right? Just past the turn for the base?"

"Exactly. Get there, and quickly. Henry Knight's therapist is there. No injuries, I don't think, but I'm damn sure she could use a shoulder right about now."

"Henry?" Sherlock asked, causing John to shift his attention.

"He's attacked her and ran."

"There's only one place he'll go to – back to where it all started," Sherlock said, heading for the door. "Did you bring a gun, Lestrade?"

And then there was running, and Greg pushing his precious car hard enough that the display never once shifted out of blue backlighting – it always glowed green whenever John had ridden in it before. Greg parked her with what would have been a screech of tires had they been on pavement and not the graveled track that lead to the borders of the forested area surrounding the Hollow. "Go on, I'll catch up!" John insisted when Greg paused just long enough to look at John climbing out of the car's back seat. Greg nodded and took off at a run, easily catching up with Sherlock.

Working quickly, John used the Insight's bonnet as a makeshift table as he dug into his satchel. He withdrew the chunk of obsidian he carried, and retrieved his penknife from his pocket. With another flake chipped off the stone, he returned it to its place and the knife to his pocket. It was a matter of moments before he'd re-opened the cut on his arm from that morning. He collected the droplets of blood on the obsidian shard's edge, then took a deep breath to center himself. When he'd told Sherlock that a mage was incapable of healing themselves, it hadn't been entirely true – there was one healing-class spell which a mage could use on themselves. It didn't actually heal anything, however. All it did was defer the pain to a later point in time. "And when it comes back, there isn't any chemical compound in any chemist's shop the world over that can touch it," he muttered. "Do I really need to do this?"

Distantly, faintly, he heard Sherlock shout, "No, Henry! No!"

"I'll take that as a yes," he mumbled, then reached for his inner well of magic. He cleared his throat, then recited, "Dolor retrasado es el dolor multiplicado por tres. Admito de buen grado y con agrado el precio. Por mi sangre, que así sea. Por mis palabras, que así sea. Por mi voluntad, que así sea." (7)

With a flash of yellow mage-fire, the blood disappeared from the obsidian. Half a heartbeat later, the pains in his knee and hands and the strain in his back and shoulders evaporated. Tossing the now-useless piece of volcanic glass into the underbrush, he sprinted in the direction Sherlock and Greg had gone.

Skidding to a halt on the rim of the Hollow itself, John grabbed a tree to keep from pitching off the edge. He had arrived in time to hear Sherlock say, "Yes, I'm sure you do, Henry. It's all been explained to you, hasn't it? Explained very carefully." Though the words were said in a very soothing manner John hadn't been aware Sherlock knew how to employ, there was an undertone in his friend's voice that hinted at stress.

Looking down into the Hollow, John had a very clear view of Greg and Sherlock standing a few feet from a distraught Henry. A distraught Henry who was aiming a chromed handgun in their direction. "Shit," John muttered and slipped and slid his way down the steep, muddy cliffside, ignoring his ever-present vertigo of high places as he did so.

Sherlock's words seemed to get through to Henry, for he lowered the gun while John was descending the cliff, and asked, "What?" in a small, confused voice.

"Someone needed to keep you quiet, needed to keep you as a child to reassert the dream you'd both clung to," Sherlock said, still using that soothing tone. "Because you had started to remember." He took a couple of steps towards Henry, holding one hand out in a placating gesture. "Remember now, Henry. You've got to remember what happened here when you were a little boy."

Henry took a shaky breath and raised the gun again, but to John's relief, it was aimed several feet off to the right, ensuring that if Henry accidentally pulled the trigger, the worst it would do was dig a hole in the dirt. "I thought," he stumbled over the words. "I thought it had got my dad." A thickness choked the last word, revealing that Henry was all but a hairsbreadth from crying. "I thought…" Henry's aura – shades of palest pink and grey – whirled around him, then surged, before contracting against his skin. "Oh, jeh – Jesus! I don't know! I don't know any more!" he shouted, then curled himself over his gun, sobbing.

Greg lurched forwards. "No, Henry! Henry, for God's sake!"

Sherlock took another step in Henry's direction, his voice still soothing, but also taking on an edge of absolute certainty, "Henry, remember. 'Liberty, In'. Two words. Two words a frightened little boy saw here twenty years ago." The certainty did more for Henry than the soothing tones had done; his aura began to relax somewhat and the hitches in his breath began to calm. "You'd started to piece things together, to remember what really happened here that night. It wasn't an animal, was it, Henry?"

