Chapter One: John Falls Into Dubious Company

John stood once more on Westminster Bridge, wondering. Did it always have to be night? There were no stars or planets in the sky this evening. Traditional fog, at least the post-Clean Air Act variety. But he hoped she would come. He'd lain awake for hours, the past few nights, since the thought crossed his mind. He didn't really know the right people to consult; Mycroft, perhaps, but John could not make himself believe they might have a civil conversation about incorporeal powers—well, 'differently corporeal' powers. And he didn't want Mycroft's advice.

It wasn't born of desperation or a wish to end himself. Life was in many ways better than Captain Watson could have envisioned after invaliding out. He was still what Sherlock had made of him: living, functioning, smoothly walking and running (and shooting), sharper of gaze and more confident of conclusions (it meant he needed to be especially careful about the gun, Mycroft's special permit or no). The sorrow was a bearable companion these days, only rarely sharp enough to cut. But John felt no pull toward the horizon; the power that had made him run—Sherlock's energy—was gone from his life.

Perhaps the space his friend taken left places within him he'd never explored. Perhaps the loss of the mad scientist who made 221B into a pathology lab, or an alchemist's, left room for unquantified forces, unproveable effects; things from places other than the rational mind. It made him—John might have said of someone else—fanciful. The first time, that night last autumn when a woman had appeared—the right word, not 'walked up to him'—and told him not to despair, John had changed.
Once aware of a hidden current, he felt its waves more often: a new patient, who told him she'd been sent by the river; the look on Lestrade's face when he greeted a young detective from a different division; Lady Ty in the background while a television reporter interviewed the Member of Parliament for Greater London.

So as the calendar year was ending he'd found himself remembering old words, and he sought them out, rereading books he'd loved long before. He did not speak them, was careful not to bind himself, but "…swear by the Living and the Dead, by the Past and the Future, by Memories and Hopes, that if a Vision comes begging at our door we will take it in and warm it at our hearth, …"

"In Life's name and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art. I will guard growth and ease pain… In the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life…"

And the less formal ones:

"I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way."

"I'm taking her back to my place, Jess. I can't just leave her.

"Whattya think? Want to join up?"

An impulse of his own: "Use mine—"
And the universes had answered all of them:"Fear not."

So he went to the bridge again on the night the year would change, knowing he should not hope (he wasn't much about hoping anyway, anymore), not knowing what he would hope for, and he thought of the shape in his head that the woman had filled, and he watched boats chug past on the water beneath and hear people singing or laughing, as the old year passed like the water itself.

The air had warmed, changed, filled. John inhaled the scent of diesel and bananas, saltwater and coffee, chocolate and fish guts, fenugreek, cumin, chilis, fried fish and chips. Tidal flats, gardenia. "I don't come when I am called," she said, when he noticed she was there.

"I wouldn't want you to, Mother Thames."

"You're lonely."

"It's New Year's. Everyone is…no, they're lonely on Christmas. They're confused now. Waiting."

She waited, with him or for him. Time hung motionless, round, pendant, like the drop at the tip of a stony icicle. The moment of stillness was all he could have asked.

"Do you think I know the future, John Watson?"

"Maybe. If time is really like a river."

"And would I tell you? Deep waters run still."

"No one I trust seems to speak in straight lines." He shook his head. "Mother Thames. I want to ask you for something, but I'm frightened. Do you look after fools and children too?"

"Some of them. You know the rules: no boon comes without cost. What do you want to know?"

"I want to know… what I can do. Is there something I can do, for you?"

"Why, John Watson. You have surprised me."

He relaxed a little. "I hoped it wasn't too far out of line, to ask if there was something you wanted done. What I miss—one of the the things I miss—is being useful. I know I'm useful as a doctor, but there are many doctors. And though I half don't believe I've ever spoken to you, I thought—doing something for you would matter."

"I don't know how many years it's been since a knight offered the River his sword. Not just a knight, a captain."

