Hi all! Not much by way of introduction today, just on with the show! I'm assuming you've read my previous ten disclaimers, so am not going to bother hereonin. So, we left John... where?

John suddenly found himself standing on the other side of the wall in Stygian darkness. He didn't have time to be frightened, as a moment later a candle standing in an alcove lit itself and shone brightly. He picked it up and looked around.

He was standing in a narrow stone passageway that led off into the dark in both directions. It was cold, but not damp and there was no dust or cobwebs to be seen. A chink of light was visible through one wall, and he put his eye to it to glimpse the corridor he had just been standing in.

John smiled despite himself – a secret passageway! It was like one of the adventure stories he had read as a boy come to life. He pulled away from the wall and examined the statue of the owl, still sitting on a semi-circle of carpet that had evidently been the key to accessing the passage. It had been simple enough to get in, so he decided to try getting out – no sense in exploring unless he was sure he had an escape route.

Five minutes later he gave up in exasperation, as the owl's obsidian eyes seemed to glimmer merrily at his futile efforts. John groaned inwardly at his predicament – it would be deeply embarrassing if he had to be rescued by Sherlock because he'd been daft enough to get stuck in a secret passage. He'd better try and find another exit.

'Okay,' he said decidedly to the owl. 'You got me into this, so you can get me out. Which way should I go?'

The owl did not answer. But standing there John felt a sudden rush of air – a breeze, whistling up the corridor, bending the candle flame, plucking at his shirt. It was showing him which way to walk, to go left. John hoped it was, anyway.

'Well, I'll try it,' he said to the owl. 'But I'm going to come back and kick you if I wind up being saved by Sherlock.'

Yet again, that merry twinkle in the eye that John was not wholly sure was a reflection of the candle flame. Shaking his head, he set off down the passageway, keeping an eye out for statues, peepholes or anything that might indicate another way out. But there was nothing that caught his attention, only the smooth stone floor and grey walls.

He had walked quite some distance, albeit slowly and cautiously, when he came to another peephole. Wondering if this signalled another exit of some kind, he put an eye to it and peered out, looking for clues as to how to extricate himself.

What he saw instead was what seemed to be a smallish atrium he had not seen before. A round room with a domed ceiling and corridors branching off in all directions, it was thickly carpeted and bare of all decoration save two windows lazily letting in the reddish light of the sunset. John was about to turn away when a hunched figure lurched into view.

John froze as he recognised the monstrous servant. He had no desire for another confrontation with the creature, and he stayed motionless, trying to breathe as quietly as possible for fear it would realise that he was hidden somewhere. But the creature seemed weary, preoccupied – it halted in the middle of the small room, head bowed, shoulders slumped, long arms dragging at the carpet. As John looked, he realised that the fur on its face and paws was matted with blood.

As were the black shirt and trousers it wore. Come to think of it, the monster had been wearing similar garments the one and only time they had met. John would have frowned in speculation had he dared move a muscle. Why the hell would a creature with such a thick pelt bother with clothing?

'There you are!' came a familiar voice, and he realised in some shock that Mrs Hudson was there and sounding faintly exasperated. 'I've been looking all over, John's been getting worried. What's happened?'

'Nothing,' came the low discordant growl John recalled, but something in the inflection caught at him as intensely familiar. 'I needed to get away for a short time. Where is he? Is he all right?'

'He's fine, dear,' Mrs Hudson answered at once. Dear? John thought incredulously. 'I'm not sure where he is, he's probably having a wander round. Do go and see him soon, he was quite anxious when you didn't turn up for your research this afternoon.'

The monster did not respond at once. John stared at it, at its dark clothing, the huge clawed unshod feet, the beast's evident rapport with Mrs Hudson, and an unbelievable idea began to form in his mind.

'I'll need to get cleaned up first,' the monster uttered. 'No research today, we'll just sit in the living room and talk, he's diverting enough provided I tune out the sermonising. Besides, we've made no real progress, damn it.'

'Give it time, dear. Go and have a nice hot bath, and for goodness sake put those clothes in the laundry hamper this time! Why you won't allow me to use my cleaning spells in your rooms is beyond me.'

'Because Herne knows what you'd end up cleaning away! You would scrub the hieroglyphics off the tomb of a pharaoh given half a chance,' the monster groused, its tone and words achingly similar to those John would hear while working in the library or while sitting by the fire, and John's idea suddenly took on a distinct shape and structure.

Sherlock...?

John, as still as the marble statue that had gotten him into this situation, heard Mrs Hudson's familiar tutting and her footsteps fading away down the hall. The monster continued to linger in the atrium, however.

And as John watched, the arms shortened, the claws retracted, the shoulders sprang upright, and human features emerged from that beastly countenance. It wasn't like the werewolf transformations in the films, there was no snapping of bones and tearing of muscles, the change flowed like water over a fall, smooth and swift and sleek. It was over and done with, in mere moments.

It was only then, as John looked upon the face he was coming to know so well, still stained with blood around the mouth, eyes (those eyes!) slightly glazed from the exertion, tall frame shaking from excess effort, that he put most of the puzzle pieces together. The nagging feeling of déjà vu when he had first met Sherlock, the creature's grief and anger over the ruined violin, Sherlock's never wearing shoes, his apparent dislike of mirrors... The evidence had all been before him, but his mind had not made the necessary leaps in logic – or was that leaps in the fantastic? Everything, everyone in this place was so far beyond the realm of his experience John simply did not have the knowledge or understanding to make any sense of it.