The sound of gunmetal clinking against tooth enamel was disproportionately loud as Henry removed the muzzle of the gun from his mouth. John saw his aura relax a fraction more as he straightened up and looked questioningly at Sherlock. Sherlock nodded minutely. "Not a monster," he said. "A man." Henry's aura flared back to its normal position, accompanied by a surge of the scent of cocoa butter, then the scent faded from John's awareness as Henry's aura began to twitch. "You couldn't cope," Sherlock continued. "You were just a child, so you rationalized it into something very different. But then you started to remember, so you had to be stopped – driven out of your mind so that no one would believe a word that you said."

Greg slowly stepped close to Henry. "It's okay, mate. Give us the gun." Henry surrendered his weapon; John was nearly certain that he didn't even realize he'd let go of it.

"But we saw it. The hound. Last night," Henry said, his voice still laced through with confusion. "We – we – we did. We saw –"

Sherlock nodded. "Yes. But there was a dog, Henry. Leaving footprints, scaring the tourists, but it was nothing more than an ordinary dog. We both saw it, yes. Saw it as our drugged minds wanted us to see it. Fear and stimulus – that's how it works." Henry blinked at him. "But there never was any monster."

An extremely close, loud howl rent the air, as though in direct opposition to Sherlock's reassuring words. Everyone immediately shot startled and fearful looks in the direction from which it had emanated. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Henry's aura flatten back to defeated terror, while Greg let out a shocked noise and instinctively raised Henry's gun to the rim of the gulley. While Henry let out a panicked string of denials, John – reacting to the rudimentary emotion flowing from the dog – launched himself at Greg. "No!" he shouted, grabbing the gun and wrenching it to point uselessly at the ground.

"Are you out of your bloody mind!" Greg yelled, competing with the dog's growling in order to be heard.

Henry had collapsed to his knees, still repeating a litany of 'no, no, no' while Sherlock unsuccessfully attempted to get him to calm down and actually look at the dog.

The snarling canine was picking its way down the same slope John had so recently conquered himself. But though its body language was aggressive, John had no trouble sensing other things swirling in its mind. First and foremost was fear; the thick, cloying taste of ammonia left little room for misinterpretation. Wrapping it was the cold, bitter desolation of being utterly, utterly alone – an emotion John himself recalled in all-too-familiar vividness from those days between settling into his bland little bedsit and meeting Sherlock. And on the surface was one last primary emotion – the sharp, bright knife's edge of hunger.

"Don't shoot the dog," John ordered in his best Captain Watson voice, then let go of Greg's wrist and spun around in time to see the dog – a larger-than-normal Chocolate Lab – quivering in preparation to leap towards Sherlock and Henry. Still using his magic-infused voice, John jumped into the dog's path and shouted, "Down!"

The dog let out a confused whine and nearly concussed itself on a rock to pull its leap short of the target. John sent a tendril of his magic out and sank it into the dog's monochrome aura, smoothing out the spikes of fear and pushing a sense of not alone into its confused mind. Unfortunately, John couldn't do a damn thing about its hunger – Not yet, at any rate. "It's okay," John said, still using Captain Watson. "It's okay." He walked over to the dog and held his hand out. The dog let out another whine and licked his wrist, just above the bandages covering his burns. "See? I'm not a bad guy," he said, then knelt on the damp leaves. In a slightly louder voice, he called over his shoulder to Henry, "It's just a dog, Henry. Just a dog. Come see for yourself."

The Captain Watson order cut through Henry's panic like a hot blade through ice cream. His repetitions of 'no' cut off as though someone had flicked a switch. Hesitantly, Henry got to his feet and stumbled over to where John was stroking the dog behind its ears. Unseen by Henry, John was also suppressing the dog's fight-or-flight response; John's own aura had completely cocooned the less-developed aura of the dog. As a result, the dog itself had calmed significantly, and was even wagging its tail, sweeping leaves and bits of rotting vegetation clear of the stone-choked soil directly behind it.

"Just a… dog," Henry's voice was packed with childlike wonder. "A big, black dog." Carefully, Henry approached the dog and held out his own hand. The dog sniffed it, then licked the side of John's face.