John was pleased—even awed—by the wonder in her voice. But he'd also read enough of the stories to set limits. "I know it's dangerous to offer you too much, and I have oaths I must keep."

She was pleased by a display of common sense; not many saw through the glamour, and so not many were much use. "I would not come between you and your honour. If your art or Her Britannic Majesty call on you, you must obey, with my blessing. Your life is not your own to give me. And because you have offered, and been humble, I will not take what you have not intended to offer." She looked out down the sweep of the water, lost in brightened mist. "The solstice is just past. Until the next one, I may call on you. Does it suit?"

John had been thinking longer-term, but as she spoke he knew she offered a kindness. She took his hands and put them, palm-to-palm, between her own. "Do you know the words?"

"I remember some," he said. He cleared his throat. "I, John, do become your liege man this day, of life, limb, and earthly worship, against all manner of folk—"

"—Where your oath is not already given. And I do take your service, until Midsummer Day; my honour is yours, and yours, mine, and no evil shall prevail against us."

The air shimmered around them. John felt as though a wave rolled over him, neither air nor water nor anything he could hear; but his breath came easier. Mama Thames looked at him intently, raised his chin, and kissed him on the lips. She stopped before he could respond. "No," she said, "Not for me. John, go home, and go to sleep, and in the morning, go to work."

Before he could form a question, she had gone.

Late the next day, John was meeting Greg Lestrade at New Scotland Yard. Dinner, drinks, and darts. Greg was trying to get out of his office; phones kept ringing. Greg stood talking on the his desk telephone, tethered and impatient, looking suddenly wary at someone coming through the cubicles. It was the very young officer John had seen before, the one whom Lestrade had watched with a reserve he never showed another policeman: not uniform, but not senior to anyone. His skin was about the same shade as Sally Donovan's; his face was less unhappy. He carried himself with a sureness completely out of line with the way people tried to ignore him. He came past all the desks and stuck his head into Greg's glass house. Greg gestured at the telephone, unable to greet him; the young man shook his head.

"Dr. Watson? May I have a word?"

John followed his lead out toward the windows.

"I'm PC Peter Grant, it's an honour to meet you."

"Ah, thank you?" John wasn't quite sure what was going on. They stared at one another for a moment.

"Umm," said Grant. "Not easy to explain. I work for the dodgy end of Economics and Specialist Crimes Unit."

John couldn't recall ever meeting them; the Turner painting had been some other division, and the jewel thefts. They sounded as though they might be computer hackers. "I'm sorry?" he asked. "Have you decided we did something new wrong?"

"Oh, no," said Peter. "No. Less official. Some of our contacts told us—me—I might want to be in touch. Well, that you—Mama Thames?"

Comprehension broke over John, at least to some extent; he saw Peter's relief as it did. It was strange to hear that name from anyone; he'd half decided he had dreamed both his meetings. "Are you—part of her, ah, her organisation?'

"Definitely not," said Peter. "But I am liaison for the Met to, umm, the riverine community, if you can call it that. It's not like the—" he sighed. "Look, my department deal with things that don't make much sense outside of context where that kind of thing makes perfect sense. You seem to have signed on as a knight or something to the River, Effra wasn't clear. Does this make any sense to you?"

"I don't know an Effra." If John had expected anything, it would not have been from a police officer. But then he'd never expected it from Mycroft, either. "But you know of Mother Thames? Have you met her too?"

"Several times," Peter said. "I started with my unit after I interviewed a ghost about a murder; that's when I found out the Metropolitan Police have specialists in magical disturbances of the Queen's Peace. Paranormal, if you prefer. But not space aliens." He waited, John thought, to be told to piss off. John took pity.

"She didn't seem like that sort," he told Peter. "Magical, perhaps, but not disturbing the peace."

"You'd be surprised. Not directly. But you wouldn't like to see her angry."

"No," John said, "I wouldn't. Is she angry, often?"

"Not often, no." Peter hesitated. "What do you know of her?"

