A Sherlock / Doctor Who crossover. I own neither show, and therefore own none of the characters. This is a story written for the pure joy of writing. It would be more of a joy to receive feedback from my lovely readers.

One week after the Reichenbach Fall, John Watson walks past a new phone box and is stopped by a mad man in a tweed suit to discover Sherlock Holmes is alive, and so is Moriarty. With the help of the Doctor and his TARDIS, they set out to finally stop Moriarty.

Chapter 1

It happened quite suddenly.

John passed the innocuous red telephone booth without a moment's spare thought on the tinted windows or the lack of a proper door handle. In fact, he treated it less than any other phone box he might have spied on that street and if he were in any proper mood, he wouldn't have bothered to add it to his mental road map in the first place. He did, because this was a path he had walked many a time, and this was a new phone box. Almost the same time as the army doctor started to turn, he heard a click, and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

"John Watson!" a voice called cheerfully. "Hello, hello, good to see you and... ah-" The strange man wore a tweed suit, a red bowtie cinched at his throat at the peak of a white undershirt. A smile stretched across his face, his eyes lively, his hair tousled across his head carelessly. As if forgetting John, his attention turned quickly to the phone box he seemingly appeared from. "Oh," he said in dull acceptance. "Oh dear, how odd."

John wore a look of confusion. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and rethought his question. The strange man's sudden appearance had him confused, and he almost walked away that instant, but something about the phone box behind him seemed to shimmer and warp, drawing his attention.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" John heard himself ask, though his attention was on the box, staring at it hard, as if by sheer willpower he could make it divulge secrets of time and space.

The man rounded on him, clapping his hands together and grinning madly. "Right, sorry, where are my manners? I'm the Doctor. You're a doctor too, as I hear it, but I'm the Doctor. I hate confusion," the man said, taking John's hand and pulling him close. He kissed the air on either side of John's cheeks and pulled away before the army doctor could decide what was happening. "Have to remember not to do that," he muttered under his breath, turning away in a flourish to circle the phone box.

"That doesn't really answer the question," John said, stepping closer to the box. The shimmer before his eyes vanished when he doubted himself, and he looked to The Doctor. "Doctor who?"

The Doctor appeared around the side of the red phone box, grin across his face. "Good question, John. And better answered by someone more qualified than myself."

John tried to ask another question, but he couldn't. The strange man kept moving around the box, humming and hawing to himself, as if perplexed and slightly disappointed. No more so than John, who could swear he saw something beneath it, something different than just a plain phone box. When his attention turned, when he looked the other way, he could swear there was something vast hiding beneath the surface.

Without any explanation, the man stopped suddenly, popped up next to John and looked him straight in the eye. The closeness of the strange man set John back, but he held his ground to not show weakness in the face of such a stranger. "You see it too," the Doctor observed. "John Watson, of 221B Baker street-"

"Not anymore," John said wearily, though immediately as the address had been said. Not since the fall, he couldn't bear to stay there. "My... My flatmate died and I left." Why am I telling this stranger?

"Right," the Doctor says slowly, recovering from the interruption to his introduction. He shifted on his toes, moving even closer to get a good look at John's face. "What if I told you that's why I'm here?"

John physically stepped back. He could feel the anger rising. It was enough to suffer the ridicule of the press, it was enough to hear the questions from the police. Now this man, who suddenly stepped into his life and offered nothing but questions and took all the answers to ferret away in his mop of a head, thought he could do the same. "I'm not answering any questions. You can shove off," he said angrily, clenching his fists as he turned and stalked down the sidewalk.

The Doctor danced in front of him to stop him, holding his hands out. "No, John, look at it, that's no ordinary box. Right? And Sherlock - yes, see? Sherlock! - he wasn't a normal person." John stopped to hear the Doctor out, less because he trusted him and more because the box was incredibly interesting, and the strange man dove on. "What if I told you I have the answers? I just need your help. We need your help. It's delicate work and we need a mind for it."

John looked at the man skeptically. "What do you need me for?"

"I thought you'd never ask!" the Doctor exclaimed, brushing past. "Come now, there is much to do and all the time in the world to do it in, if we time it right."

Deciding there was no danger out on a street, John followed the madman only to discover they stopped in front of the red phone box. He looked up at it, arching his eyebrow and giving the Doctor a glance. "Are we phoning someone?"

"Oh, right, he fixed the chameleon circuit. Told him not to, really, but what can you do? You would know better than anyone," the Doctor said in dismissal. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. "Now, if you will."

