After TRF came out, I had to alter this story to match with cannon. I also noticed that I'd gotten considerably better at writting too, so... ya know... another reason to re-write the entire thing. Hopefully it's better. Let me know, yeah? I'll also leave the first version up too, but that one's been debunked.
tl;dr - Ignore the previous chapters and start again here as the story's cannon. :)
John hurried out the cab after tossing the appropriate notes at the cabbie.
After breaking up with Sarah in New Zealand, John had become Sherlock's full-time assistant and partner. John had never really thought of himself as a Consulting Detective, despite what Sherlock's clients assumed, and more like Consulting Detective's Doctor/Partner.
Now Sherlock was dead and gone, and what was there for John to do? After been invalided, John had lost his life, not in the literal sense, but all the same he had died as it was Sherlock who had previously brought him back to life. They'd been wonderful, Sherlock had been everything John needed for well over a year and then Sherlock tumbled off St. Barts.
Despite what Sherlock wanted John to believe, and the world for that matter, John knew that Sherlock hadn't committed suicide. Oh, he'd thrown himself off the hospital, yes, true; but was certain that Moriarty had used some sort of leverage and convinced Sherlock to take that step off just as Jefferson Hope had convinced his fares to swallow the poisoned pills.
It was ingenious, it was murder; and Sherlock was still dead.
Knowing this did nothing but depress John further and fuel his hatred towards Moriarty.
Since Sherlock's death, John had grown cold and empty. He felt more of a shell than he ever had since before he'd ever met Sherlock Holmes, but he still wouldn't give it up for the world, even knowing the pain that would inevitably come. But oh, was the pain unbearable. Every morning John would lie awake, silent tears trailing down his cheeks. He would have terrible night terrors. John worked his life on automatic with nothing registering.
He was just as dead as Sherlock.
John tried to free himself from the paralyzing grief, but while alcohol was a habit he'd picked up in a way worse than Harry had ever been; it only hid away the pain for a night. The pain would always be back in the morning, ready to snatch him from his dreams and torment him with his friend's bloodied broken body.
So John drank the morning away too, and the afternoon and the night. Mrs. Hudson didn't approve of John's new state of sobriety (or lack thereof), but she remained silent. She knew that the moment that John stopped drinking, reality with kill him immediately and without mercy.
It was frank and cruel, but it was there, in the depth of his vacant eyes.
Sherlock was John's whole world, and without that madman at the center, John was spinning apart.
Mycroft, in an effort to rescue John from his impending fate, got him a part-time job at Royal Hope Hospital. It was a minor position, but it kept John occupied and slightly more sober than he would've been otherwise.
The job was a good one, a patient boss bribed by Mycroft to be forever understanding and patient. Never was John to be fired, and always was his work to be checked for mistakes. John, despite his lack of mind, was still one of the better doctors at the hospital, able to apply Sherlock's methods of deduction to diagnosing his patients. It shamed the other younger doctors to be overshadowed by this half-drunk shell of a man; and it made them resentful and shy away from him.
John was alone in the work place; and by avoiding any and all involved with Sherlock's suicide, John was alone at home too. Only Mrs. Hudson visited, and only once every month or so, only able to take so much drunken abuse from what was once a good man.
xxx
John was still in a bad mood from that rude bloke decked out in leather like he was in an American action cinema, but John did his best to ignore the rude brush off in the lobby. It really wasn't worth the energy to get hyped up about anyway. John had patients to tend to, and in his slightly liberated state, John could really only follow one train of thought at a time.
So John set about checking on his chronic hypochondriac on floor six, the three in ICU for appendicitis, and then the two in CVICU for heart attacks before making his way towards the less extremely ill patients of his roaster.
Florence Finnegan was the first in his less severely sick patients. She was a kindly old lady who'd only been in the hospital all of two days. She was friendly and quirky, and John was faintly reminded of his grandmother - the woman who'd practically raised him and Harry while their parents were too inebriated to do anything.
Alcoholism was a serious vice in the Watson family.
After Florence, John would most likely head over to see his new patient, John Smith, before heading over to remove some sutures from another patient down the hall.
"Flo! And how're you?" He slurred a bit, blinking rapidly against the bright light shining through the window.
"Sober, Doctor." She replied with a dry smile. She didn't approve of his drinking either, but was also well aware that while alcohol dulled his mind, it didn't affect his work. His work was the only thing John had now.
He grimaced and let himself fall back into a recliner chair.
"How much and of what kind?"