Stunned by the revelation, he watched as Sherlock lifted a hand, looked at the blood on it, and sighed deeply before striding off in the opposite direction to Mrs Hudson. It was only then, when Sherlock was safely out of sight that John's paralysis ceased. He turned and fled back down the passage the way he had come.

This time, when his hand touched the moonstone, the entrance swung round at once and deposited him safely in the corridor. He looked wildly at the owl for a few seconds, its eyes seeming – ridiculously – to shine with glossy sympathy, before turning and running once more. He had to get somewhere – anywhere – where Sherlock was not. He had to hide until he had made sense of it all.

One question stood foremost in his mind, burning there, as he ran. Was Sherlock a man forced to look like a beast, or a beast concealed behind the form and face of a man?

John had not had any definite destination in mind when he began running, but as he paused for breath at last he realised he had returned to the corridor that contained the island-within-a-room. He had forgotten which door it lay behind, and instead of taking time to search for it grabbed frantically at the nearest door handle. The door opened easily and John slipped inside noiselessly, wishing he was able to lock it. Casting about for something to brace the handle with, he realised he was standing in a forest.

A pine forest, carpeted with fallen needles, quite unlike the deciduous trees that comprised the wood he and his colleagues had been hunted through. The sound of running water echoed pleasantly, and the light was a soft pink, the sun stepping daintily toward the horizon. John forgot about bracing the door handle and fled into the forest, following a rough earth trail through the trees.

He had run along it for only a minute when he found the waterfall. It was not a huge one, maybe fifteen feet tall, but it was certainly picturesque, tumbling down from a little cliff into a deep pool, frothy where the water fell but clear elsewhere. Acting on a hunch, John carried on round the bank of the pool and towards the waterfall. Clambering carefully over the slippery rock, he inched his way behind the water and found himself in a cool, gloomy, damp but not threatening cave that appeared to extend some way back into the cliff that supported the waterfall. He journeyed in for a little way until he found a little niche in one wall, large enough for him to nestle into.

John did so, sitting down and wrapping his arms around his knees. He felt a little safer here, where he could watch the only entrance and be ready in case Sherlock found him. The revelation that the monster who had threatened to torture him and his colleagues to death and the brilliant, infuriating, fascinating man he had conceived a strange liking for were one and the same was hard to stomach.

Why hadn't anyone told him? Well, that was obvious, John thought grimly. Here he was, hiding in abject terror. Sherlock and Mrs Hudson hadn't wanted him to know because if he did, he would refuse to work with Sherlock in breaking the curse that supposedly lay over the mansion. How could he be responsible for unleashing a monster like that back on the world?

But is he such a monster? An annoyingly reasonable voice asked in his mind. He's kept one promise – no one has hurt you. And he did let Lestrade and Molly and Anderson go.

After almost choking Lestrade to death, that is.

John rested his forehead on his knees, head spinning.

Mrs Hudson says that he's not evil, just thoughtless and careless. And you've gotten on well together, insufferable so and so that he is.

Mrs Hudson could have told him a pack of lies, for all he knew. John was aware he was a terrible liar, but not everyone was. It must be easy to lie, if your facial expressions could not be read.

But she loves Sherlock – I'm sure she's not lying about that. She's known him since he was a child...

John looked up, unseeing, as something occurred to him. Mrs Hudson had told him that the curse had been cast on them both five years ago. Was Sherlock's beastly alter ego another aspect of the curse, or had he always been thus?

Unbidden, a memory returned to him – his very first glimpse of the monster. He had awakened at the sound of the living room door opening – war had left him a very light sleeper. He had blinked awake, only to be paralysed by fear as he glimpsed a monster gazing at them – to begin with, he believed that the monster that had hunted them all that terrible night had somehow discovered them, had come to slaughter them.

But the monster had not attacked them, only looked long and hard. And then, when its eyes had met John's... that cool blue, so different from the dull glaring yellow that had constituted the other creature's eyes. Cool, intelligent, surprised. John had known, somehow, that the monster had not intended to attack them.

Until Anderson, that bloody fool, had destroyed the violin...

John shivered at the memory of the monster's – Sherlock's – rage. It all came back to that, didn't it? He wouldn't care what Sherlock looked like, handsome aristocratic man or deformed monster, if he shared Mrs Hudson's conviction that there was a good man inside whatever form he happened to be in. Is Sherlock a good man? If he isn't, could he learn to be one somehow?

John didn't have the faintest idea.

But he wouldn't find out sitting here, in the cold and the damp.

He sighed wearily. What to do now? Have it out with Sherlock and demand to know what the hell was going on, whether Sherlock was man or beast? Carry on as if he remained in ignorance of his housemate's double life?

John was turning over the possibilities in his mind, each appearing equally wretched to his view, when he heard what sounded like the scrape of claws on stone towards the back of the cave.

Panicked, he strained his eyes as he stared into the darkness, wondering if Sherlock had followed him into the cave somehow. But the eye watching him was not Sherlock's icy blue orb, but golden-brown in hue, and the size of an orange. It had a glazed, feverish look to it, but it regarded John steadily.

Then it screeched a simply unbelievable cry, a cross between an eagle's shriek and lion's roar that echoed like a bomb blast around the cave.

'Oh, fuck,' John said.

Author's Notes: yes, John does seem to have a knack for getting into sticky situations, doesn't he? Till next time...