"I know that, twice, I've been standing on Westminster Bridge, and she has…appeared, and said some probably insightful things. I've met enough other dubious shadowy people to know that Mother Thames isn't like any of the usual kind. She answers thoughts before I've spoken them, which isn't completely unprecedented in my life…but it feels like different means from usual. I don't know what she is, but I know I needed…something, and she answered. I don't know what the hell to make of it, but you're here so I don't think it's just a psychotic interlude."

"No," said Peter Grant. "Not something you made up, but not something everyone's aware of. And on the whole, probably just as well."

"No, I wouldn't like people to be depending on a strange African woman to stop them jumping off a bridge."

"Were you—?"

"No," John said. "No. But I'm not what I would consider 'of sound mind', quite, either." He tried to keep his tone light, but a dead man on a pavement swam before his mind's eye, as it tended to.

"I'm terribly sorry for your loss, by the way. It's everyone's loss." Peter Grant looked at John like a real person: not a tragic hero, not a dupe. "I don't think he was a fraud. I'm sorry I think it's important to say so."

"I can tell that by the way you've spoken to me, but thanks. He wasn't a fraud…I haven't been in very good shape since last summer"—Peter nodded—"and the first time I met her, last autumn, I thought it was—I don't know, grief or exhaustion; but then I met a Lady Cecelia Tyburn-Thames at Mycroft Holmes's office, and he's not someone whom I'd ever think sees…well, fairies at the bottom of the garden. Neither am I. And you don't look like you are, either."

"I haven't seen anything with cute little wings wearing a bluebell on its head, but there's more out there than I had any idea," said Peter.

John nodded. "On New Year's Eve I saw Mother Thames a second time. I asked her if there was anything she needed done I could help with."

Peter Grant looked at him. "You couldn't just apply to be a Special Constable or something?"

"Lestrade's suggested that more than once, but no. Not all of us want to be police."

Peter nodded. "I never wanted to be a soldier. Any road, it's not my business, Effra was clear on that, but she thought I might like to know, and I thought you might like to know someone in consensual reality you could call on, if you need it. I rather hope you will."

"Consensual reality?" John asked. "Is that what the rest of us call 'the real world'?"

" 'The rest of _them_,' " Peter corrected. "You have a foot squarely planted outside that now. Effra said you had 'offered your sword' to her mother. Do you have any idea what you're supposed to be doing? In this context, I mean?"

"Not in most of them," John said. "Well. Not true. I'm managing real life well enough, but I volunteered—outside of it, I suppose. That's what I miss, I need that, and I didn't want to look for it in drugs or alcohol or— and Mother Thames came to me one night and told me I mattered."

"Most people matter," Peter told him. "DI Lestrade is the real thing, and I know you matter to him."

"I need to matter to myself," John said. "And after Sherlock…it just isn't working."

"And Mama Thames took your service."

"And I have no idea what that means, but I trust her more than Mycroft Holmes or the army."

Peter looked at him gravely. "Fan of Japanese movies?"

"Not so much."

"So the word ronin doesn't signify…knight errant?"

" 'Only a flesh wound?' "

Peter shook his head. "I think it means you should come and meet my sensei."

"Your what?"

"The man whose apprentice I am, Chief Inspector Nightingale. Come to the Folly and have dinner with us. Give us a call, but most nights are good. Unless a case has hotted up."

"I understand that," John said. Grant gave John his card, greeted Lestrade respectfully, and left. Lestrade looked after him.

"What did he want, John?"

"To invite me to dinner," John said. It seemed easier to leave out the circumstances.

"You have a talent, don't you?" Greg said to John. "Some sort of lighting rod."

"What do you mean? Are you going to warn me off?"

"I dunno; would you like an excuse? They're good coppers, they're just…"

"He said 'magical disturbances of the Queen's Peace.' "

"Creepy X-Files bastards, I try not to know. I haven't had to call them. I don't know whether Sherlock ever ran across them either, God knows what they would have made of one another."

"You're supposed to tell me that one day there'll be a djinn in the Albert Hall and Peter Grant will have put it there."

