A/N: So in this story, Harry is based heavily on Jenny, the Doctor's Daughter (s4e6), but with a different backstory. This first chapter is mostly background. Hope you enjoy, and please remember to review!
John Watson has lived a very long and varied life. Well, lives technically. Five, to be precise. He's on his sixth now.
His sister, Harry, is on her eighth life, despite being almost a hundred years younger than her brother.
John Watson is currently on Earth, taking a break. Harry, as far as he knows, is still touring around the stars, getting into all sorts of trouble. That's what she normally does, anyway.
They haven't been in contact for a while, fifteen years or so. Because of this, John is very surprised when he gets a call from his sister out of the blue, when he is in the middle of a case involving none other than Sherlock Holmes.
-o0o-
I suppose I should start at the beginning of John's story. Or at least, the beginning of this part of John's story.
It started after the Time War. John and Harry stumbled out of their father's TARDIS, coughing and choking on the smoke. They turned around and looked back at the figure in the smoke, waving goodbye to them. "I'll be fine," he said. "Save yourselves. I'll save the universe."
"Dad, no!" Harry shouted, and ran forward, but she was too late. The TARDIS had vanished.
John walked forwards and laid a hand on her shoulder. "He'll be fine, Harry. He always is."
"He can't save our planet alone," she said, staring at the space where the TARDIS had been.
"He'll work something out." She didn't move. "Harry, we have to go. People will be coming along soon, to investigate the smoke."
Finally, she turned around. "Where are we?"
"Appalappachia," he told her, having recognised the place when they arrived. "I think he wanted to drop us somewhere beautiful, and friendly, and safe."
She sniffed, and fiercely wiped away a single tear that had fallen, unbidden, onto her cheek. "That's just like him."
"Let's go," he said again, and this time she followed him away, out of the smoke.
-o0o-
They split up soon after that, each going their own way. Harry stole a spaceship almost straight away, going for a 'cruise around the universe'. She would try to find their father as well, but neither would admit it. Instead. John waved her goodbye with a bittersweet smile.
He tried to copy her at first, half-heartedly going to the typical tourist sites. The Planet of the Coffee Shops. The planet Midnight. The emerald caves of Poosh. The thrice-stolen gate of Yupatrom. But rattling around the galaxy became boring, after a while. So John went to Earth instead.
He wandered around England for a while, trying to find a purpose. He began to use his old surname alias again, Watson, which he had stolen from a gravestone centuries earlier.
Eventually, John found himself in the middle of another war, this time in Afghanistan. Just his luck, to escape one war to end up in another, albeit much smaller, war. He tried not to, but he found himself comparing this war each day to the Time War. He found himself thinking that humans knew nothing about war, nothing about the true destruction and terror it could bring. These little battles, these petty fights, were nothing compared to what his planet and his people had experienced.
After some time, John found these thoughts unbearable. He tried to be brave and strong and noble, like his father, but he could not. So he got himself shot.
He could have healed quickly using his regeneration energy, but this would have made the humans suspicious. Instead, he forced himself to heal slowly, leaving a scar in his shoulder that he knew would be there until his next regeneration. It hurt a lot, of course, but it was better than the alternative.
John was sent back to England, and after a while encountered a curious mystery on a website. He read further, and discovered a man who shouldn't have existed, yet somehow did. John resolved to investigate further. Perhaps that would bring some purpose back into his lives.
-o0o-
Being at the centre of time and space had its advantages. John knew that he needed to be walking through a particular park on a particular date, and so he did, hobbling along on his unnecessary cane.
"John? John Watson?"
He turned around to see a familiar face. "Stamford. Mike Stamford," the man introduced himself. "We were at Bart's together."
Of course he remembered him, from much earlier in this life. Before the Time War, even. However, a human might not have remembered. "Yes, sorry, yes, Mike. Hello, hi," John said. They shook hands.
"Yeah, I know. I got fat!" Mike laughed, gesturing to himself.
"No," John lied easily.
"I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at," Mike said conversationally. "What happened?"
"I got shot." It was the truth, after all.
Mike bought John a coffee (how quaint), and they sat on a bench together. They talked about London and army pensions, then Mike mentioned Harry. John felt a lump in his throat. Where was she? Was she still alive? Had she found Dad?
He pushed the thoughts aside to focus on the conversation. Eventually, Mike offered him a landline: a flat share in central London. John seized it with both hands. Mike took him to the hospital where they used to study, hundreds of years earlier for John, only a few decades for Mike.
They went into a lab with a man who seemed unremarkable at first. Just another scientist. However, the instant he opened his mouth, John was certain he had the right man. The calmness, confidence, even the stance was the same.
"Afghanistan or Iraq?"