"Alright, you, down," John laughingly said, wrestling the dog off of him.

The pleasant little interlude was then interrupted by Sherlock's voice from the other side of the Hollow. "It's not you – you're not here!"

Alarmed by the horror in his voice, John leapt to his feet, the dog coming to heel just behind him. On the other side of the little ravine, Sherlock had grabbed a hold of a man wearing a gas-mask – one with red-tinted eye holes – and was wrestling with him. Lestrade moved around the edge of their grapple, looking for a place to jump in and help. Sherlock adjusted his grip and managed to knock the man's mask off, causing him to back away, holding his shirtsleeve over his nose and mouth. It was Bob Frankland.

Sherlock immediately calmed and straightened up. "The fog!" he cried.

"What?" Greg said.

"It's the fog," Sherlock repeated. "The drug – it's in the fog. Aerosol dispersal – that's what it said in those records. Project H.O.U.N.D. It's the fog! A chemical minefield!"

The dog, still wrapped in John's aura, growled threateningly at Frankland; reacting to John's own loathing of the man. Frankland startled and nearly tripped over a fallen log. "For God's sake! Kill the blasted thing!"

Henry looked from the dog – bristling with anger at John's side, but not moving an inch – to the man who had once called his father 'friend'. "No," Henry said, though it was obvious that this time the word wasn't a denial of events, but a direct reply to Frankland's command. "It's just a dog," he growled, stepping closer to Frankland.

John saw Henry's aura finally spin back into its usual cloud, then begin to swirl madly around him. Henry's temper had finally reached its breaking point. "You. Utter. Bastard." The words were ground out through gritted teeth. Henry tensed, then leapt upon Frankland. "Twenty years!" he shouted, pummeling the scientist. "Twenty years of my life making no sense! Why didn't you just kill me and have done with it?!"

Greg quickly moved over and pulled the flailing knees'n'elbows of Henry Knight off of the crouching scientist, but it was Sherlock who answered Henry's question. "Because dead men get listened to, Henry. He needed to do more than kill you – he had to discredit every word you ever said about your father. And he had the means right at his feet. A chemical minefield," he gestured to the ground, shrouded in a thick layer of fog. "Pressure pads in the ground dosing you every time you came back here," he said, then grinned. "Murder weapon and scene of the crime all at once," he let out a delighted little laugh. "Oh, this case, Henry! Thank you! It's been brilliant!"

John sighed. "Sherlock!" he reprimanded. As his friend looked at him in slight befuddlement, he clarified, "Timing."

Sherlock cocked his head slightly. "Not good?"

Henry interrupted the aside, "No. It's fine." He glanced from John to Sherlock. "Because this means," he said, looking to Frankland, "this means that my dad was right." He took two steps towards the scientist, but Greg's hand on his shoulder kept him from getting any closer. "He found something out, didn't he? And that's why you killed him – because he was right and he'd found you in the middle of an experiment," he spat the last word with a level of disgust that John typically reserved for finding electric-orange slime in his yogurt.

"Henry," Greg said. "Come on, mate – calm down. We've got him now. I'll speak with the local force, have them reopen your dad's file." Henry ripped his gaze from Frankland to level a questioning look at Greg. "Oh, sorry – we've not been properly introduced. Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, Scotland Yard, London." He let go of Henry's shoulder and offered his hand.

A slow smile crossed Henry's face as he shook it. "Pleasure," he said.

"Frankland!" Sherlock shouted, ripping attention back to him and the scientist. The scientist had taken the momentary interruption to make an attempt to escape. Sherlock dashed after him, branches breaking in the undergrowth.

Greg shouted Sherlock's name and took off after them, with Henry on his heels. "No!" Henry yelled. "He can't get away now!"

John just rolled his eyes and slowly began picking his way across the uneven terrain. "Where do they think he's gonna go?" he aimed the question at the dog. "It's not like we can't find him." The dog let out a little yip of agreement and followed John.

A loud explosion had John reflexively ducking for cover a couple of moments later. The dog whined and tried to bury its head in John's jacket. John climbed to his feet, brushed bits of leaves off of himself, and headed towards the flickering glow of fire. He caught up with Henry, Greg, and Sherlock at the barbed wire fence that surrounded the more traditional minefield that encircled Baskerville. Even without having to ask, it was fairly obvious what had happened – Frankland had, either by accident or on purpose, triggered one of the landmines.

