Notes: This story is a collaboration between myself and the most awesome lobstergirl. Go check out her superb Mystrade stories over on AO3 and you will see why I jumped at the chance to work with her! This is a minor Dexter, major Torchwood x Sherlock crossover. Unfortunately, FF would not let me add anymore characters or categories to the list.
Warnings for canon-style violence. This is a slash story, so if that's not your cuppa, please stop here. Otherwise, we both hope you enjoy reading it as much as we are enjoying writing it!
From a certain social networking site with a side order of telephone call and a smattering of e-mails between two crazy fangirls comes this brainchild. We have nursed it, changed it's nappies and now we present it to you all cleaned up and ready to play.
"There are many impossible things in this universe that cannot be easily categorized. So many more objects and such that humankind wants and is convinced that it must have, yet there are many truths that perhaps humans are not meant to know but rather to experience." -excerpt from the Journal of Ianto Jones
Prologue
"It's already too far gone to save." Doctor Watson states to the man standing behind him. He receives a short grunt in reply. "I think I felt the object you were talking about, though."
Again, there is no answer but John can feel the heavy weight of eyes studying his every move. It is familiar in a most emotional way; John refuses to acknowledge the feeling, instead turning back to the task at hand. A faint cold breeze blows around them, lifting the fringe of ash-blond hair from the doctor's brow and cooling the sweat there. He is far from cold, however, as the creature beneath him is radiating a strange level of heat.
John Watson is elbow-deep in the chest cavity of a bright blue Kel'fish. Its eyes are wide open; red, oddly pentagonal pupils frozen in mid-dilation. In the center of its rather humanoid forehead is a perfectly shaped circular entrance wound from an antique hand gun. The thing smells like cairn and its insides are repugnantly squishy. If John were anyone other than who he is, he would be positive that this is some joke being played on him by his mates; he trusts his hands, though, and accepts that it is all too real.
John is kneeling on the hard ground beside the creature, trying hard to uncover the strange object it swallowed that ultimately killed it. He looks down into the mushy purple innards of the creature just as his gloved fingers close around something smooth and hard; he removes it very slowly, finally holding it up to the dying light of day. It appears to be a titanium signet ring with a clear jewel set in the smooth top. The jewel catches the orange light of the sunset and it glitters back as liquid gold. For a moment, John is spellbound.
"Thank you, Doctor Watson." A smooth American voice says over John's head as sturdy fingers pluck the ring from John's hand. His palm suddenly feels very, very empty.
"You're welcome, Jack, I think." John stands carefully, easing his weight off his bad leg and gratefully accepting the arm of the other man to balance on. John peels the gloves off his hands and looks around, worried about simply dropping them.
"Ah, we'll get that." A pretty Asian woman appears as if out of nowhere holding a large black box, her breath puffing into a small cloud in the frigid March air. She opens the box and holds it out to John who drops in his used gloves. Jack holds the ring up one more time to look at it, shakes his head then adds it to the weird collection. It makes a tink sound as it hits the bottom of the box.
"Thanks, Tosh." Jack offers to the woman's retreating back. She nods her head as an answer, her glossy black hair shiny against the growing darkness.
"'til next time, then, Doctor?" Jack beams at John and holds out his hand.
John nods and shakes the offered hand; each man gripping the other's tightly, using the action to say what they will not.
"Sure, why not. 't's not like I've much else to do at the moment, since…" He shrugs and does not exactly smile; the look on his face is more like relief.
Jack claps John on the shoulder as they walk in silence out of a sparse grove of trees and back towards the road. A shiny navy blue sedan is idling on the shoulder, a man in a golf cap standing with the back door open. He nods in John's direction and John holds up his hand, asking him to wait just a bit more. The driver tilts his chin again and moves around to get into the seat, leaving the door open and waiting.
"Actually, Jack, I should be thanking you." John's expression is sad, turned inward.
Jack, being who he is, can say nothing. He has come to genuinely respect Doctor Watson as a surgeon, a soldier, and as a consulting member of his team. In his tightly-guarded heart, Jack wants so badly to spill a deep secret to John that will affect the other man; in his mind, however, he knows that there are some secrets that should never be divulged until the time is right. They shake hands again and Jack grasps John's arm tightly, the closest to a hug the two of them will get. John may not be privy to all of Torchwood's secrets yet, but he seems to inherently understand a few things about Jack, and so Jack lets Doctor Watson have his distance.