John sighed, resting his cane against his inner thigh, "Whiskey, 24 ounces." He confessed.
Her eyes widened almost comically, "And you're still standing?" She asked in wonder with a slight 'tsk' in her voice, "Doctor, I'm concerned for your health."
"Everyone is." John replied, "and honestly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
Flo gave him a knowing, very sad smile, "Alright, Doctor." She nodded and patted John's knee, "Just be sure."
And how she'd known that he was on the verge of throwing himself off St. Bart's roof too was beyond him. He'd just mentioned that didn't give a damn about his health, something he shouted at both Lestrade and Mycroft; and neither of them had caught the underlying current that she had. Only Flo had been in his company a full half hour since their initial acquaintance and she already had such acuity towards John.
"I-" John sat back, faintly alarmed, "I haven't really set a date yet. Flo." He managed in a whisper.
"But you've decided, and I want you to be sure you're ready for it to end."
John paused, staring at the floor dispassionately as he remembered Sherlock. Giggling after a mad chase through the city, attacking Chinese smugglers, facing Moriarty and the Woman, saving England, stealing ashtrays, chasing augmented wolves in forests…
John also remembered the flailing arms in running in windmill circles before smashing right into the ground like a bug on a fly swatter. The blood painted the sidewalk, and the still warm body with glazed eyes and nary a pulse. John remembered visiting the body in the morgue, Molly having given him time with his friend after the autopsy. She said she'd be back in ten minutes, but she didn't return for three hours; letting John curl up on the cool steel table with the corpse of his best friend and just cry into that dark mass of curls as he held tightly to the corpse, as if he could pull Sherlock's soul back from the grave. The funeral, begging it all to be some sort of lie; and then going to their home and putting on Sherlock's long Belstaff coat and crawling in Sherlock's bed and just existing best he could. Then Harry came over and got him drunk, and John still hasn't the bravery to let sobriety take him back since.
"But you've decided, and I want you to be sure you're ready for it in the end."
"It would be a gift."
There was silence.
Flo just held his hand.
xxx
"So…" John whispered as he and his new friend/patient overlooked the lower level of the hospital from the balcony, "What did you say these aliens were called again?"
"Judoon." Was the whispered answer, "Think of them like police, but for space and for hire… they're more like interplanetary thugs, actually." Smith shrugged, wrenched his neck to the side, and then inched forward, watching one of the Judoon interact with one of the men by the door.
"Fantastic." John grumbled sarcastically again as he shifted in his position behind the potted plant. His leg was achy again, what with all the squatting and walking around, but he'd lost his cane at the balcony as the alien ships had landed, "And they brought us to the moon, because…?"
"Neutral territory. According to galactic law, they've got no jurisdiction over the Earth; so they isolated us here. That rain earlier? Lightning? That was them, using an H2O scoop."
John gave Smith a cross look, "So… we're trespassing on the moon then? I – well- with that 'galactic law' I mean?"
Smith looked at John with that grin again, that madman-grin.
"No. But I like that. Good thinking." He congratulated John with a tip of his imaginary hat, "But you're wrong. No. It's more simple than that." He pointed to the Judoon below, shining lights in peoples' eyes and then inking their hands, "They're making a catalogue; it means they're after something non-human, which is very bad news for me."
John blinked, "Wait, what do you mean, 'bad news for you'?"
Smith shot John a Sherlockian 'figure-it-out-yourself' look and John suddenly understood, "You're an alien too." Smith nodded at him, "That's why you've got two hearts then…"
Smith inched forward again, watching the proceedings below very carefully, "Yeah, and-"
He never got a chance to finish. John had chosen that moment to clout his newly-discovered alien-patient very firmly in the arm, hard enough to leave a bruise and pull a yelp from the other man.
"I gave you human drugs, when you were an alien?" John's neck and the tips of his ears were crimson with anger, and his entire left hand was shaking like a mini-earthquake with its' power and destructive capabilities all cubed before being squared and times'd by ten.
"I-"
John walloped his patient again, roughly knocking him to the floor, before grabbing him by the lapels of his suit and wrenching him up to John's eyelevel with an inordinate amount of strength for your ordinary human being.
Very suddenly Smith was staring into John's rage-filled eyes with his own widened with surprise chocolate-brown ones.
Smith made a mental note – Hell hath no fury like a Watson's scorn. – and believed every word of it.
"I am your doctor." John hissed, spittel flying form his mouth in the rage, "You are my patient. You will behave; or I will beat you bloody, knock you comatose, truss you up, and lock you in a closet. Got that?"
