A/N: I took some slight liberties with this. :-)

Prompt 08: From V Tsuison – Someone is an extraterrestrial.

Worlds Away

It is a day in 1880, the blazing heat distorting all edges, and Watson wakes on a bunk in Peshawar, wakes to dirty thin sheets surrounding him like a corpse's wedding veil. The air shimmers and he watches it with a detached confusion, thinking air should not be able to do that. But here it does. Here it always has.

It takes him a moment to ground himself. Gunshots and shouting and pain fight for dominance in his memory, and then his body chooses the pain, gathers it close to pool together at the base of his spine. He wonders what he has broken, apart from himself.

There are voices, glimpses of spectre-like people beyond the veil. The bunk on which he lies is short and narrow. He finds it strange that he fits on it, thin trembling limbs that do not match the body he remembers leaving England with. He watches with a curious fascination as his hand reaches out to pull the sheet aside, his wrist as thin as a youth's.

One of the voices is suddenly close, whispering, "doubt he'll walk again," and Watson's heart freezes, a horrendous realisation running through him, a sentence worse than death.

But then he sees Marsden in the next bed, recognises the tattoo that creeps up the man's arm and shoulder like ivy, ink-green tendrils visible at the neck. One of Marsden's legs has gone, cleanly sliced above the knee. The other is twisted in a break that Watson can see will not weight-bear, even when healed.

The relief that washes over him is sickening, guilt carrying the wave, because Marsden will not have that relief. He turns on the bunk and empties the contents of his stomach, brings up what little was in there.

A nurse rushes over, all compassionate tuts and murmurs. Watson waves away her concerns and questions and asks when he can go home, feeling like a distant creature amongst these broken men.

"Soon, Doctor," the nurse says kindly, and Watson associates the word with an eternity, long-drawn days and nights in this heat-flooded world.

Six weeks later, he returns to London cracked but whole, splintered pieces of himself abandoned in Portsmouth and cast out to sea.

He ventures as far into the Capital as he can go. A suitcase makes up the rest of him, contains his army clothes, journals and a sovereign Marsden kept in the inner pocket of his uniform coat. It cost the man as much to give it up as it did for Watson to take it, the coin pressed into Watson's hand with the doctor's solemn promise to return it to Marsden's sweetheart.

Watson gave his word. How could he not.

He signs into the Strand hotel under a false name, leaves no trail of identification, craving anonymity until such a time he finds himself again. The butler recognises him for what he is, however, quick sympathetic smiles directed at Watson whenever food is brought to the room. Something in Watson's chest closes up at that. He takes to eating in the restaurant, in an alcove as close to the door as possible, enough room to escape.

Time passes, hours marked by dull routine.

Spring rolls into Summer.. He spends his days watching people through glass, the women with their pastel-washed parasols and men with tweed suits every shade of monochrome, a throng of bodies crisscrossing the streets.

He feels like an outsider during these moments, disconnected entirely, and he wonders if it will end. He thinks he will carry this with him forever, this feeling of isolation on his own planet.

One month later, he hits solid ground when he shakes hands with Sherlock Holmes, a knowing look in the detective's eye that brings Watson crashing back to earth.

End