"What?" asked Lestrade.

"Nothing; sorry. But they're coppers like you?"

"Different department, same bosses. Not many of them. Plainclothes. I've never heard they were anything but good men. Just… not quite our type."

For the next few days, John went about his life. His nightmares had gone away again; probably not forever, but any quiet night was a good one. He did find himself drawn to walk along the Thames more than he had been doing, and the empty place on the bedroom wall where a periodic table had hung finally called out insistently enough he found himself at a poster shop, buying an old picture of the Embankment, streetlights light haloed in the fog along the river. He Googled 'ronin' and watched some Japanese cinema; the visuals were gorgeous, but he was profoundly grateful not to be Japanese.

Then his mobile, shrilling next to his pillow in the dark, woke him. He answered calmly and instantly, as though he had been waiting.

A woman's voice, not so deep as Mother Thames, still slightly accented—Nigerian?—but younger."Dr. Watson. In the River's name, can you come?"

That seemed clear enough. "Where?" he asked, pulling on his trousers.

"I'll text you the address. It will have to be a cab. Bring your medical kit."

He dressed warmly, semi-professionally; wondering if he would regret not wearing waterproof boots. The address was near the King's Stairs Gardens, on the south side of the river. For once, he had no trouble attracting a taxi as soon as he reached Marylebone Street, but it was still more than half an hour before John found himself alone in the streetlights at his destination. Nothing on his jacket to indicate that he was a medic, not that London's muggers observed the Geneva Conventions.

After a few moments he could hear a bunch of people trying to speak softly; he went toward the noise.

"Cursed thing turned on me," someone—male, Londoner, older than John—said. "Fuckin' _hurts_, sorry."

"Most people have enough sense not to tease them," a woman said. She sounded like the voice on John's phone.

"Ah, hallo? It's John Watson?" John called out, drawing near. Four or five people—it was hard to tell in the harshness of the street light and the shadows around it— gathered by the water's edge. Someone sat on the ground.

"Over here," said the woman. As John's eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw a black woman, slighter and younger than Mother Thames, her hair in tidy dreadlocks pulled back from her face; two or three other young people, and a battered-looking older white man, sitting on the round cradling his arm. There was blood; the woman was holding someone's t-shirt wadded-up against it, but she seemed calm. Nothing was dripping.

"I need more light," John said.

Someone sighed. "You have your phone?" asked Peter Grant. "Digital thermometer, tricorder, anything like that?"

"I left my phone in the car," John said. "It wouldn't be bright enough, really—" and someone behind him focussed an LED lantern on his patient.

"How's that?" asked Peter Grant.

"Good! Thanks. What happened here? Can we get your shirt off, sir?"

"I'm not taking off my weskit on a night like this—"

"Aelred, he needs to be able to see how badly you're hurt—" began one of the girls.

"Your sleeve's pretty much a dead loss as it is," John said. "I'll cut it? Fine." He was used to wounds; at least this man wasn't bleeding out from the abdomen. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"Bruise on my bum, I imagine. I think I twisted my ankle when I jumped back from t'river's edge."

"Your head's all right?" John pointed a penlight at the man's eyes and nearly dropped it. His eyes were light brown and the pupils were rectangular, like a goat's. But they responded to the light, and matched in size.

"It was, until you shone your damned light in my face."

"Aelred—"

"Sorry." The old man didn't seem sorry, but John had treated more recalcitrant people in his time.

"You can take the pressure off for a moment, miss—"

"My name is Raven; I am a daughter of Mama Thames," said the woman, carefully moving the wad aside. An artery spurted at them; Peter, John, and Aelred all said 'Fuck!" simultaneously. One of the girls giggled as Raven replaced the pressure.

"He needs an A&E," John said. "Can you move your fingers?"

The man wiggled them, carefully; it plainly hurt, but John was relieved to see that, too.

"Not going—"

"He won't go—" said one of the girls at the same time.