John fought his memories back – memories of blood and death and missing limbs – and dug into his pocket for the post-it from Barrymore. He handed it to Sherlock, then spent the next twenty minutes in doctor mode, making sure that everyone was alright, while violently repressing the urge to traipse across the minefield to see if Frankland had managed to survive.

Eventually, Barrymore arrived, along with twenty other soldiers. Most of the soldiers immediately set to work, hooking up floodlights and working with metal detectors to go into the minefield to retrieve Frankland's body. The major himself settled in front of the cluster of John, Greg, Henry, and Sherlock. It took nearly an hour for the four of them to explain what had happened; during which time it came to light that Greg had most likely been exposed to the drug by means of a leaky pipe back in the BSL-1 labs. Barrymore's only response was a brief look of sudden understanding, and a terse, "I will ensure the matter is addressed."

Eventually, the major released them.

Back at the Cross Keys Inn, Sherlock immediately excused himself to the room John had secured for them while Greg went about getting himself accommodations for the night. The spell John had placed earlier in the evening was still going strong, however, and so he decided not to waste his temporary reprieve. He hiked out into the night. Grimpen didn't have much in the way of stores available, but there was a small petrol station still open. He popped in and purchased a one-kilo bag of dog food, then headed for the center of the Grimpen cemetery. Though the avatar hadn't returned to plague him, he didn't want to be easily accessible when it finally decided to return.

The dog – as it had been doing all evening – followed at John's heels, waiting patiently by the door when he'd ducked into the store. Once John was seated on the war memorial's steps, he ripped the bag of kibble open and sat it down. The dog barked happily, then set to inhaling the food at a rate which made John feel guilty for not having been able to feed it earlier.

A quick inspection revealed that the dog – most likely a Labrador/St. Bernard cross – was male, and had, at one time, been someone's pet. He'd already been fixed, and there was a faint thinning of the fur around its neck where a collar had once been worn. "I don't know if I'll be able to keep you," John said, lightly scritching the dog's ears. "I don't know if Mrs. Hudson will let us have any pets."

The dog just grinned at him and thumped his foot with his wagging tail.

"Yeah – I suppose you have a point," John replied. He got out his phone and hit 'send' after scrolling to the right number. It rang twice before someone answered. "Evening, Mrs. H. How're you doing?"

"Oh, fine as ever," she replied. "Sherlock behaving himself?"

John chuckled. "Much as he ever does. We've wrapped up this case and should be back home sometime tomorrow, probably just before noon."

"That's good to hear. It's too quiet when the both of you are gone."

"Listen, I had a question for you."

"Yes?" Mrs. Hudson was curious.

"How do you feel about pets? Specifically, dogs?"

She let out a delighted laugh. "I love animals, John. But do you think it wise to keep one, what with Sherlock…?"

John had to admit she had a point, but one look at the dog's chocolatey eyes, sparkling happily in the faint light from the streetlamps, had him firming his resolve. "I know, but I don't think Sherlock will be the problem. Only real issue I can foresee at this juncture is the sheer amount of kibble he's gonna go through."

The dog seemed to know that John was talking about him and let out a puppylike bark.

"Oh, is that him, then?" Mrs. Hudson asked, a little bit of enthusiastic happiness coloring her words.

"Yeah," John confirmed. "That's him. Dunno what I'm gonna call him yet, but he's a pretty good dog. Hopefully, you'll agree."

"I'm sure I will," Mrs. Hudson replied. "So, I'll be seeing you tomorrow, then?"

"Pretty sure. I'll call if that changes."

"See that you do – I'll make scones."

A couple of minutes later, they bid each other good night, and John returned the phone to his pocket. He focused his attention on the dog. All of the fear and hunger and loneliness of earlier had bled out of his aura and was now sleepily content. The dog jumped up onto the stair beside John and laid his head in John's lap. A soft wuff had John resuming his interrupted petting. Less than twenty minutes later, the dog's paws began twitching as he chased dreamtime rabbits and squirrels.

Even knowing that, once his spell wore off, he was going to be in agony; even knowing that Frankland would never stand trial for torturing Henry; even knowing that the next day was going to be excruciatingly long; John was content. He was still curious as to why Grimpen's leyline hated him, but since it wasn't actively bugging him at the moment, he pushed aside thoughts on it, promising himself to ask Ajay when they returned to London.