Besides, John's heart clearly belongs to someone else; it is not just that it is lost, because that would imply that it can be found. Jack knows that some things just have to come back in their own time.
John gives a short little wave to the brown-haired man in the long, dark blue wool coat as he slides into the car. In an instant, he is gone. Full darkness settles around the secluded lake and the Welsh countryside that accompanies it.
ooo
Sherlock Holmes fights his most important battles alone, as he always has done. He scuffles, scraps and downright dogfights his way in and out of more trouble in a few months than he has in his entire life. One day it is finally over. Like a powerful god of storms, he will return to the land of the living in a blaze of glory.
Out of it all, everything he has done and had to do to stay alive, all he wants is to come home.
Home, as simple a word as John.
One day soon, he will have to answer for many, many trespasses, but for now he is ready to face the cacophonic music of his best friend's broken heart.
"John, I am here." His warm baritone carries through empty corridors as he steps through a doorway and back into John's life, a promise of forever riding on his swishing coattails. There is anger, arguments and finally, finally, a tearful promise in a kiss that changes everything.
John's life begins anew but he does not give up those tasks that have helped him out of the darkness. He has tasted what lies beyond what most people consider 'normal' and found that he enjoys it. John holds out his arms and allows the eye of the storm back into his heart and wonders how he can maintain the balance of everything his life has come to be.
ooo
The man fights his way back into consciousness only to find that he is lying on his back on a hard and unyielding surface. He slowly blinks his eyes open and immediately closes them again. Bright colors drill straight into his optic nerves. A wet cough forces its way up through his chest so he forces himself up as he hacks into his hand, eyes firmly closed. When the pain subsides, he wipes the moisture from his lips and scowls at the foul taste of lake water in his mouth. Where did that come from?
Besides the brackish taste against his tongue, he slowly realizes that his hair and clothing are soaked through. Somewhere close by the sound of running water captures what small bit of attention he can spare. He struggles and manages to force himself upright, an action that eases the ache in his chest. Of course, it does nothing for the throbbing at his temples; this pain forces him to lean forward with his head in his hands.
After a while, he carefully lifts his head, opens his eyes once more, shielding them with his hands and when they adjust to the colorful lights, he lowers his hands and tries to make sense of his surroundings. He is sitting on a bench at the edge of an oval space, a plaza of sorts, surrounded by illuminated pillars. How did he get here? What is this place? His mind is a complete blank, a sea of unnamed faces and landscapes; memories that keep circling back to water, always water. He tries to reach into his subconscious and retrieve those strange, faded memories but as soon as he begins groping for them, he is shut down with a wave of nausea unlike anything he has ever felt before. A soul-searing groan is ripped from between his teeth, his body convulses against the bench and its old metal bindings squawk under the onslaught.
He reaches out to clutch at the air as if to balance against nothing just before he slides off of the bench and into a heap on the unforgiving concrete. At least his unconscious brain feels no pain. "Hello, are you alright, sir? Hello? Can you hear me?"
A woman's voice reaches out to him, just as he is about to give in to oblivion's sweet siren song. Once more his mind struggles to the surface, away from the merciful blackness where everything is silent and pain free. He squints up into a pair of hazel eyes that look at him with concern.
"Do you know where you are? What happened to you?" She speaks with a soft voice and a heavy, unfamiliar accent. With a sure hand she takes his pulse and peers into his eyes. "Your name, sir, do you know your name?"
"My name…" He tries to sit up but another wave of nausea makes him wince and he slumps back on the cold ground. The woman's voice drifts in and out of his consciousness.
"Jack. It's me, Gwen. I need your help, quickly. Bring Ianto. I can't do this alone."
She feels for the man's pulse again. It's weak but steady, as is his heartbeat. His shirt is badly stained on the left side but when she unbuttons it to check for wounds, his skin is smooth and unscathed. She frowns and tries to remember if there was anything on the news about a storm or a ship in distress, anything to explain this.
Approaching steps make her look up.
"Look at what the tide brought in," says a mocking voice behind her. "Finders keepers, Gwen? I don't think Rhys would approve if you brought that home with you."