"He's not in the system," Constable Grant said. "He's not one of ours."

"Well, THEY need to—" began John, shocked.

"Doctor Watson, are you saying you cannot deal with an injury such as this?" asked Raven.

"No," John said, nettled, "I'm saying he could use better care than I can give him."

"Well, yours is what he will take," she said. "What do you need?"

It was not the battlefield. No one seemed to be trying to shoot at them. He had enough supplies for a skirmish, a firefight; this was only one man, with what looked like a messy gash most of the length of his left forearm. "Clean water, ideally hot; more light. Is there a surface, a picnic table anywhere nearby?"

There was a table not many meters away, it turned out, and the little party went to it. John laid out a sterile pad, big enough for the man to put his arm down on and for John to lean in, and someone produced an open litre bottle of water.

"Is it clean? Has anyone drunk out of it?" John asked, rolling up his sleeves and pouring antiseptic wash on each of his hands.

"Nothing in the water will hurt him, Doctor, I promise you."

"You've _heard_ of sepsis, haven't you? And I'll need someone else to scrub. Constable Grant?"

"I can't," said Grant. "I have to hold the light. Do you need the water boiling?"

"Just warm would be nice, is someone getting it from a loo—?"

"No, just a moment—" The water in the bottle glowed and then bubbled; the threaded part of the bottle-top melted sadly to one side. John stared at it as the water steamed. "Did you put a sodium pellet in there or something."

"Something," said Peter. "May be a bit hot, sorry."

"Olympia," said Raven. "Wash your hands as the doctor will tell you."

A slim black girl—about fifteen, John thought—put her hands out for antiseptic wash. "Get it in well around your fingernails," said John. "Good, they're not too long. Okay, gloves—" He laid out sutures and a clamp and the other things, and gloved himself. Olympia watched him, and did a credible job getting the gloves on while maintaining sterility. "Are you allergic to anything, Mr. Aelred?"

His patient looked at him without welcome.

"I want to give you something for the pain and you're going to need antibiotics." Aelred looked like a reasonably tidy homeless man, or a labourer from another era. He wore layers of ragged but serviceable clothing, and mud along one of his sides from sole to armpit—"Dragged along the bank. BY the arm—" announced his inner diagnostician.

"Morphine will be fine," said Raven. "He won't need antibiotics."

John stared at her. "Are you kidding?" She shrugged at him.

John jabbed his patient with a syringe. Aelred tensed, and then exhaled as the drug began to take hold. "More light now?" asked Peter.

"Yes, please. Okay, it's going to be a bit messy, you're not going to faint, are you?"

"I am NOT," Olympia said, with all the hauteur of youth.

"People do, just let us know, all right? All right, then, Ms. Raven's going to take away the pressure and I'm going to put your thumb on the artery, all right? It's going to feel like something alive—it is, yeah?—so don't be startled, and DON'T let go while I clean it up a bit—" John swabbed the undamaged part of Aelred's arm bicep clean with warm water and then with alcohol.

The next few minutes were messy and utterly absorbing—well, it seemed like a few minutes, but John's back and arms were tired when they could finally relax. He'd tied off the artery—a small one, fortunately—made sure the layers of muscle were touching the right other layers, and finally lined the edges of the wound back together, put a dressing over it all, and made an adequate sling. He tried to recall times in the army when he'd patched up civilians, unable to send them to anything he recognised as a hospital; but this was London, he could see the skyglow across the river. It felt wrong to be tending a wound like an unusually hygienic early Victorian. "No antibiotics?" he asked Raven again, just to be sure.

She shook her head. "None needed, I promise you. And he might not be allergic, but I doubt that you wish to monitor him."

"He should have someone one with him for a day or so; either the pain or the drugs will leave him dopey. And I'd like to check on it in the daylight."

The patient and the women all looked at one another, and John moved away; they needed a moment. Peter asked, "You're done with the light for now?"

"Yes, thanks," John said, turning around. He expected the young policeman's arms to be tired of holding up the lantern; but the light went out and even after John's eyes adjusted there was no lantern to be seen.

