The car was cruising into their new lodgings when a fireball rocketed into the sky far behind them. John glanced behind them and winced as a blast of hot air took shingles off nearby rooftops, denting the car with a series of alarming thuds. Mrs. Hudson cried out and wrung her bony hands. Sherlock stayed impassive.

John turned back and watched the city outside the window, marvelling at the humans walking one by one and two by two, carrying things, eating, chattering to one another and living their lives. There were shops, and houses, and people everywhere. It was so familiar, and yet so alien. He half expected to look up to the tops of the buildings and see the spires and domes of the Capitol, towered over by the welcoming shimmer of the dome, and above that, the endless red sky. But instead, the buildings were still the nests of humans, and the sky was a foreboding blue. He turned back with a shudder as the unmarked car pulled to a stop in front of a nondescript warehouse.

"A warehouse?" murmured Sherlock. "How very original." But then, Mycroft always did have a sense of the theatrical, and nothing has ever been more theatrical than cliches.

He climbed out of the car and stood quietly on the sidewalk, coat rustling in the sudden quiet like a reminder that even when he was still, the great detective's piercing mind ran a thousand miles ahead of his legs, circling the world in an instant and covering the greater distance into someone's soul in almost as much time. He was poised to understand things that other people sometimes tripped over, and every facet of him, from his coat of armor to his rebuttal of a personality, was carefully designed to protect him from the revelations he could never control.

John stood next to him, six inches shorter and over two thousand years older than the human he had grown to love. He stood with the muted grace of a survivor. His eyes didn't dart from place to place like Sherlock's, but watched everything at once, logging every movement and possible threat, and every story happening on the periphery of his. He saw it all, standing poised to attack or defend, to love or hate, to make whatever choice had to be made. He knew, acutely and painfully, just how easily the city would be torn like paper by inevitable tragedy and time, and his heart reached out to encompass all of it, to touch it before it was gone forever.

Mycroft's agents hurried them into the warehouse. They watched the spacious, bare open walls, stacked with enormous boxes labelled "BOOKS O-Z," and their shoes clopped like hooves on the stained concrete. Between two intimidating stacks of boxes, one of which was stamped with the number #2010, the other with #1895, was hidden a small, inconsipicious door labelled - with a sense of humor, John suspected - "221B".

Sherlock entered and half-heartedly scanned the room. It resembled a cheap motel room: bare, comfortless, with low ceilings, and a little bit dirty, as well as empty except for two beds, a small snack refrigerator (fully stocked, he suspected) and a TV with only one channel - the news, judging by the pattern of fingerprints on the buttons. A toilet was blocked off by curtains; there was no shower. He disliked it all immediately, but the detective adapted quickly and took the suitcase from John. He tossed it on one of the beds (making that one automatically his) and started furnishing the flat with dirty laundry, half-empty tea mugs and other comforts, to Mrs. Hudson's protests.

John looked around. A light dusting of depression settled across his shoulders. He drew almost imperceptibly into himself. The room reminded him too much of government-supplied housing - the basics, the essentials, and a suffocating air of "There, now get better." His left hand shook, ever so slightly.

The doctor squared his shoulders and helped Mrs. Hudson down onto the clean bed. "There, rest your hip," he said quietly, soothing himself as well as her. "You should have this bed. I'll sleep on the floor."

"Oh, John, thank you so much!" the landlady bleated. "I don't know what to think, with my flats all gone - but you're such a good man, John. I've always been able to rely on you." She patted his arm and smiled. The soldier couldn't help but warming with a smile of his own. From across the cramped room, Sherlock watched with something a little like jealousy.

John made up a pallet on the floor and organized his things. Sherlock organized his things, too, but his "organization" was generally inscrutable to anyone besides himself. After all, why bother putting things away when he could find things just by deduction?

John was more of an alphabetical-order kind of guy. He liked having things right where he could grab them at a moment's notice without even looking. He organized his clothes by type, weather and occasion, and his money he put somewhere as close to his gun as possible, which he liked safely close to him. Shampoo, soap, toothbrush and hair gel went in the bathroom (such as it was), and the tea kettle, skillet and set of silverware went in the kitchen (which in this case meant on top of the snack refrigerator).

He didn't really own anything else. He wasn't sentimental, and in all his travels he'd never picked up a keepsake. He would have liked to have something of his family, but his race wasn't big on photographs and anything bigger would have been confiscated during his... unusual departure from Gallifrey.

He didn't have any books, either. He hadn't grown up with them. During the majority of his life, any information he needed was available through holovids, gaseous or subatomic transmissions and just talking to people. On Gallifrey the only people who read were Academy Time Lords, whom he'd always disdained as useless, dishonest snobs. It wasn't until he reached Earth and found, to his dismay, that everything was on paper, that he learned to read. He wasn't even sure he'd be able to recognize Gallifreyan writing if he saw it.

He only had one pair of shoes, one ancient laptop, and the beat-up phone he'd been regifted by Harry as a lasting reminder of how much she hated him. Some people might have said that John was a simple man. He wasn't. He was a no-nonsense, orderly, practical man, but he was not simple. He was complicated.

He was the uneducated tribal kid from wild lands of Gallifrey, outside of the protected cities and free of the Time Lord government, who'd been awed and mystified by the Capitol.

He was the fresh-faced new grunt soldier who'd been ready to protect and serve.

He was the traumatized young soldier who'd discovered the hard way that he wasn't fighting for the good guys.

He was the bitter and furious fighter who had responded to disillusionment by throwing himself into the work of war, and who had grown to enjoy it, to love blood and killing in a way that frightened even him.

He was the pessimistic officer who knew that rising through the ranks was not a badge of honor for the courageous, but a mark of Cain for the survivor at all costs.

He was the cynical but humorous, softened by time, middle-aged Army General who had learned that above all else, you had to keep caring.

He was the father of three healthy, brave, idealistic, beautiful young Gallifreyan children, well loomed and brought up, and the husband of an intelligent, courageous, compassionate wife who made him dizzy with undeserved joy.

He was the only sane leader who saw what was coming, and tried in vain to get people to prepare, when the Last Great Time War was declared.

He was the man screaming, beating against the walls of the cargo hold for someone to take him back, to let him die with everything he loved as his planet burned behind him.

He was the prisoner of war profiteering slavers, empty, hopeless, too far gone to care what happened to him.

He was the uncomplaining slave of kings and emperors who struck no fear into him, accepting his lot simply because he had no other purpose.

He was the devastated, ripped-apart patient of a galactic abolitionist and doctor, who put him back together and more, inspired him to learn to heal instead of kill.

He was the wandering doctor, roving aimlessly through the galaxy helping where he could help, healing where he could heal, learning from everyone he met, and piece by piece, over centuries, making himself whole again.

He was the changed man who'd crashed to Earth after the business with Harry and slipped into the role of army medic like a glove the moment he saw wounded, eventually being accepted as an oddball but kind out-of-nowhere Good Samaritan/guardian angel who, according to him, "was just, uh, um, passing by?" while trying to hide the engine burns on his hands.

He was the complicated, dark and humorous, cynical and loving, broken and whole man who had met Sherlock Holmes, and maybe, just maybe, might have fallen in love.