John made a face, looking at the phone box. "In there? What, do you think I'm daft?"

"Just come on," the Doctor persuaded.

"No, you're mad."

The Doctor sighed heavily, disappearing inside. The door stayed open, leading to something that didn't quite make sense to John's eyes. He tired to turn away, he tired to walk back the way he'd come, to forget about the mad man and the red phone box. He tried very hard, it should be noted that he was very close to leaving. But the strange glow inside and the absence of the Doctor in the space he should be in made him ever curious and he walked to the door.

When he entered the phone booth, the sensory overload stopped him dead in his tracks. Where he'd walked in, where there should be a small box with four walls and a telephone, perhaps a ratty old phone book with torn pages and pen marks from dozens of people, there was instead a strange sort of foyer. It led to a staircase, that led to a circular platform with a circular spire rising from floor to distant ceiling filled with knobs and levers and buttons and even a few parts that resembled engine components. From the round platform were two staircases that led off into the distance on either side, disappearing into the walls further on. Standing at the spire, one hand on a monitor dangling from a metal arm, was the Doctor.

"It's bigger... on the inside," John said dully, when his wits partially returned to him.

"I love that part," the Doctor said, letting the monitor go to jump down the stairs and meet John Watson face-to-face again. "They always come in. You were harder than most, but I had faith in you."

"We're in a phone booth."

"Used to be a police box," the Doctor lamented, shaking his head.

John lifted his hands, as if to emphasize the small space they should be in. "We are in a phone box that is bigger on the inside."

"Precisely."

The familiar voice snapped John out of his shock and he turned to the man. Tall as always, lanky, though somewhat thinner, his hair more of a wild mess than it had ever been. John's mouth worked open and close, but nothing came out. Only stupid shock and disbelief. He'd asked for this, at the cemetery one week ago, he'd asked for Sherlock to be alive. He'd thought it was just a stupid wish, but here the man was. Alive. Well. And his normal asshole self.

Before John quite realized what he was doing, he'd crossed the small foyer, bounded up the steps, moved across the platform, and punched Sherlock square in the jaw. The consulting detective recoiled from the blow, hand going to his face.

"That hurt!"

"Damn right it hurt!" John shouted. "You were dead! I saw you die!"

"I had no choice," Sherlock hissed, dabbing at his lip with a delicate pale finger. His blood smeared red across his skin and he scowled. "The phone was bugged, John. I thought you would have known that."

Logically speaking, John would have known the phone was bugged. From the moment he saw Sherlock standing on the roof, all logic had left his head. Now, even through the anger, he could see the truth in Sherlock's words. "What happened?"

"They never found Moriarty's body?" Sherlock deflected, in that way he did when leading John to conclusions. A small smile played on the corner of his lips as he watched his flatmate.

"Just a smear of blood," John agreed.

The Doctor stepped between them, draping an arm over each man's shoulders. "And that's why I'm here. To get rid of the bad, bad man."

"Sherlock, who is this?"

"The Doctor, John. This is the Doctor."

"So I've heard," John said, twisting out from under the Doctor's arm. He was glad to see Sherlock do the same, though less clumsily. "Who is the Doctor? Is it a code name? Is he part of the military? Are you part of the military?" he asked, directing the question to the Doctor, who stood by with a grin on his face.

"Oh of course not, I'm no Military man. I'm wearing a bowtie. What military man wears a bowtie, John Watson?"

The army doctor didn't have a rebuke for it. Instead, he stood, staring angrily at Sherlock. "You were dead. I saw you die. I watched them..." he heaved a great sigh, holding back the emotions that began to creep into his voice. "I went back to my shrink for it," he said finally.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," Sherlock said loftily. He walked past John to peer into the monitor. "There are bigger things happening now. I'm alive, yes. But so is Moriarty. And we both know what that means."

John looked at the Doctor, then threw his hands up. "No, I don't know what that means because I didn't know he was supposed to be dead!"

"He shot himself in the head," Sherlock said, never taking his eyes off of the monitor. "I saw it happen, but he's alive. So many things, John," the consulting detective said, turning from the monitor. "I've seen so many things and each one makes less sense than the last."

"That's my fault," the Doctor interrupted cheerfully.

Gathering his sea-legs beneath him, or rather his what-the-hell-is-going-on legs, John sat down in the only chair available on the platform, landing hard. "What exactly is going on? Where are we? This isn't a phone booth, how did you do this? I've seen David Blaine, even he couldn't pull this off."