Peter saw John looking for it. "Yeah, magic, I'm afraid."

"Heating the water in the bottle, as well?"

"Yeah."

"Can you make tea?"

"I _haven't,_" said Peter, "but now that you raise the question…I don't know how my guvnor would feel about that, might be considered light-minded. On the other hand it's all about control and precision; he might approve."

"Well, it was a damned handy trick for this occasion, thanks. Could you actually boil it? I don't know how she can be so casual about sterility—"

"River water and River people," Peter said. "Well, 'people' in the wider sense of the term, anyway."

"Yeah. His eyes—" said John. "What…?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"I don't really need to know," said John, realising it was true. "He bleeds. Raven seemed to know he could tolerate morphine. Don't want more antibiotics around if they aren't needed. What bit him, though? I thought blind white alligators were confined to the sewers in New York."

"It wasn't blind or white," Raven said, joining them. "Or an alligator, as such."

"I am reliably informed they pose no threat to the general population," Peter said. "If this one gets a taste for blood, Raven, I hope you'll let someone know."

"We look after our own," she told him. "But if there's a hunt I don't imagine you want to miss it. You've no more sense than anyone your age, for all your powers." John wondered if Raven were all that much older than Peter; she didn't look it.

"You look after your own, but you got Dr. Watson out of a warm bed to help—"

"For the time being, he is our own, and it was a nasty bite. Aelred's a fool sometimes. Doctor, you have my number—call me later and we'll arrange for you to see him tomorrow."

"I can come to his home—"

"He's not entirely at ease with that; we'll meet you here."

"I'd like to bring him something for the pain—here's some pills for the next 24 hours—but it's not easy to prescribe narcotics for someone who doesn't exist."

She handed him her own NHS card, 'Marcia Ravensbourne-Thames'. "Don't think of it as fraud," she told him, as he copied her information. "It's fealty. Do you have any trouble covering the expense of all that?" She indicated the neatly folded bundle of biohazard.

"No," John said. "I've become surprisingly well-off." He hadn't wanted Sherlock's legacy, but Mycroft hadn't asked. No wonder Sherlock had never stinted on taxis.

She nodded. "Thank you for coming out. We'll try not to make it a habit."

"It's what I'm for," John told her, and meant it.

"Goodnight, then, both of you." Before he knew it John found himself walking away with Peter Grant away from the river.

"We're dismissed," said Peter, confidently. "Want a lift back to yours, or an early breakfast at ours?"

"It _is_ still early; I'll catch another couple of hours sleep," John said. "How did you happen to be there?"

"Believe it or not, I was giving Olympia a driving lesson. At least this time of night there's no much for her to hit. When she told me she wanted to come here, I stayed around to see she was all right, not that she needs my protection with her family."

"Who are they?"

"They're all some of Mama Thames's daughters." Peter unlocked his car and opened the door for his passenger.

"Some?"

"It's a very large river, after all."

"Who was my patient, come to that?"

"I think he's a troll," Peter said.

"And that means?"

"'I've no better idea than you do, really. I know someone at UCH who would greatly appreciate a chance at a blood sample." Peter glanced at the bundle of medical waste.

John thought about it. "I don't think we can, really. I can ask for permission when I see the patient next, though." He was surprised at the warmth in Peter's expression. "It's a fairly clear ethical question, surely?"

"It really depends who you ask," Peter said.

John went to his afternoon shift at Sarah's practice and filed a prescription for three days worth of moderately strong painkillers under 'Marcia Ravensbourne Thames'; the NHS had no problem with that at all, beyond a routine remark that he was now her registered physician. After a moment's thought John decided he did not, as yet, need to read her medical history (another question to ask if he saw her again). Scarcely five minutes later his phone rang.

"What have you done now, Doctor Watson?" asked Mycroft Holmes. They were on easier terms now that John understood the circumstances of Sherlock's death: that Mycroft and his brother had been working together against Moriarty, and Sherlock had given him permission to…John knew the word 'betray' was not accurate, but it still rankled. There _should_ have been some other way, the two most devious men (surely) in England against a single madman. He shook it off.

