CHAPTER THREE
John stared at the rows of dairy products before him. The Doctor leaned against the glass case.
"This isn't tea," he said. "I was hoping you might have biscuits."
John smiled in apology. "You said it was important we speak somewhere Sherlock would never find us."
The Doctor nodded.
"Well, this is the milk aisle at Tesco's…" John waited for the Doctor's reaction. "Well. Sherlock won't come here. Trust me."
The Doctor shrugged. "Okay." He was doing the pouting thing again, like he had done back when he had tried beer at the pub.
"We can get biscuits later," John suggested. "I'm sure Mrs. Hudson has some back at the flat."
The Doctor smiled and clapped his hands together once, rubbing them back and forth as he spoke. "Okay! Then I suppose I should tell you the truth."
"This is about Sherlock?"
The Doctor nodded. The smile dropped off his face. "Very much so."
"He's not sick or anything?"
"No!"
John breathed a sigh of relief.
"He's just not…well, John, he's not human. Not originally, anyway."
"What?" John said.
An elderly woman carrying two tubs of ice cream turned to stare at them.
"Sorry!" John told her. He turned back to the Doctor, his voice lowered to his whisper. "What?"
"Well," the Doctor seemed a bit offended, "he's like me! I'm not so bad, am I? I'm very clever, you know."
John shook his head. "Sherlock Holmes isn't an alien! I think I'd have noticed."
The Doctor nodded. "No no no, you couldn't have noticed! You didn't even know aliens existed, not your fault. You see the trouble is, the trouble is, John, that your friend hasn't always been Sherlock Holmes. He used to be like me."
Sherlock Holmes, the same as this man? With…two hearts, and a spaceship, and all sorts of other alien parts? John shivered, and it wasn't only the chill from the freezer aisle. "I don't believe you," he said.
"Well, I didn't either! The TARDIS was the one who sensed it, Sexy is rather good at these things. Last of the Time Lords, says who! No, she got one look at your Sherlock Holmes and bam! The gravity filter went kablooey. I suppose it is a rather weighty subject! No, she was trying to tell me this was important, she sent me straight to you so I come and find the man who isn't really a man—"
"Sorry," John said. He wasn't sorry, though. He had no qualms at all when it came to cutting off the Doctor's rant. John had had quite enough of people calling Sherlock "inhuman." Sherlock said the Doctor was an alien, fine. That didn't stop him from also being a nutter. "Your spaceship. Looked. At Sherlock."
"Well, she's a slightly sentient spaceship, and she sensed that there was another—"
John tilted his head. "You have a slightly sentient spaceship?"
"Well, you have a fictional flatmate! I'm not judging you, am I?" John stared at the Doctor. "Right. Sorry. Sorry, I've got it all wrong! Well, no, I've got it right, but it's all coming out in the wrong order. It's an awful lot of exposition to get through. But for you, for Dr. John Watson, the exposition needs to be in the proper order, in an order that makes sense. You see, it's imperative to your life, to everything that you hold dear, that you understand what I am trying to explain."
"I thought this was about Sherlock."
"Oh, it is. He's very important. But you, Doctor John Watson, you could very well be the most important man in the universe."
The Doctor waited, John wasn't exactly sure what for.
John just stared at him. He was clearly a nutter. There was no other explanation. Certainly there wasn't proof that Sherlock Holmes was a…well, whatever the Doctor was. He didn't have two hearts, John knew that for a fact.
John didn't know if he wanted to laugh hysterically or run away. He didn't really want to hear more of this shite. Who would ever accuse Sherlock of having one heart too many?
The Doctor sighed, and pushed a hand through his hair. When he spoke again he spoke softly, like he was forcing something out of himself and he couldn't waste any energy on the volume. "You know we're both soldiers, you and I. Survivors. There was a war throughout time, and I was the only one left. 'The last of the Time Lords.' But, oh, John, if you could have seen. Time Lords could hop between realities like that," the Doctor snapped. "We travelled space and time in the bat of an eye, the flick of a wrist. Some of us wanted to save worlds, some to destroy them. There was one of us, though, who wanted only to learn about them."