"Jack." Her voice takes on an exasperated note even as she cracks a half-smile at the playful tone. "Can you be serious just once? He needs our help, don't you see that?"
"What he needs is an ambulance," observes the second man and takes his mobile from his pocket. "And possibly a week's worth of pain killers," he mutters under his breath.
"No," Gwen stands up and places a hand on his arm before he makes the call. "Jack, I want you to take a closer look. There's something strange about him."
"No, there's not. He's just a big guy in wet clothes near the Water Tower. Probably a stag party gone wrong and his head will be killing him by tomorrow morning. Ianto's right, we should call an ambulance before he catches pneumonia and dies on our doorstep."
He turns to go, long greatcoat swirling dramatically. It's that moment the stranger opens his eyes again and croaks something that neither of them is able to understand. Gwen immediately crouches down and places a hand on his shoulder.
"What was that? What did you say?"
The man coughs convulsively, and then croaks out, "Isaak. My name… is Isaak." He reaches for her wrist. "Where am I? Who are you?" Red-rimmed, watery green-grey eyes that seem much older than his body plead for answers she cannot give.
Gwen frees her wrist gently but firmly from his grasping fingers.
"You are in Cardiff, and my name is Gwen Cooper."
"Cardiff? I don't understand." Isaak's eyes threaten to close again and Gwen gently shakes him.
"Stay with me, Isaak. What do you remember?"
Her soft-eyed empathetic expression touches him somewhere deep inside; somewhere cold that wants to be warm.
His brow furrows as he tries to remember. As he blindly gropes for memories that will not come, another wave of nausea washes over him and he barely manages to turn away from Gwen as he retches painfully. It hurts even more when all he manages to choke out is a stream of dirty water. His throat burns.
"I fell," he whispers hoarsely, "I remember falling."
The younger man kneels down next to him and brings something to his face that looks like an extra slim mobile phone and outlines his upper body. The device makes a beeping sound and the young man's eyes grow round as saucers.
"That is not possible," he breathes, quickly stands up and hands the device to the other man.
"Look at that, Jack," he urges. Jack takes one look and whistles through his teeth. His face has lost all signs of mockery as the turns towards Gwen and Isaak.
"We need to get him underground. Now."
It takes the combined strength of all three of them to haul Isaak to his feet and all but drag him to the Water Tower. Jack steps on the tile that will take him into the Hub and motions Ianto to help him balance the dead weight of the tall man between them.
ooo
Mycroft Holmes yanks at his tie in the bevel-edged mirror over the fireplace in his sitting room. Even though he only has a conference call to attend to this morning, there is absolutely no reason to look the fat slob his brother always accuses him of being. Thin lips flatten into a line and auburn eyebrows knit tightly as he studies his reflection. This particular call is the first in a seemingly endless row of tightly scheduled catch-up calls between the branches he oversees and serves to pave the way for the upcoming annual strategy meeting he does anything but look forward to.
Needs must, however. Mycroft adjusts the dark maroon tie one more time then brushes his hand against a stubborn hair at the top of his head. Finally satisfied, he moves away from the mirror to settle at his desk. He fiddles with his phone, standing it on its side against his palm and then letting it clatter against the wood.
No music plays in his office so the sound of the front door opening downstairs travels clearly through the partially-open door. The heavy tread of booted feet bounds towards the office until it stops and the silvery head and broad shoulders of Greg Lestrade poke through.
"Good morning." Greg smiles.
"Good morning, Gregory. May I point out that it will most certainly be a much better morning for you, even with your 'round-the-clock stakeout." Mycroft drops the phone against the desk one more time and swivels in his chair to look at the clock.
"Hmmm…must be your super-super-secret chain of phone conferences. Well, then, for all that, I'm going to go take a shower. Ta." With that, Greg disappears back down the hallway.
Mycroft counts his partner's steps to the bathroom and listens to him start the water, seriously contemplating calling Anthea and having her reschedule the call because even exhausted, his favorite DI oozes an unmistakable invitation to do some serious ravishing. Just as he begins to dial her number on his mobile, the shiny black telephone on his desk buzzes. He wrinkles his long nose and sighs before picking it up from the hand rest.
Using his most bossy voice, as smooth and soft as well-oiled leather despite thinking such unchaste thoughts of Gregory only moments ago, Mycroft says into the speaker, "Good morning, Captain Harkness."