"What exactly do you mean, Mycroft?"

"Further involvement with the, ah, Thames family?"

"They needed my services."

"I cannot believe this will end well. Must you?"

"Why can't you believe it?" John asked. He reminded himself that Mycroft had truly loved his brother, and tried to quiet the voice that suggested the damage to Mycroft's political pride must have hurt just as much as what passed for his heart.

"Because they are not what they appear, and historically—"

"'Historically', Mycroft? Really the right word? You mean Tam Lin? Midsummer Night's Dream?"

"Of course if you insist of making an ass of yourself—"

"I've done it before. Mother Thames didn't seem like, umm, what I've heard of the Fair Folk. Nor your Lady Ty."

"I have been fortunate enough thus far not to have made the acquaintance of any seelie or unseelie courts."

"Are they real, too?"

"I have no information on the subject. Thank God. John, I mean regular mortals mixing with—" Mycroft hesitated.

"At least some of them bleed, and hurt. Still not altogether certain about you."

"Is Lady Marcia badly injured? I assume she was the reason for your nocturnal perambulations."

"You could stop surveilling me, you know. Couldn't you?"

"Not really," Mycroft said, neither sneering nor backing down. There was a heartbeat, where John didn't say that the game was over, and Mycroft didn't have to equivocate, and in the space John tried not to notice the sprig of hope that persisted growing in the broken place within him. They both sighed, hardly an exhale.

"You're not going to ask me the nature of my relationship with the Lady of the Lake? I assure you it's no having any effect of my understanding of constitutional monarchy."

"John, while I am delighted that your pawky sense of humour has recovered to this extent, you must resist casting your experience in the light of Monty Python. These are serious matters."

"I know that, Mycroft." John was always surprised when Mycroft showed any grasp of popular culture. "I offered Mother Thames my sword. Is that serious enough?'

Another heartbeat of silence. And another. John nearly felt concerned. "Mycroft? Saving the oaths I swore to the Crown and to, umm, Apollo Physician. And she only's only keeping me on until the summer. I guess I'm on probation. But I think I'm relatively safe."

He still had the feeling that Mycroft was dumbfounded, gob-stopped, horrified. "If you wanted a more demanding occupation I could have found you something in Military Intelligence," he said at last.

"I didn't want to be a spy," John said. And despite their détente he doubted he would ever want to be one of Mycroft's underlings.

Mycroft sighed deeply, indicating elaborate, world-weary exasperation; John could all but hear the wheels turning. He would have waited for Sherlock's train of thought to come to a complete stop; but Mycroft didn't deserve the courtesy. More than likely, John would be 'invited' to board it when it was least convenient.

"I enjoy our chats, Mycroft, but I'm working. Have a lovely afternoon and don't start any wars."

"Most of my endeavours are rather in opposition to that, Doctor, I assure you. Do be careful."

John met Raven and Aelred at the same picnic table late that afternoon, gathering a few strange looks from mums and toddlers. By daylight, the 'troll' was unremarkable: perhaps a homeless man, perhaps an eccentric with a taste for eighteenth-century workingman's garb and not washing more often than he needed to. The smell was noticeable, but not unpleasant like old sweat or urine; more like woodsmoke with a hint of pond-muck. He did have a lot of unruly hair—head, ears, eyebrows. And there was the matter of his eyes. John tried not to stare. Someone had removed the torn and bloody sleeve of his shirt and replaced it with a light, unfitted tube, slit to the shoulder, fastened closed by easily-undone buttons. "Nice work," John said as he unbuttoned them.

"Ah, she said the same of yours."

The wound was knitting well, no sign of redness or swelling. John had Aelred move his fingers again (the old man complained, but complied); barely seven minutes after his arrival, he was ready to button the sleeve up once again.

"Hardly worth your while," Raven commented.