The Doctor took a deep breath. "None of us saw the Time War coming, none of us knew enough to run away. But if there's anyone who knew enough to save themselves, it would have been him. There was a Time Lord, you could say an old acquaintance of mine. This Time Lord was obsessed with knowledge and he would do anything to know even more. If he had a question, if anyone had a question, he would learn the answer, whether through observation or experimentation or negotiation or force."
John smirked a little. This "acquaintance" sounded a fair bit like Sherlock when he had a mystery he couldn't solve. He'd bet the Doctor had his hands full with this one.
"He called himself 'The Genius.' I believe he escaped the Time War by becoming a human. By creating a new human where there wasn't one. You see…that's who Sherlock used to be."
John had to look away. He didn't want to insult the Doctor by smirking at him. John had lost people too during the war; he'd had his own battles with PTSD. It didn't seem fair to mock the Doctor for missing one of his old friends. But Sherlock? An alien? In what universe did that idea make any sense?
The Doctor stood next to John and grabbed John's hand. John looked over, startled. He really didn't want to offend the man. But he also really, really wasn't interested.
"It's hard to explain, because it's a bit of a Time Lord thing. You know how you could recognize another soldier even if they were in fancy dress?"
John looked around. He hoped nobody else noticed them and got the wrong impression. Thank God, the aisle was barren. John looked back to the Doctor and nodded.
"Well, it's nothing like that at all, really, it's a very complex and scientific process involving nonlinear events and imprinting and Time Lord blood lines and all kinds of wibbly-wobbly things, and that still isn't enough to recognize him at very first sight, but you just imagine Sherlock as a soldier in fancy dress. I think that'll see you through. Now!" he squeezed John's hand. "I need you to do something for me. Close your eyes, just for a second."
"What? Why?"
"I need you to imagine. But I'm going to…help you a little. Another Time Lord thing."
John licked his lips. "Yeah. Okay." He closed his eyes.
"Okay!" the Doctor said, sounding pleased. "John, I want you to picture a moment with Sherlock at work. Sometime when he's on a case, when he's deducing someone and the words spill out of him, how it's almost like magic, like he's just too incredible to be believed. Think hard and give me a moment when he's more brilliant than anything else you've ever seen."
John nodded. He pictured Sherlock on a case, on "A Study in Pink," when he stood in the stairwell and realized the crime scene was missing the most important piece, that the killer had stolen Jennifer Wilson's suitcase. He remembered Sherlock tiny in the stairwell below him, and how all the energy in the room seemed to be collected in his single, brilliant mind, the one man in the room inexplicably shouting "Pink!" John remembered how he had no idea what was going on and how that killed him, how he needed to know more than anything, just because Sherlock was beginning to know. Oftentimes John felt content to help Sherlock be clever, to determine a cause of death or defend Sherlock when necessary. But to this day John remembers wishing more than anything that he could be on the inside of Sherlock's mind, looking out. Just that once, to know what it was like. He remembered Sherlock shouting, waving his hands, having ideas right, left and centre. And John realized he couldn't let this brilliant man go.
"That's fantastic," the Doctor said softly. "That will do just fine. But now I need you to try to imagine something even bigger, even madder. I need you to imagine Sherlock like that every single moment, always too brilliant, through all of space and time."
John gasped at the images filling his brain. They weren't concrete pictures, exactly; it wasn't that he could see anything at all. Sherlock normally shone so brightly, sometimes watching him work was like looking into the sun. John sometimes had this distant sense that his life would be far healthier, and far safer, if he could only learn how to look away. If what the Doctor was saying was really true, then all this time he'd only seen Sherlock with sunglasses on. Because now he imagined Sherlock as the Genius. Sherlock with a slightly sentient spaceship, Sherlock with two hearts in his chest and the ability to travel anywhere, see everything. Sherlock solving crimes across the galaxy, Sherlock controlling time. Not Sherlock the man, though maybe he would look like one. Not even Sherlock the alien, but Sherlock the god. John would bet he'd be bloody infuriating, too.
He felt like he has been blinded. Like he couldn't see straight anymore. He didn't want to open his eyes.
"There's a device on the TARDIS," the Doctor said. "A Chameleon Arch. It converts Time Lord DNA into human DNA. Flip a few switches, put on a funny hat, and bam, human. That's how Sherlock Holmes is here in 2010 London. New body, new friends, but it's him all right."