He looked up at the star-spattered sky, idly adjusting where he'd stuck his cane through a beltloop, and let out a long breath. It's beautiful out here. He glanced down at his injured knee. Beautiful, yes, but I don't care if Sherlock manages to score himself a solid ten on his weird-o-meter – I am never leaving London ever again.

A/N2: Sorry about the lateness of this chapter, but I landed a paid editing gig for a fantasy manuscript, and pay takes precedence over pleasure (as I'm sure y'all are aware).

The book John is reading in the beginning of this chapter is Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz. The excerpt was provided by Amazon's 'look inside' feature.

I also know that the structuring for schooling in the UK is very different to that here in the US, however I meant what I said about the bit where I mention flashback!John was between his junior and senior years – my headcanon has it that he attended to his undergrad studies in the US (and I even know which school he snagged a full ride to, too, but I'm not going to say – I'm still hopeful that bit will find a way to present itself in-story); so, during that teeny flashback, John was enjoying the last of his summer break between his third and fourth years of college. Of course, I'm going to keep him having gone to medical school at St. Bart's, otherwise I'd need to rewrite rather a lot of what I've already posted, and that's just not something I'm willing to do right now.

And while writing this, I rather had dog-puns on the brain, so I noticed something I'd not really registered before – has anyone else noticed how punny it is that Sherlock and John wind up with a Land Rover? Just thought I'd point it out.

The bits that John used in his bath have both magical and medicinal properties. Arnica is commonly used medicinally to treat strained muscles, and magically it's believed to enhance psychic gifts. Comfrey is one of the best topical remedies I know of for bruises and swellings (and has been used for millennia under the folk-name of 'boneset'), and it's magical uses include warding off thieves. Lavender's relaxation properties are likewise not a matter of superstition, but are scientifically-backed; it's a potent relaxation aid and a very effective anti-inflammatory. Magically, it's not as relevant (and why John said what he did about 'hope springs eternal') – it's used quite a bit in aphrodisiacs and love potions. Just so y'all know, of course.

Extracellular matrix is one of natures little miracles. It's seriously awesome stuff. Go do a little research and see why!

And in something completely unrelated – I spend a lot of free time over at notdoppler-dot-com, playing either Earn to Die or Feed Us (1-5). I've found the perfect example of irony: In Feed Us 3, in order to beat the game, you have to kill the sea monster (which is hard to do, as you might imagine). I figured out the trick to it, but the last time I played, I killed the sea monster, only to almost immediately get eaten by a shark – yet I still 'won', because I completed the level's objective. So far, no irony. I know, I'm getting to that bit. The irony comes in with the splash page that shows on completing that level: Congrats, you are now top of the food chain. Even though I was just eaten by a shark.

All Pashto phrases are taken from nawcom-dot-com-slash-swearing-slash-pashto-dot-htm . Any other language's phrases are courtesy Google Translate and any other appropriate aspects of Google.

1.) Salam – 'hi' in Dari. Esmee – 'my name is' in Arabic. Nemidanam – 'I don't know' in Farsi. Usted tiene cualquiera – 'you have any' in Spanish. Amem – 'I would love' in Latin. Lionn – Scottish Gaelic for 'beer'. (I've actually uttered sentences like this, only using words from Spanish, Russian, Japanese, German, and English – and, depending on how drunk I am at the time, parts have been known to be signed in ASL, too. Drives everyone I know nuts, and me, too, because I rarely notice when I've done it until I get the blank stares and the 'WTFs' from whomever I'm around at the time.)
2.) Daga me ra wazbaisha – Pashto for 'suck my dick'.
3.) Da spi zo – Pashto for 'son of a bitch'.
4.) Siksaka – Hindi for 'teacher'.
5.) Spee bachee – Pashto for 'son of a bitching'.
6.) Da spi zo – Pashto for 'son of a bitch'.
7.) Dolor retrasado es el dolor multiplicado por tres. Admito de buen grado y con agrado el precio. Por mi sangre, que así sea. Por mis palabras, que así sea. Por mi voluntad, que así sea. – Spanish for 'Pain delayed is pain multiplied by three. I willingly accept and welcome the price. By my blood, so be it. By my words, so be it. By my will, so be it.'

Please remember to let me know your thoughts on this AU. Thanks in advance.

Until next time folks!