Smith nodded fervently, "Got it."
John nodded back, and then, with an irritated huff, dropped him.
"John Smith isn't your real name then, is it?" John asked, his voice betraying the existence of any of his previous ire so believably that Smith found himself doubting that it had even occurred in the first-place. "That's a human name, and you're… not human?"
"Yeah, Time Lord actually." Smith (a Time Lord?) answered as he backed out and away from the edge of the balcony, "Come on then. We've got stuff to do, Doctor." He grinned madly at John, who just blinked before crawling after him.
xxx
The fact that John's patient, Mr. Smith, was actually an binary cardiovascular timetraveling alien was but a highlight in John's day was something of a worrying nature. Especially since that meant crazy rhino space-cops were after anything alien, including Mr. Smith, then it would be really bad, such as "everyone would die" bad.
xxx
Once they were out of sight, both men immediately shot to their feet and dashed down the hallway, John tailing his patient, as fast as they could run. Smith led John to an office, empty and abandoned, but apparently exactly what he needed to do whatever it was he needed to do.
John closed the door behind them, locked it, and then slid down the wall before settling on the floor to give his leg a well-deserved rest. He really shouldn't be running like that anymore.
John then turned to watch Smith as he waved some sort of tubular metal device at the computer's monitor, before whacking it harshly with his free hand after four or so minutes of the private light-show doing absolutely nothing.
Personally, John was content to watch him for however long this madman was prepared to beat and shout abuse at the machine. John felt a sense of déjà vu, what with his own ongoing battle with chip and pin machines across the entirety of Great Britian, and could sympathize quite readily with the man's (alien's) predicament. Additionally, John needed to get his breath back, but once that was done about ten or so minutes later, John decided enough was enough and stood. This madman was evidently a genius. John could just sense it, an ability he'd gained after living with Sherlock for nearly a full year, and most geniuses, John knew, needed enabling.
"So, you're a Time Lord." John began as he slowly made his way over to the computer desk at which the alien was working, "Do you have an actual name then? John Smith couldn't po-"
"The Doctor." Smith – The Doctor – interrupted.
"The Doctor." John echoed with a tilt of his head as he hobbled forward some more, he'd lost his cane somewhere along the way, "Doctor Who?"
The Doctor grinned, like he'd just heard a funny joke, and then his expression grew to be one of serious concentration again, "Just 'the Doctor'."
"Doctor of what then? You've a specialty of course, being a doctor, so in what then? Aliens?"
The man in front of him snorted again and turned back to face John, "You're a very funny man, Dr. Watson." The Doctor beamed happily at him before speaking in that deep-yet-mocking baritone voice of his again (the one he used for funny exaggerations or ridiculous exclamations), "I like you."
He then went to answer John's earlier question, the one which John had so keenly forgotten he'd even asked, "And no. Well… yeah." Pause. "Well, a little bit of everything really." He shrugged, apparently satisfied with his answer and turned back around to the computer. John having only just caught up to what exactly the man was talking about.
"Doctor of everything." John sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation, "Okay then. What are you doing? And what are you doing it with?"
"Sonic Screwdriver." He briefly held it up for John to see.
John eyed it and leaned back again, watching over his patient's shoulder so the man/alien could get back to work. It looked pretty nifty, only if it worked though. So he asked.
"Does it work?"
The Doctor guffawed at John and sent him the stink-eye, "Of course, it works." It was like he was insulted just by the very idea that it might not.
John nodded at him. "It's cool."
The Doctor blinked like he'd not heard that comment directed at him before, "What?"
John smiled, "It's cool." as he motioned towards the 'sonic screwdriver.'
The alien was grinning now, "Sonic Screwdrivers are cool, aren't they?" He sniffed happily before suddenly growling and hitting the computer again with a loud huff. Honestly, this man-!
"What's wrong?"
The Doctor shot John a look before sighing and then gesturing widely to the computer, "It's this- computer!" He almost whined, "The Judoon must have locked it down." He sighed and began to mumble quietly, yet just barely loud enough for John to hear, "Judoon platoon upon the moon." Then the Doctor groaned audibly, slamming his forehead down on the frame of the monitor, obviously stuck.
John put a hand on his shoulder, and the Doctor suddenly looked up at him and then continued talking like he had never stopped in the first place, "Cause I was just travelling past, I swear. I was just wandering. I wasn't looking for trouble, honestly, I wasn't; but I noticed these plasma coils around the hospital, and that lightning(That's the plasma coils); which been building up for two days now, so I checked in, I thought something was going on inside, it turns out the plasma coils were the Judoon up here - in space." He groaned dramatically, and John could almost swear it was Sherlock in that chair instead of his new alien friend, the way he didn't seem to need to pause to breathe while talking widely about nothing (or something) in particular.