But—John opened his eyes. "He would have told me," John said, but even as he said the words he wondered. Occasionally he felt he hardly knew his flatmate at all…
"He couldn't tell you; he doesn't even know. That's why he always carries a fob watch, you must have noticed it, it contains the all Time Lord-y bits of him. If you open the watch, he'll remember everything."
John breathed a sigh of relief. He let go of the Doctor's hand—he hadn't realized he was still holding on to it—and put his own hand into his pocket. "That's that, then. I'm sorry about your friend, Doctor. But there's definitely been a mix-up. Sherlock doesn't have a fob watch."
"He must. Maybe he's never shown it to you. But I promise you, Sherlock is never without this watch. He doesn't know it's anything special. He won't even want to open it, not even if you were to ask. That's the Time Lord technology, called a perception filter. But you have to find the watch, John. Please."
John shrugged. "Okay," he said. Why not? He'd search a bit. He wouldn't find anything. He'd be able to convince the Doctor that Sherlock was normal and they'd all go on their merry ways.
"Now, when you find the watch, and this is very, very important, John, the most important bit. Do not open it."
"What?" John frowned. "Why not?"
John watched the Doctor, pulled out the green torch and fiddled with it. He didn't seem to want to look John in the eyes.
The Doctor shoved the torch back into his pocket and grabbed John by the shoulders. He bent down to shove his forehead against John's. "John H. Watson. If you open the watch, you wouldn't be helping Sherlock. Not at all. Not one bit. Once you find it, you must never, ever open Sherlock's fob watch, do you understand me?"
"Why not?" John wasn't even sure why he was pressing the question. The watch wasn't real, and Sherlock wasn't secretly an alien, certainly not one with two hearts. John could see how some kind of outsider would make that mistake; Sherlock certainly had his off moments where he ignored the rest of humanity. And he had those piercing eyes, those bloody cheekbones. But a few oddities didn't add up to alien. No, Sherlock Holmes wasn't any kind of alien, not any kind of machine. He was human through and through.
But the Doctor was still speaking; still explaining Sherlock's alien aspects. Well, the Doctor was wrong.
"The moment he opens that watch, the moment he so much as takes a peek, he won't be Sherlock anymore. The Chameleon Arch does more than make you human; it makes you a new person. The Genius will still remember being Sherlock, he'll remember you and the crimes and every moment you spent together, but that's it. He won't be Sherlock, not ever again."
"Sherlock Holmes has a brother," John remembered aloud. "I've heard about his childhood. It doesn't matter, Doctor, because you're wrong."
The Doctor frowned. "Oh! He does, doesn't he! That's very interesting."
John finally snapped. "No! It isn't bloody interesting. It's not evidence or exposition or whatever you'll call it! It's proof. That's it. Now."
John grabbed a milk carton, because they needed milk, always, and with his other hand he pushed the Doctor's back straight out of the grocery aisle.
It wasn't a very John-like gesture. It was very rude. Actually, it was very Sherlock of him.
John thought the manoeuvre worked incredibly well.
.
.
John went straight back to the clinic. He put the milk in the communal fridge and hoped no one would use it for their afternoon tea. He chatted awkwardly with Sarah, he saw patients. He tried his best to forget everything the Doctor had said to him. It didn't matter; not a word of it was true.
John lost himself in the usual routine as best he could. But then, when it came time to leave he found Sarah and asked if he could take another shift. He told her he wanted to make up for taking the morning off. She stared at him for a bit before she shook her head.
"No, John," she said. "I don't know what's going on, but you look like you should to go home. We have more than enough people on staff tonight."
John sighed, accepting defeat. That was the trouble with amicably ending things with your superior, wasn't it? He couldn't start a fight with Sarah, not for a few more hours of work, not even if it meant going home a flat filled with awkward silence and meant not being able to look Sherlock in the eye.
As his taxi approached Baker Street, John realized he had been worried about all the wrong things.
He watched out the window as the blue box, the sentient spaceship, slid into view. John couldn't ignore the way his insides twisted at the idea of the Doctor inside their flat. What was he telling Sherlock? What wasn't the Doctor telling Sherlock? Was he going through their things, right now? And the tiny, burning question that John didn't even want to ask—had he found a watch? He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the taxi window. A frown creased his face—and as he watched the frown only deepened.
