John woke up.

He didn't open his eyes immediately, but slowly let them drift open, taking in his surroundings... which weren't the usual surroundings. The wallpaper of his flat was gone, and the door was wooden now, with designs carved into it. A bulldog on the floor raised its head to stare up at John for a moment before nodding back off to sleep contentedly.

John didn't recognize the room at all, but he searched his memory, trying to remember if he had ever been somewhere like this before. He was sure he had been in rooms with this sort of design and everything, but everything felt... different. John wondered if Mycroft had kidnapped him during his sleep.

Suddenly, a woman's voice spoke out from behind him. "Mmm, come back to bed, John..."

John asked with incredulity in his voice, "Sarah?" before turning around to see a woman who was most definitely not Sarah Sawyer.

The woman's eyes widened as she fully realized who was and wasn't in her bed, and she screamed, sitting up and raising a pillow, "Who the ruddy hell are you?"

"Who the bloody hell are you? And where am I?" John retorted.

In answer, the woman began to beat him with a pillow, and John quickly stood up, jumping off the bed, only to embarrassingly find out that he was clad in only undergarments. His face flushed, and he looked around quickly for clothing to pull on.

The woman on the bed looked quite cross at this point, and angrily insisted, "No, really, who are you and why are you in my room? Where's John?"

That halted him.

"What did you say?" John asked, turning around slowly.

"I said, what have you done with my boyfriend?"

John narrowed his eyes. "Your boyfriend is John."

At this point, from the look the woman was giving him, she probably thought he was crazy. "Yes!"

"It wouldn't happen to be... John Watson, by any chance?"

The lady bit her lip, and then nodded. "Yes. Dr. John Watson."

John suddenly felt a bit dizzy, and stumbled over to the end of the bed, where he sat down. "Where's Sherlock?" he asked.

"Holmes? He's... he should be in his place. At 221B..."

John gave the woman a long stare, and then stood up. He walked over to the closet, and searched through it. Unable to find one good jumper, he finally settled for a button-up shirt that was a bit too baggy and pants that were a couple inches too long. He rolled them up, and then stood, facing the woman in the bed. "Now, listen. I don't know who you are, but I am John Watson, and I'm going to go see Sherlock to sort this out. Can you drive me over to wherever he lives?"

"You think you're John? Are you utterly mad or somethin-"

"Apparently," John muttered. "Now can you drive, or do I have to call a cab?"

"I'll..." The woman breathed in and out to calm herself down, and then said, "I'll get a carriage."

Now it was John's turn to give her a strange look. "A carriage?"

The woman exchanged the look, and said rather blankly, "Yes..."

John shrugged, and then said, "All right then. You call your... carriage, and I'll be outside, trying to sort this mess out further."

He left the room, feeling incredibly confused.

Watson woke up.

Hazily, he sat up, scratching at his eyes. "Mmprgh..." He stood up, eyes half-lidded, and lumbered in the direction of his closet.

He hit a wall.

"What the..." He opened his eyes, and turned around, to see an unfamiliar room. "Where am I?" He examined around the room, looking for any sign of where he was, and he recognized nothing. He clearly remembered falling asleep in his own room, with Mary beside him. Oh god, where was Mary? Watson rubbed his eyes a couple more times, before sitting back down on the strange bed, to make a plan of action.

"First," Watson muttered, trying to keep his wits about him, "I should get dressed."

He located a closet, and opened it. Much to his dismay, the clothes in there consisted of a large collection of baggy sweaters and jeans. He did manage to find a couple dress shirts, and he put one on, along with a pair of denim pants.

Whoever lived here had a despicable sense of fashion, Watson reflected to himself. He walked over to the door of the room, and opened it.

His door opened onto a hallway. The doctor snuck down towards one end of it, and then slowly, wishing he had a gun or something, made his way around the corner.

A strange man with black curly hair and high cheekbones was seated in an armchair, with some curious invention on his lap that looked like a book turned on its side, but with no pages. Without looking up, he called out, "Ah, John, you're up. Good. I wanted to ask you about this post on your blog."

"How did you know my name?" Watson asked through gritted teeth.

At the sound of Watson's voice, the man looked up through his long lashes, and his eyes widened and then narrowed. He took in Watson's general appearance, before asking sharply, "Who are you?"

"I'm John Watson," Watson answered, a little taken aback at the question. "What, did you kidnap the wrong person?"

"Kidnap?" The man placed the item on his lap on the floor, and then stood up, examining Watson. He stopped, and then repeated, "Who are you? Why are you badly impersonating John?"

"Impersonating? Are you daft? I am John! I can prove it! We can- that's not the point! The point is, why am I here? And where am I?"

The man's eyes seemed to be sizing him up or something, and Watson didn't like it.

Suddenly, the man stopped searching his body mentally, and then said quickly, "You're taller than John is, you have that hideous moustache, and you don't even vaguely fit his clothes. You act oddly, as though you're not from around here at all. You don't know who I am, you're telling the truth about that, obviously, but why would you wake up in John's bedroom, thinking that you were him. Unless the two of you have had some sort of switch, and John is now in some sort of crazy parallel universe with some other Sherlock Holmes, then you must be a shockingly good actor or a man with severe amnesia who is confused and-"

"Sherlock Holmes?" Watson cut in, finally latching onto something that he recognized.