"You're in the TARDIS," the Doctor said, patting the flattened hoop around the circular spire. "Time and Relative Dimension in Space. A traveling machine. Anywhere, anyday, anytime, anyplace. Everywhere. Here, right now, with the great Sherlock Holmes and bachelor John Watson."

John couldn't quite wrap his head around the Doctor's explanation, so he shook his head and pointed to Sherlock. "How is Sherlock alive? There was so much blood..."

"Fake blood," Sherlock said quickly. "Everything was set up. I'm willing to admit the Doctor did much of the work, or the fall would have killed me."

John put a hand against his forehead. "You're telling me you knew it was going to happen? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I had to keep you safe, John." Sherlock's words were earnest, spoken quietly without the usual bitterness.

"That was my fault, as well," the Doctor added. "I had to make sure the man you knew as Moriarty thought everything had gone his way."

"If he wasn't Moriarty, then who was he?" John asked, looking up to the two men.

Side by side, the Doctor and Sherlock Holmes were of relatively same height, with their slim builds and their pressed suits, one with a bowtie one with a loosely buttoned undershirt. The Doctor's eyes were old beyond words, where Sherlock's were cold and logical. Yet something about the pair seemed to go together nicely. To John, he supposed their intelligence must be what got them on so fabulously.

Sherlock didn't make the first move, choosing to let the Doctor explain.

"Moriarty was just a name," the Doctor said hesitantly. "It really is a good thing you're sitting down, most people don't take it all in one sitting." The Doctor rocked on the balls of his feet, tugging a strange, pen-shaped device from his pocket. Fiddling with it, he looked up at the ceiling of the TARDIS to gather his thoughts. "Moriarty was really a Time Lord, like myself, called the Master," he said, eyeing John for any questions that might arise. "I thought he was dead. Then, I also thought he had reformed, and that was not right at all. I found him by pure chance."

"When Moriarty broke into the Crown Jewels case," John said.

"You are smart," the Doctor crowed, delighted. "It was brought to my attention right about then, with everything going off at once. I was in the area, visiting with some... friends. And family. Family friends. Friends of family. Anyway, that's not important. What is important is that I found the Master, and I found his target."

John sighed heavily, felling much like he'd had this conversation before with Mycroft. "Sherlock Holmes."

"Really quite a popular fellow," the Doctor agreed, grinning at the sullen detective. "Unfortunately, his unending charm isn't what the Master wanted from him."

"Moriarty," John clarified.

"Right, Moriarty. The Master. They're the same person, John, keep up with me." The Doctor flipped the pen-shaped object, pointing it at John. The little green light and the pulsing sound put the army doctor off, but the Doctor only smiled. He scanned the light over John, then flipped it up to stare at the base of the clawed prongs. "Don't worry, its sonic. A sonic screwdriver, actually. Ah! Good news, John. You're not bugged."

"Why would I be bugged?"

Sherlock pulled the hems of his coat, looking annoyed. "If someone were following you, to make sure I was really dead, they would have you bugged."

"No one has been following me since you... died," John said stiffly.

"Don't be foolish," Sherlock said in dismissal. "The homeless, John, they're my eyes and ears. You have been under their surveillance since the day I faked my death. You don't really think I'd let you be alone, do you?"

John didn't have time to answer the unusual detective. A sudden static blasted through the cavernous hall of the TARDIS and the Doctor was hopping around the center console, flipping switches and jamming levers. The crazy man pointed, and Sherlock stepped up to the controls, pressing a lever down. Never before had John seen Sherlock take orders, or suggestions. Something, some tiny part of him, was jealous of the mad man with the box. To get Sherlock to do something so easily!

"John, hold this one here!" the Doctor called, pointing to a yellow button before dancing away to play with the other components. "She's locked on to the Master's position!"

John scrambled to the button as the floor beneath his feet gave a nauseating lurch. As far as he knew, they were the only people on the ship. "Who is locked on to the Master?"

"The TARDIS, of course," the Doctor said, as if everyone should know it. "You might feel a slight dizzying sensation - you can stop pressing that button, Sherlock - but that will pass. Here we are... now... geronimo!"

Slight dizzying sensation didn't quite cover the stomach-dropping wave of nausea that pulsed through John Watson as the TARDIS rattled and pitched like a sailboat through a storm. He lost his grasp on the button, falling back from the console to be caught by Sherlock and eased into the chair. Through his double vision, he managed to spot the Doctor, standing at the console with a wide grin. When at last the TARDIS came to a halt with grinding gears, the Doctor pranced to John Watson's side, clapped him on the back, and laughed.

"Welcome to time travel, John Watson."