He began to deduce things about John. Little things, such as the fact he had been an army doctor, and he had a brother called Harry (sister actually, but close enough, John decided). He got some things wrong, though: he thought Harry was an alcoholic, when it had been Clara; and he thought John's limp was psychosomatic when it was merely put on. What he didn't deduce was that John was an alien from another planet, or that he had died five times before. In other words, nothing important.
"The name's Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street."
John was certain he had the right man. Now all he had to do was wait until the next evening to see him again, and hopefully gain some more information.
-o0o-
Sure enough, the next day, John found himself moving in with Sherlock Holmes, the man who shouldn't exist. Not only that, before long they were chasing around half of London after a mysterious criminal, who turned out to be a taxi driver, of all people.
When they were running, John found himself so caught up in the chase that he completely forgot to keep limping. Sherlock noticed this, of course. However, his arrogance meant that he thought he had cured John, who was only too happy to let him keep thinking that.
Life continued on, and John and Sherlock ran around together, being a modern-day detective and sidekick. John was fully aware of his role as sidekick, and kept a blog of his and Sherlock's adventures, true to form with his literary counterpart. He was careful not to seem too intelligent, instead working extra hard to keep up the human façade, even becoming a doctor (oh, the irony).
As soon as he saw Sarah, he had a feeling about her, similar to when he knew he had to be in the park to meet Mike. She would be important, he could tell; so he asked her out on a date, which went predictably pear-shaped. He kept going out with her afterwards as well, of course, because she was a nice person.
As John and Sherlock ran around, chasing Chinese gangsters and consulting criminals, John realised that he was feeling more alive than he had in years. He felt as if he had a purpose, aside from being the Doctor's son. Here, he wasn't saving planets or fighting civilisations. Instead, he was solving problems that were much smaller, but equally as important.
It was something of a surprise to him when Sherlock revealed that he didn't care about the human lives he was saving. John stormed out, but almost as soon as he was outside, he decided to put it down to ignorance. He was putting a lot down to ignorance, these days.
He was only a few streets away from Sarah's flat when somebody crashed into him from behind, pushing him over and pinning him down. He struggled, but they injected something into his neck to knock him out. It didn't work, of course, but he pretended to be asleep anyway. It was easier than explaining.
When he 'came to', he was in a cubicle near what smelled like a swimming pool. Someone had roughly shoved an overcoat on him with explosives. Well, this is new, he thought resignedly as he waited for something to happen.
And sure enough, it did. Sherlock arrived, and John had to briefly pretend to be Moriarty before Molly's gay boyfriend revealed himself. While he and Sherlock were talking, John saw an opportunity and took it, grabbing Moriarty's throat from behind. Maybe, just maybe, he would be able to stop any more deaths. He knew that if Moriarty was allowed to live, there would be more murders, as per the original books. "Sherlock, run!"
He didn't run, of course. Just John's luck. And to top it off, Moriarty had snipers aiming at both of them. Now, if there was one thing John was not going to let happen, it was Sherlock Holmes dying. So he stepped back, and left his fate in Sherlock's hands. Again.
The conflict was temporarily resolved, and life continued on. John barely had time to think about the family he had left behind as he and Sherlock investigated a dominatrix and an imaginary dog, of all things.
The dog, incidentally, turned out to be the result of a hallucinatory drug, which was so potent it that even worked on Time Lords. There weren't many Earth substances that could do that. John made a mental note to investigate it further if he had a chance.
However, all thoughts of suspicious drugs were pushed aside when one day, out of the blue, John received a call from none other than Harry Watson.
-o0o-
"John! I need a pen!" Sherlock called. There was no answer.
He opened his mouth to call out again, but stopped when he remembered something John had said a while ago, about not always being in the room. Sighing, he sat up and made his way upstairs to John's room, grumbling internally all the way.
Sherlock stopped outside John's room, and was raising a hand to knock when he heard voices coming through the closed door. He leaned closer and listened.
Inside, John held up a small hand-held device that resembled a smartphone. He was looking at a women, her pale blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail, her large mouth in a cheeky grin. "…not the best time, Harry," he was saying apologetically.
She wasn't looking at him, instead focusing on the spaceship controls in front of her. "Guess what I'm doing."
"Are you going to get arrested again?" he asked resignedly.
Harry glanced up at the camera, before returning her attention to the control panel. "Only if I'm caught, Johnny."
John pursed his lips, then ventured to ask a carefully veiled question. "And dad won't find out?"
"Nah. Said he's busy for the next week," she said casually.
John suppressed a frown at the news that she'd spoken to their father. "Rule one," he reminded her. "He lies."
This time, Harry looked up at her brother and grinned widely. "Rule number four, John. The fun is in the chase."
He sighed exasperatedly. "Why now, Harry? It's been years, for me. Longer for you, I can tell. Why are you ringing me now?"
She shrugged nonchalantly. "I got bored."
