This story features both the Victorian and modern incarnations of our friends, and, unlike my other Sherlock/Sherlock Holmes crossover The Time Capsule, features actual time travel. (Not sure how that would work, but what the hell, it makes for a good story.) This idea is one I have contemplated for a long time, but I was persuaded to get on with writing it by KathyG, without whose prompting it may never have existed - so thank you, KathyG. :) Anyway, on with the story!
When Sherlock Holmes woke up in an entirely different bed to the one he had fallen asleep in, it did not take him long to deduce that he had gone back in time.
Anyone else, I suppose, might have panicked and fled out of the door, wondering where they were and what they were doing there, and it would not have been until they looked outside and saw the gas lamps and carriages in the street that they realised that it was the 19th century, rather than the 21st, as they had at first thought, indeed hoped, on opening their eyes that morning.
Sherlock Holmes is not anyone else, of course, and he made a point of deducing things before breakfast, and so his thought-process went something like this: not my bed, but the same room – it's the same orientation, and the same size and shape, and it even has the same ceiling. Not my bed, however. Nor are these my belongings that are strewn all over the floor, although that's what I tend to do with my belongings too. Chemistry-set – old-fashioned. Very. Pictures –distasteful, have been repeatedly put back on the walls after being taken down – or torn down in disgust. Not my bed. Lumpy. Odd sort of mattress. Eiderdown duvet. Counterpane – who the hell uses a counterpane? Ah, but of course. This is 221B Baker Street in the 19thcentury.
Even he was just a little surprised by this conclusion. After all, it wasn't what he had expected to wake up to when he fell asleep the previous night.
He went through to the kitchen, noted with mild interest that it wasn't where he usually kept it, and after a moment's hesitation put the kettle on the stove to boil up some water for tea. He didn't usually make his own tea but he couldn't count on Mrs Hudson having been brought back in time with him. The kettle began to whistle stridently, and he had to resist the urge to shoot it. (Though judging by the dents in the metal, someone else hadn't been able to resist that urge.)
A short while later the kettle had boiled, Sherlock had attempted to make tea, and the detective was now sitting in an armchair that wasn't his own sipping from a mug of some horrible-tasting liquid with bits in it.
Of all the things that could have happened next, he perhaps didn't expect the door to open and Mrs Hudson to come in.
She was at once Mrs Hudson and not Mrs Hudson. That flyaway hair had been tamed and stuffed beneath a tasteless, shapeless bonnet-type thing. Her apron had been replaced by a long grey dress. The image was nothing if not strongly Victorian. Sherlock greatly suspected that she was in fact Victorian, and not the Mrs Hudson that he knew, even if she was still Mrs Hudson.
Did that even make sense? He hoped so.
'Ah, sorry,' he said, finishing the horrible-tasting liquid and leaving the bits. 'I seem to have travelled back in time and stolen your tea. I won't be here long. I just need to find a way to get back. I don't suppose you have any clothes I can borrow?' He indicated the pyjamas he was wearing.
Mrs Hudson just stared.
'Mr Holmes never mentioned a twin,' she said at last.
'Mr Holmes?' Sherlock asked naïvely; then, without waiting for an answer, he continued: 'Oh, I suppose I've got a Victorian double too. I presume Mr Holmes's name is Sherlock?'
Mrs Hudson nodded, by now utterly confused.
'I'm Sherlock Holmes from the 21st century. It's very nice to meet you. Clothes?'
'Clothes,' repeated Mrs Hudson vaguely, and, like an automaton, padded towards the bedroom that Sherlock had just left and returned with the pieces of what Sherlock guessed to be a third-best suit.
'You might be able to borrow these,' she said, handing them to him. 'Mr Holmes is away at the moment, in Devonshire, so I don't think he'll miss them for the moment.'
Sherlock nodded and went to change into the clothes. He emerged from the bedroom a minute later and admired himself in the mirror.
'It seems I have excellent dress-sense,' he complimented himself with a smile. 'I suppose John – Dr Watson? – has a double too?'
'Dr Watson's in Devonshire as well,' Mrs Hudson told him. She had decided just to play along, rather than spend the entire time staring at him in confusion. She was still convinced that this was a slightly mad twin brother of the detective she knew and liked. Perhaps he had escaped from some lunatic asylum somewhere.
Just then the ceiling creaked, and as one Mrs Hudson and Sherlock looked up. Another creak. Like someone walking around upstairs. But if Dr Watson and Mr Holmes, as Mrs Hudson called them, were out, then who –
Judging by the surprise on Mrs Hudson's face, Sherlock guessed that nobody else lived here. Judging by the creaking, there was definitely a person upstairs. He listened to the noise for a moment more, suddenly recognised it, and, just as he was about to announce his conclusion, John came running downstairs in his pyjamas yelling something about gas lamps.