"Yes, Sherlock Holmes. Do you know who that is?"

"Of course," Watson replied, grateful to have something he could talk about almost normally. "He's my best friend."

The man's eyes narrowed once more. "Wrong."

"What?"

"I am Sherlock Holmes."

Watson's jaw dropped open.

John was just trying to sort it all out in his head at this point, as the carriage traveled along the streets of London.

"So, what you're saying is..."

"All I know," Mary repeated for what had to be the third time, "is that I am Mary Morstan, and I am to be engaged to John Watson. He's a doctor, and used to be in the military. For a long time before he met me, he shared an apartment with a man named Sherlock Holmes. He moved into my place eventually-"

"That's where I woke up," John interrupted.

"Yes. That's where you woke up. Anyway, he moved in with me, and we were living together happily. And then, this morning, I woke up and-and he was gone, and you were there, and you're a different John Watson from a different England who lives with a different Sherlock Holmes-"

"That about sums it up," John finished gravely, biting his lip.

There was a period of awkward silence.

"I'm sorry to put you through all this, Mrs. Morstan-"

"It's Miss Morstan, but please. Call me Mary."

John nodded, and then looked out the window, reflecting upon his situation quietly. Finally, Mary broke the silence, asking timidly, "Joh- Dr. Watson?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you. For, uh, being logical during all this."

John nodded, and shrugged. "No problem. And call me John."

The carriage pulled up on Baker Street outside an apartment with steps leading up to the door.

John shook his head in complete disbelief as they got out of the car, staring up at the place clearly marked 221B. "This is so weird."

Mary nodded. "Yes."

They went up to the front door, and Mary got out a key. "Watson usually keeps it with him," she said, fiddling with the lock, "but he left it on his bedside table, so I just brought it along."

John quietly wondered to himself what kind of man brings around at all times a key with him to another man's house if he is in a committed relationship with a woman at the time and he has officially moved out of the man's house. But then again, perhaps there was another aspect to the situation that John didn't yet know.

Mary unlocked the door, and John followed her into the apartment.

"Holmes? Holmes! It's me, Mary!"

A male voice rang out from some unknown part of the house. "Hello, Watson," and then after a pause, "Hello, Mary."

John said, "Actually, it's... um... I'm not your Watson."

There was a moment of stillness, and then the voice replied with curiosity, "My Watson?"

Mary cut in. "What the man means to say is, he's not the John Watson you know. But- oh, would you just bloody come look, Holmes?"

A man walked through the open doorway near the bottom of the stairs, and John stopped for a moment to look at him.

He didn't look like John's Sherlock. At all, really. This Sherlock had black messy hair too, but it was straight, and he had tired eyes and stubble, as opposed to the bright eyes and pale cheeks of the other. His body was also much more masculine-looking, although he was about the same height- and still significantly taller than John.

Sherlock was surveying him, John knew, just doing his usual deductions, but it felt so weird to have someone else's eyes scraping up and down, absorbing every important detail, and loose bits of information, because usually the only people who did that were Sherlock (and maybe Mycroft).

John shuffled around nervously, and then said, to break the tension, "Hi."

"Hello," Holmes answered. His voice sounded different than Sherlock's, but- goddamnit, John had to stop comparing them and just focus.

"So, um, sorry for the inconvenience, but... I'm here. In... Watson's place."

"Who are you?" Holmes asked sharply.

"I'm... I'm Dr. John Watson, I'm-"

"A retired army doctor, got back recently from Afghanistan," Holmes observed, walking in a full circle around John, heels clicking against the floor.

"R-right, um..." John sighed, and gave up. "God, you're so much like him."

Holmes asked, "Like who?"

"Sherlock Holmes," John answered, before realizing it.

Holmes' eyes narrowed, and he said, "I am the only-"

"No. You're not," John explained. "Could we maybe sit down and have a cup of tea while we talk about this?"

Holmes nodded once, saying, "All right," and bounded off to the other room.

John followed slowly, sighing. This was a rotten mess he'd gotten himself into.

Watson was sitting on the couch, staring at his companion, who he still couldn't really believe existed.

"So what year is it?" Watson asked bleakly.

"2011," Sherlock replied easily.

Watson groaned.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, and said, "And where you're from, it's..."

"1891."

Sherlock's other eyebrow traveled upwards to meet the first, and then they both fell as his eyes narrowed. "So you've just travelled 120 years into the future."

"I... I suppose."

"Doesn't it frighten you at all?"

"Yes, actually."

There was another period of silence.

"So it would make sense then... We can only assume..." Sherlock fell back into muttering, something that reminded Watson painfully of home, because his Sherlock had done that all the time, but it had been different of course.

"Ahh," Sherlock finally said, sitting up straight.

"What?" Watson asked instantly.

"John must be with your Holmes and this fiancee you've spoken of."

"What? Really?"

"Well, if you're here," Sherlock answered, "then yes. It appears that for whatever reason, you two have switched places in time and space."

"Well, what am I to do about it?" Watson asked, feeling more and more desperate by the second.

Sherlock looked at him as if he was daft. "Why, stay here, of course. Until I figure out how to get you back."

Watson fell back into the cushions of the couch, suddenly feeling relieved. "All right." He peered over once more at the strange, pale specimen before him, with high cheekbones and curly hair.

He missed the real Sherlock Holmes already.