He paid the driver, unlocked the door, and ran up the steps into the flat. He pushed open the door to see Sherlock lounging on the sofa and the Doctor standing next to him. Funny, there was a chair, right there.
John wondered if the Doctor was standing because it was easier to investigate the flat that way. Sherlock was holding something in his hands, stroking it like a baby bird.
"Impossible to keep up a smoking habit in London these days," Sherlock told the Doctor. "But tempting…This is very nice."
The Doctor nodded and kind of bounced on his heels. "It's an antique."
"Though I don't imagine you hunted through antique shops to get this. No, of course not. Why would you, when you can simply travel back in time and pick it up fresh?"
"Oh, I like a little shop! But no, I had this lying around. Call it a personal favourite."
"Hm," Sherlock said. John waited for the sulk that came on whenever Sherlock deduced incorrectly, but it never came. Sherlock just looked down at the object and nodded. "I can see why," he said.
"Go on, then. Try it out!"
Sherlock moved his hands a bit and John could see he was cradling a mahogany smoking pipe.
John cleared his throat. "I don't think that would be a good idea," he said. He glared at the intruder, who glanced at John almost bashfully, clearly feeling guilty over his attempt to…what, to bribe Sherlock? "You gave him a pipe? What kind of a Doctor are you?"
The skin around the Doctor's eyes creased and he broke out with a grin. "Oh! I think we should let him try it, don't you?"
John said, "no" at the same time Sherlock said "yes!" Sherlock stood, pipe still in hand, and set about looking for tobacco from his ash analysis. John grabbed the pipe from Sherlock's hands as he rushed past.
Sherlock turned back to stand by John, to tower over him as best he could. "Really, John?" he murmured.
"I just don't think we should trust the Doctor," John whispered back. "Like you said, we don't know who he works for."
"He's the Doctor," Sherlock said dismissively. He spoke the words as if that was some kind of sufficient explanation. John stared back.
When had this happened? When had Sherlock gone and bloody fallen in love with the alien? Because last time John checked, the detective had been going for the Doctor with a syringe!
John felt the pipe being tugged out of his hands. The Doctor popped it into his mouth.
"Oh! Oh," the Doctor said, shaping his words around the pipe, "I can't ever let Jack ever get near the two of you. He would try to kiss you, or…well, kiss you!" The Doctor nodded, sealed his mouth around the pipe and puffed.
A series of bubbles rose from the pipe. John glanced over at Sherlock, who stared open-mouthed at his new alien idol. He seemed to be in shock.
The Doctor smiled around the pipe. "See?" he said. "Isn't it fun?"
"It blows bubbles," Sherlock said slowly.
John held in a giggle. Barely.
"You need a pipe, Sherlock Holmes! Like I told you, it is an antique. Also, very good at a party!"
Mrs. Hudson wandered in from the kitchen. She carried a tray with three cups of tea and biscuits. "Not too many, now," she said as she put the tray down. "Shouldn't ruin your appetite, boys. It's nearly dinnertime."
The Doctor stuffed the pipe in his pocket, sat on the sofa, and scrambled for a Jammie Dodger. "Oh, you have this kind! I love this kind!" He bit into the biscuit, his grin wide.
Mrs. Hudson offered the Doctor an indulgent smile before turning to John. "Hello, John, how was work today?"
John tried to simultaneously smile convincingly and forget all about his impossible-to-forget discussion from the morning. "It was fine, Mrs. Hudson," he said.
"All right, you boys just shout if you need anything. Pleasure meeting you, Doctor."
The Doctor wiped his mouth free of crumbs and stood to kiss her cheeks. "Yes! You too!" He held up a homemade biscuit. "This is a lovely spread, Mrs. Hudson."
The landlady blushed. "Thank you, dear. Just shout." Then she left.
The Doctor looked at Sherlock, considering. "Maybe we can get you a little cape," he told Sherlock.
John waited for Sherlock's cutting response. But the detective just shrugged and stooped down to pick up his tea. "I'm quite pleased with my coat," he said.