"I rarely see anything heal this cleanly," John said. He never saw anything heal so free of infection outside of a proper hospital surgical procedure, and not always then.

"I told you," she said. "We look after our own. There are compensations for the way we are."

But HOW are you? John wanted to ask. Raven looked at him with irritating serenity and there was no danger of her telling him anything. Something to experience rather than explain, then. Charming. On first seeing her in the light, today, he had thought Raven was younger than he'd believed in the night. Now she seemed to share a portion of Mother Thames's agelessness. Was it her tilted cat's-eyes or her gravity?

"Mistress," Aelred interrupted their lack of dialogue, "since you're here, will you lay your hands on it again?"

"Most certainly. I thought Doctor Watson's little pills were doing all you needed?"

"Belt AND braces," Aelred muttered. He'd huffed when John gave him the prescription bottle, though he'd taken it quickly enough.

"Very well," said Raven. Aelred shifted a bit on the seat of the picnic table, laying his arm out. Raven, across from him and next to John, reached out to his forearm and gently, carefully, put one hand on either side of the stitches. They both closed their eyes; John grasped a sudden waft of coal and diesel, horses, hay and beer, machine oil and ink and glassware, as Aelred relaxed visibly, his massive gnarled frame settling into itself.

It was not by any means the first time John had seen 'healing hands', but it was the first time he could recall being pulled in. Perhaps it was just mirroring the relaxation of the two people? He found himself breathing deeply, accepting that the moment needed nothing from him. There were birds, and thin January light, and the table was solid. He heard Raven speaking to him.

"May I, Doctor?"

"Sure," he said, "Please." Raven turned and put both her hands on John's scarred shoulder. It was behaving well enough, as it did when he kept up with the exercises, so he was surprised when Raven's touch loosened an ache he hadn't known he had. Relaxation poured into him as though he'd swallowed a shot of Scotch, without the burn, without the dizziness. It was like the times he woke up warm and slowly, or falling asleep after heavy work and a good meal. Gradually the sensation lightened and he felt himself back in his body, driving rather than drifting, opening his eyes as Raven took her hands from his shoulder. She was looking at him, concern on her face. Aelred was gone; the sun had moved a bit farther west.

"You've had some hard times," she said. "Soaked it up like a towel."

John didn't bother to answer. "Thank you," he said. "That was, umm, good but strange." He moved his left arm and shoulder, trying to assess any difference.

"Strange for a healer not ever to have been offered healing."

"Not really," he said, thinking of the hospital in Afghanistan. From the doctor's end, and then as one of the wounded. "We tend to be materialists, and let the nurses and chaplains and social workers take care of the…other stuff. And your, umm, gifts are different, aren't they? I don't think we had any of your sort of people with us."

"Arghandab and Helmand don't trust foreigners, but I am sure they were among you. You wouldn't know if they didn't want you to."

"I suppose not," John said. "I don't think ordinary Londoners know you and your mother are among us, not most of us."

"I know ordinary Londoners with nearly as much healing ability as I or my sisters have—I cannot make Aelred's wound close and disappear, as I might if he were one of my relatives, but easing pain is within reach. Or yours, if you want to learn. It might be useful to you."

John twisted. "It might, but I don't really believe in that kind of thing." He hated to seem rude.

"Yet you use green mould and cowpox and spirits of wine and believe in tiny beings in the water that no one can see."

"I do. I don't doubt your gift." He flexed his arm again. "It felt good." It was not the time to discuss placebo effects, and he had had attractive women put their hands on him with remarkable effects (if not recently, and not on his shoulder, and…).

"But if I tell you it can be taught, you don't want to discuss the matter? Not very scientific."

"Are you daring me?"

"Perhaps. Why did you take this on, if not to become something more than you feel you are?"

"To be useful," John said at last.

"Well, this would be useful. And if it doesn't work for you, you have at least tested my hypothesis."

"Fair enough," John said.

"I'll send you a link," said the river goddess, and she smiled and left him.