"So what are the Judoon here for?"
The Doctor spun in his chair to face John and rested his head on the palm of his hand, "Something that looks human, but isn't."
"You?"
"Not me – but like me." He shrugged.
The Doctor spun back around to the computer and set to work on it again, calmer than he had been before.
"What if they find the other alien then? Why is that bad?"
"Be-cause…" He stretched out the word as he worked a very particular spot very forcefully with the light from his Sonic Screwdriver, "They might declare the hospital guilty of harboring a fugitive. They'll sentence it to execution then. 'Justice is swift' and all that."
He went to typing on the computer now, accessing files after having beaten whatever it was he was fighting with on the computer earlier, "But if I can find this thing first-" He slammed his fist into the computer suddenly, startling John, "Oh! Just that: they are thick! Judoon are thick! They are completely thick!" He shouted angrily, "They wiped the records." He mocked, irritated, "Oh, that's clever." Sarcasm, then. Brilliant.
"Well, what are we looking for? I'm a senior doctor here, I know a lot about the place." John offered as he sat upon a heap of boxes as a sort of make-shift chair.
"I don't know. Any patient admitted in the past week with unusual symptoms? There might be a back-up…"
John stood and limped over to the door.
"Hey! Where're-?"
"Mr. Stoker." John interrupted turning around, "He's very posh, bit of a prat, but he's very hands-on. If there's any back-ups, chances are: he's a copy in his office someplace." John sighed, "Keep working though, in case I'm wrong."
The Doctor grinned at John very suddenly, "I knew I liked you. Smart thing, you are." He clapped his hands together, "Alright then, Dr. Watson, off you go!" And with that, and an unnecessary shooing motion, John set off down the hall and towards Mr. Stoker's office.
xxx
The man, Mr. Stoker, was planning on retiring in a few years; and John had gotten to know the guy pretty well as he was planning on moving someplace in Essex, an area in which John had grown up in as a child. He wanted to know about some of the better neighborhoods, and John hadn't minded talking about his childhood country.
When John actually got to the office, it was, of course, locked. So John set to work picking said lock.
Before Sherlock, it had never been a necessary skill, picking locks, but ever since then John could never have been more grateful for being taught the trade by the master lock-picker himself. It was consistently useful and never had ceased to be a serviceable skill, even after Sherlock's death. (John found himself picking locks at least once in every three days, and he questioned what that said about himself.)
John had the door open in under 15 seconds with nothing but a spare paperclip from his wallet (kept for emergencies, of course) and some good jiggery-pokery. It was bent out of shape after the lock picking, but John didn't care and tossed it over his shoulder before continuing forth unto the breach.
xxx
The office was empty, not a soul in sight, and that meant John would have to snoop around instead of just asking for the back-ups like a normal person.
Another useful skill John had learned from Sherlock, was how to snoop efficiently and quickly through an office. John had a lot of practice raiding Mycroft's office (The one upon which Sherlock raided most often and had the least amount of time to do so). The goal had always been to steal whatever sweets Mycroft had packed away, and even though Sherlock's brother wasn't overweight, he still always had sweets hidden away. John figured out at some point along the line that they were only actually there for Sherlock to snatch and steal away. That caused John to thereby equate the 'raiding of Mycroft's office for candy' to 'a game between the two brothers that Sherlock wasn't quite aware of yet'.
John started with the file cabinets first, and then moved to the closet at the far end of the room afterwards. He didn't hear someone approach him from behind, hadn't even been aware of them until something very solid and very thick grabbed him from behind and dragged him backwards.
John, startled, yelping loudly and swinging out. He had slammed his knee right into the groin of whoever was holding him; but it had, surprisingly, zero affect. John, instead, was whapped across the skull and then, once stunned by the hit, dragged further back from the closet and pushed to his knees facing the doorway of the office.
xxx
John dazedly looked up and saw his attacker to be that rude man from earlier, the one who'd bumped into him without apologizing afterwards.
What confused him though, was Flo, his patient from before seeing The Doctor, standing in the door way with a smile on her face. She was grinning in a way that reminded John of the Doctor's mad-smile, but it seemed more conniving on her visage.