John snorted. "When you're bored, Harry, you don't call me. You go and fight some Raxicoricofallapatorians, or liberate some Tivolians, or something."
Harry opened her mouth to answer, then glanced above the camera, to another monitor. "Incoming!" she yelled suddenly, and hit a button. John's screen went blank.
He sighed and dropped his arm, knowing that she would contact him as soon as she could, whenever that would be. He gave up worrying long ago.
Outside the door, Sherlock withdrew silently, and slipped downstairs. He lay back on the sofa, and settled down to think about some of the strange things John had said.
Nothing came of these strange things for a while. It was a long time before Harry contacted John again. During that time, Sherlock became famous.
When they discovered the painting of the Reichenbach Falls, John became uneasy, remembering the original Conan Doyle story with the same place. However, he brushed off his misgivings, reassuring himself that it was probably a coincidence. Probably.
Instead, John committed himself to working with Sherlock. He had hoped they would be finished with Moriarty, but then the psychopath returned, this time with a vengeance. Again, the Reichenbach Falls niggled at John's conscience, but he did his best to block it out, rather than preparing for the worst. He was getting good at that.
-o0o-
Then one day, the worst happened. John got out of the cab outside St Bart's hospital, only to receive the phone call that would change his life.
He watched Sherlock jump, watched him fall to the bitter end. He went numb. No, he thought. You weren't going to get involved. The memory of 'The Final Problem' returned to him in a flash, and he knew somehow that Sherlock was gone.
Still, he allowed himself to stagger forward numbly, thinking, no. It's not possible. No.
Over the days, weeks, months that followed, John merely went through the actions of living, going to work, meeting friends. Or rather, that was what he let everybody think.
Whenever someone mentioned Sherlock, John thought back and allowed the pain of the loss of his planet, his family, and his entire race to wash over him. When people saw the true pain in his eyes, they would usually stop talking, which suited John just fine.
He often felt frustrated, thinking about Sherlock. Sometimes he would go into a rage, yelling and throwing things around his new flat. Once the neighbours had called the police, scared that he was having a fight. The rage of a Time Lord was strong on any planet.
The thing was, John had come so close to finding out the secret, he was sure. He had been so close to fulfilling his new purpose in life. And then Sherlock had died, just like that. It wasn't fair.
Eventually, John got tired of living on Earth, waiting to die so he could regenerate and leave. There was no way he could just disappear off into space, he was in too far. He could of course pretend to kill himself and then leave, but that would not be fair to those he was friends with. He had learnt his lesson on doing that to people, from Sherlock. Lessons from a dead man, now that was new.
There was still no word from Harry.
Then everything changed when the beautiful Mary Morstan appeared in his life. John had clung for so long onto the hope that Sherlock would return, but was beginning to give up. Maybe the events of 'The Empty House' would not happen. Maybe Sherlock was gone, and John was stuck on Earth for the rest of this life, playing the grieving widow.
After he met Mary, John became certain that Sherlock would return. For how could the story be continuing, if the main character was dead?
True to form, John got to know Mary better, and eventually asked her to marry him. Or at least, he tried to.
For that was the night that Sherlock Holmes returned from the dead.
John was sitting, reading the menu. An annoying waiter came up to him and started to push the wine menu in his face, which in itself was strange; the waiters at this restaurant were usually very reserved.
Then the waiter spoke again. John concentrated on the voice, and recognised it almost instantly. The bastard, he thought, but didn't say anything. Instead, he pretended not to recognise Sherlock, relishing the thought of how the detective's face must look.
Before Mary came downstairs, John had time to think about how he would react when Sherlock properly revealed himself. He could of course have merely fainted, like Watson had in the book. However, he decided to go for the more fun option of attacking him.
Life managed to continue on. John and Mary got married, eventually, and lived together with the promise of a child. John still hadn't told Mary who he was. He realised he would have to say something before the baby was born. He should have told her earlier, he knew. But how does one find the right time or place to tell one's wife that one is an alien, chasing the trail of a best friend who shouldn't even exist?
His life was thrown into turmoil once more when Sherlock was shot by an unknown assassin, and flat lined in hospital. No sooner had John recovered from the relief that his friend has survived, then he found the identity of the assassin: his wife, Mary Morstan.
John became angry. Really angry. Both with Mary, for not saying anything; and with himself, for not noticing himself that Mary was not who she said she was. Of course Sherlock had worked it out. Perfect Sherlock.
After John's anger, he realised that he had become too caught up in living with Mary, and with being human. He resolved to focus back on his original case, and so he moved back into 221B Baker Street, under the pretence of temporarily leaving Mary.
John turned up on the doorstep of 221B in the rain, with a packed suitcase and a desperate expression. Sherlock let him in immediately, and even helped him to get his old room ready to live in.
Exactly two months later, John received a video call from Harry.