"Yes," the Doctor said. "I can see why. It does that nice swirly thing. I do like a swirly coat. I have one of those myself!"
This was just too weird.
John grabbed Sherlock's arm. Sherlock turned and watched John, eyes narrowing as he tried to deduce the problem.
"Sherlock," John whispered. "Can I speak to you alone? Maybe in the hallway."
Sherlock kept staring at John. He couldn't deduce John's discussion with the Doctor, could he? Sherlock nodded, still looking uncertain, and John issued a sigh of relief.
"Doctor," Sherlock said, and nodded to the door.
John rolled his eyes. "No, Sherlock, I meant we could go…Oh, fine," he muttered as the Doctor nodded, stood, grabbed a few biscuits, and left the flat.
John went to the kitchen, trying to move somewhere the sound wouldn't carry out to the hall. Sherlock followed.
John sat down at the table, next to Sherlock's latest experiment. He licked his lips. "Um," John said. He wasn't sure what the best way was to phrase his thoughts. Maybe there just wasn't a good way. "Has the Doctor been here long?"
"No," Sherlock said. He watched John expectantly.
"Just…has he been looking through your things at all? Did he search in your pockets or anything?"
Sherlock stared at him like John has just suggested Sherlock should write thank you notes, or drop a case about a serial killer.
"John," Sherlock said slowly. "Are you…feeling okay?" He looked distinctly uncomfortable at the words. John tried not to flinch under Sherlock's gaze.
"Yes," John offered. "Yeah, Sherlock, I'm fine." John felt exhausted. It was hopeless; he knew that. Sherlock would figure out what was wrong. He wondered if Sherlock would actually be able to guess. It didn't seem likely, given the preposterous nature of the conversation, but then again this was Sherlock. John watched his friend's roving eyes. He held his breath.
"You've been to Tesco's," Sherlock said. "You didn't bring anything back."
"Yeah..." John had completely forgotten to grab the milk from the clinic's fridge. "Nothing was on sale."
"We need milk," Sherlock said. Then he frowned. "You bought milk, didn't you? Something happened. Did you throw it out?"
John sighed. "It doesn't really matter, Sherlock."
"But it doesn't make any sense!"
John smiled a little at Sherlock's frustration. Despite John's attempts to lose himself in work, Sherlock's pouting now was the first time all day that anything had seemed normal, much less right. John hadn't realized he was so co-dependent on Sherlock Holmes—the thought was a little bit unnerving.
"We needed milk at the clinic, Sherlock."
"Oh," Sherlock said. He fiddled with the cuff of his sleeve.
"I suppose we can invite the Doctor back in, then," John said. He didn't exactly have further questions he could ask, not unless he wanted to give Sherlock any more incentive to deduce what had really happened at Tesco's.
Sherlock nodded excitedly and walked back to the living room. John sighed and followed behind. "I want to ask him about a few of the cold cases," Sherlock said. "At the time I couldn't see any way the murders could have been committed, but alien technologies open a whole new realm of possibilities! An unlikely realm, granted. I severely doubt we've encountered aliens before. Did you know, John, that the Doctor is the last of his kind?" Sherlock sat back down on the sofa.
John sat down next to Sherlock, half holding his breath. He didn't dare nod.
"You can come in, Doctor!" Sherlock shouted at the closed door.
Honestly, Sherlock was just like a child, John reflected. For some reason he smiled anyway.
"Excellent!" the Doctor said as he re-entered. "Biscuits go much better with tea, don't they? Marvellous stuff!" He grabbed a cup from Mrs. Hudson's tray.
"Doctor," John said. "I think you ought to tell us what you're doing here." John could feel Sherlock watching him, probably making new deductions by the second. John wasn't usually rude, that had to give Sherlock something to work from. John gripped the edge of the sofa and tried to tell himself he didn't care.
The Doctor smiled. "Just making a house call." He grinned a little. "I am the Doctor, after all."
"You're not mine," Sherlock said. His tone held no animosity, but it also held no room for argument. When John looked at Sherlock, shocked by his words as well as his mood swing, he nearly gasped aloud.
The detective's eyes, already trained on him, held absolute trust, and the tiniest bit of warmth.