"Flo?" John ventured with a heavy swallow, "What's going on?" He struggled slightly against his restrainer, but the man in leather just twisted his arm, forcing John to release a pitiful yelp in pain. He was breathing heavily now, and he could hear his heart beating loudly in his chest.
"I'm helping you, Doctor." She smiled at him as she knelt before him, cupping his face with one of her wrinkly old palms.
"Helping?"
She gave him a sad smile, "A gift, Doctor."
And John remembered his last words to her. He remembered the pain he felt, still felt, and always will feel. Sherlock was dead, and what? Flo was offering to kill him?
"Why?"
"There are great tests to come," She said philosophically, softy, "and terrible deeds. Some of them my own. But if I am to survive this, I need blood." She leaned back and with a wave of her hand the restraining hand at John's arm and neck were gone. The leatherman stepped back and John clutched his arm to his chest as he spared a quick glnace towads the leatherman before turning his attention back to Flo. "I thought I might give you the chance to take what you wanted most."
"What's blood got to do with anything?" John questioned, 'I don't understand."
"Well, Doctor, I was only salt-deficient because I am so very good at absorbing it." She nodded at him as she pulled a white straw from her purse and held it up for John to see, "I need fire in my veins; and who better than the man who wants to die?"
"You want to drink my blood? That's what you're saying? You'll drink my blood?"
"Oh, you're a smart one." She praised as she knelt down in front of him.
"Who are you?"
"A survivor, Dr. Watson. At any cost." She folded her hands in her lap, "What do you say, Doctor Watson? Want to die?"
John cast his gaze to the floor, swallowing painfully past the lump. The constant loss of Sherlock and John wasn't coping. He wouldn't survive. John was fine right now, what with this adventure, but what afterwards? What would he do? Go back to his flat and mould, maybe throw himself off St. Barts...
John tipped his neck to the side, granting Flo access.
"Yes." It was bust a whisper, but it was all Flo needed before she descended upon his neck with that straw. He felt the plastic stick in his neck, breaking past the skin; and then his blood began to well-up to the wound. His platelets would try to seal the opening, but it wouldn't do any good. She would just drink them all up.
He could feel her lean over him, placing the unattached end of the straw at her mouth, and then it started. He felt her sucking through the straw and his blood flowed right up the plastic tube –just like a smoothie. John grimaced but held still, letting the approaching black take him without a fight.
Just when John thought it was over, just before he lost himself, John managed a hoarse "thank-you" before falling beneath the surface, hopefully gone forever and, with luck, to see Sherlock again.
John knew only floating blackness. It was nice, slightly cold, but alright. If this was death, or the other side of it, John could live here for a while. Not too long before he would go mad, mind you, but what did it matter if there weren't any people around? No one to mind a madman?
Did it really matter?
Fancy that though: being killed by a vampire.
He didn't even know how long he'd been floating. It was peaceful.
Then a soft murmuring could be heard. Something breaking through his black haze.
"John." And he could recognize that voice. It was familiar.
"John, wake up!" He felt someone shake his shoulders, and John groaned at the disturbance.
"Leave me 'lone." He mumbled incoherently. He felt the shaking stop suddenly, and John grinned at the tiny victory. Then he recalled he wasn't suppose to be able to talk, being dead, and his eyes popped open and, leaning over him, he saw the Doctor. His concerned face was looking down at John with a sort of solemnity that was reserved for only those who were beyond help. Who'd lost someone really important or were lost themselves. John was both.
"What happened?" John croaked at the man leaning above him.
"Found the back-ups." The Doctor replied calmly. Quietly. "I came to get you and found that plasmavore feeding off of you." His lips were pulled thin, "I managed to get you out of there and in here." He made a gesture with his eyebrows drawn to their surrounding area, and John made a quick look around from his position on the floor, "This closet." The Doctor clarified. He sniffed and looked back down at John, "I thought she'd killed you." The corner of his mouth pulled downward a bit, "I have a tendency to lose people, and I thought-" He shrugged and leaned back, allowing John to sit up slightly, with the Doctor's help mind you.
John nodded, "Yeah, that was the plan." He rubbed the back of his neck and kept his gaze to the floor, aware that the Doctor's eyes had suddenly snapped to his face.
"The plan?" He'd echoed, "You-" He choked and cut himself off, "You planned that?"
The rest to be continued shortly.
I hoped you enjoyed this redone edition of "Smith and Watson" And I'd love it if you reviewed and told me what you loved or what you'd love to see between John and the Doctor (10 and/or 11) and any of the future companions (Donna, Amy, Rory, River, ect.)
-MV