John felt himself relax against the sofa, his arm brushing Sherlock's as he did. He a felt kind of warmth seep through his body, even though he hadn't had any tea yet. He hoped he wasn't blushing or anything. It was only that Sherlock didn't say things like that.
When John finally managed to look away from Sherlock he saw that the Doctor was smiling again, just a touch.
"No, Jack's not allowed here at all," the Doctor muttered to himself. He cleared his throat. "I'm here to speak to John, actually." The Doctor said. "I owe him a present, too."
Sherlock huffed. "A present? You have access to vast alien technological resources, not to mention the ability to travel in time, and you brought me a human children's toy." Sherlock frowned in that way that John recognized completely. "Which you then took back!"
"Oh! Sorry about that," the Doctor handed Sherlock the pipe again. "I've found the right toy to be very handy on occasion—saved my life once or twice! Besides, I never said it wasn't alien."
Sherlock stared down at the pipe as if seeing it anew. He turned it slowly in his hands, probably searching for alien features.
The Doctor pulled something small from his pocket and handed it to John. "Here," he said. He seemed rather pleased with himself. "Now, I imagine you'll find this very useful!"
John looked down at the object in his palm. "It's a kazoo," he said. It was also hot pink.
"It's not a kazoo," the Doctor cried. "Well it is, a kazoo, obviously it's a kazoo, but it's not just any kazoo." He paused to take a deep breath. "It's a space kazoo!"
"Um," John said. "Thanks?" He glanced at Sherlock, who was eyeing the hot pink toy with definite interest.
"Oh, that's just unfair," Sherlock told the Doctor.
The Doctor grinned. "It is good, isn't it?" He took the kazoo back from John. "Just blow this," he tooted once on the kazoo, "and I'll come running. Maybe even literally!" He handed it back to John.
"Not to be abused. For emergencies only," the Doctor said. He watched John carefully, and John knew he wasn't talking about John and Sherlock's usual emergencies where they were moments away from death because Sherlock texted a serial killer with an invitation to their flat. "Do you understand?"
John nodded. "Can't imagine we'll be needing it," he said.
The Doctor shrugged. "Better safe than sorry," he said. John felt rather tempted to punch the man.
The Doctor stood. Oddly enough, Sherlock followed suit. Sherlock even offered the Doctor his hand to shake. The Doctor pushed Sherlock's hand aside and grabbed Sherlock for a hug.
John sighed and stood as well. The Doctor let go of Sherlock and grabbed John. "Look after him," he whispered in John's ear. "That's all I'm asking, really." He let his head fall onto John's shoulder. "God," The Doctor said. "I really need to stop saying that. I need to stop needing to say that!"
He pulled back and patted John's chest a little. "And don't be afraid to call. Or kazoo!" he said. He shut the door behind him.
Sherlock ran to the window, his dead body smile firmly in place as he watched the Doctor go to the box, shut the door, and vanish away. Once the whooshing sound had faded Sherlock turned back to John, still grinning.
"Would you like to know the best part?" Sherlock asked.
John shook his head, trying to hide his own amused smirk. It was just so very Sherlock, wasn't it? "You're going to have to give it back," John said.
"Give what back?" Sherlock said carefully.
John rolled his eyes. "I saw you nick the Doctor's MI6 ID while he hugged you."
Sherlock nodded. "Your observation skills are getting better, John. I'm impressed." John felt himself puff up at the praise.
Sherlock pulled out the small black rectangle and flipped it through his fingers.
"Sherlock…" John said. Obviously they needed to give it back. Wouldn't do to condone his flatmate's penchant for petty theft. Even if it was amusing at times.
"Don't call the Doctor back yet," Sherlock said, carefully watching John. "Give me twelve hours."
John sighed. "I suppose if you weren't going to sleep anyway…" Hopefully the Doctor could live for a bit without his ID. If he really needed it John was certain the man would return. "I'm going to order takeaway. You want any?" He glanced over at Sherlock. Naturally the detective wasn't listening at all, too busy examining the ID.
"Oh, this is excellent," Sherlock said with a grin.
Next update in two days. :D See you then!
P.S. Thank you for all the lovely comments! They are the perfect encouragement as I edit the second half of this fic and work on new fic to publish in the future.