A/N: Still not British, a doctor - or a writer, for that matter. -csf

IV.

'I trust my best friends to always keep one last illusive surprise from me', Sherlock revels to say, delighted, as I come down for shower and breakfast. I am not beyond a morning grunt and a flat dismissal:

'Best friends?' Emphasis on the sibilating sound of the plural form. 'You only got one, mate.' I grin proudly right at him.

Sherlock grins in response to my hazy brain and the quick lifting of my grumpy mood, but corrects me nonetheless.

'We seem to have acquired a second of you, John. Do keep up.'

'And you trust him – just like that?'

'He is you, after all.'

'That's my point', I protest, crossing my arms in annoyed military stance. 'What have you got there?' I can see he's holding a pocket notebook, of a deep blue colour, and Sherlock's memory is too good to need aids and I do not recognise that notebook as one of mine, so—

'Our travelled friend's notebook. A fantastic take on quantum physics and time travelling.'

'You nicked it, while he was asleep.' Sherlock nods, seeing nothing wrong in the gesture, he never does. I shrug, of course he nicked it. The sofa's empty now. 'Where is he anyway, my doppelganger?'

'Showering.'

'He better not use up all the hot water.'

'Worry not. John, I could set a timepiece by your shower time habits, my friend. You are meticulously precise, a habit born out of your extensive military deployment in— oh.'

I release my arms in fake exasperation and come take a grumpy seat opposite his armchair, in creased pyjamas.

'So what did you find in that?' I ask, curiosity overlapping anything else.

'The key to the universe', Sherlock comments cryptically. 'They seem to be highly developed plans for a time travel apparatus of sorts. Probably the portal John was talking about. By the way, do we still keep fortified uranium in the bread box?'

I blink. 'What bread box?'

My friend pretends dismay. 'Mrs Hudson will have taken it away. She didn't like how it glowed in the dark.'

I seriously hoping he's just messing with me. I still glance over the shoulder to the harmless looking kitchen laboratory.

'You want to build a portal for John.'

'Seems only right to help. Think of him as our client—'

'God, do you really want to return him to a home where he's enslaved by a wicked version of you that keeps him from making tea?'

'—and besides you should look at this notebook, it's filled with my own handwriting, John.'

I blink. And again.

'The third Sherlock.' The detective nods, as if he's waiting for me to catch up; he probably is. 'The astronomer. He helped lost John to build a portal so he could go back home.'

'My deduction precisely, John.'

'Then what is my doppelganger doing here right now, using up all our hot water?'

Sherlock smiles softly, almost proudly.

'Quite intriguing, isn't it?'

.

Not all hot water, I correct myself. I get up slowly, discretely extending my sleep stiff muscles, heading for the kitchen. Tea is in order.

I notice behind me Sherlock extends his hands and prongs his fingers in a morning stretch, just like a ruddy flexible overgrown house cat, delighting in his home environment. Next come a few agitated knuckle cracking, and the genius himself gets up from his chair in an agility that contradicts his age.

'You're planning to build a portal', I deduce quietly.

The way he overacts his indignant stance from zero to 100mph under an instant tells me all I need to know.

Sherlock strongly dislikes being deduced by his ordinary flatmate. It robs him of his thunder.

We're somewhat distracted, therefore, as the bathroom door clicks open behind me. Next thing I know Sherlock is tossing that blue pocket notebook my way, I catch it by instinct. Unfortunately, the furtive movement gets our guest's immediate attention. I'm busted.

It wasn't me!

I turn around to confronted a very angry, vastly impressive, John Watson.

Err. Really, it was all him! I turn to the detective, who is looking mildly angelic, glacial blue eyes rounded in innocent curiosity. I groan. Of course he would.

'John, I—' I start.

'Give it back!' he roars at me. It rings in the kitchen sea coloured tiles with the slightest touch of panic. I understand the man in front of me, and in him I recognise a vulnerability I don't often admit to myself.

I extend him his important possession at once. I'm not a bully.

Sherlock intercedes to confide, conspiratorially: 'John was only trying to help, you know.'

I whip my head around to shoot Sherlock an incredulous stare.

The farcical detective isn't deterred. 'We both want to help. The portal you used, that erroneously brought you to us and not to your true dimension, if you show it to us, we can help you guide the portal in the correct direction. A bit like steering a spaceship, I would say. It must be possible. A different me, in an alternative reality, nearly did it.'

I frown at that, and interrupt: 'How do you know? Do you not know the Solar System but understand the portal? How can that be?'

Sherlock shrugs his head impatiently. 'Our traveller has managed to navigate other realities but maintaining both time and space coordinates, have you not noticed? There is a deep degree of knowledge already in display in that notebook, that I organised for John in another lifetime. If I could do it then... I believe you can deduce how it goes after that.'

Something in my friend's misguided attempt to coerce cooperation from our guest spooks him the more. He's quickly losing trust in us.

I blurt out, at once: 'You asked that already of the next Sherlock and blogger you met, John. It didn't go well.'

Sherlock's eyes widen my way. Not for a second he doubts my blurted deduction. Mirrored emotions are my field, just as complicated murder scenes are his.

We both look on to the forlorn traveller.

'Yes', he admits, awkwardly scratching his elbow. Uncomfortable by his memories. This John is so easy to read. Yet I know he still keeps secrets from us. Like this. He hesitates to bring this up. 'They weren't like the others. Sherlock wasn't a detective or an astronomer. I suppose he was a criminologist in a way. He and his ring. John was his right-hand man. They both ruled London's criminal underworld... Big brother Mycroft wasn't pleased.'

I pull out a kitchen chair beside me, just in time for Sherlock to drop himself deadweight on it. We cross an intimately shared glance.

'It's plausible', Sherlock admits in a tight whisper. It's a painful admission, that too much genius, too much cleverness, if misdirected, could end so wrong.

I shiver. Maybe. But— really?

'So we were... criminals?'

'The best London had ever seen', our guest admits.

Sherlock smiles with misplaced pride at that.

.

'Chaotic evil or neutral evil?' Sherlock asks, in full composure, as if enquiring about the English weather.

I smirk. When did Sherlock ever do anything by halves?

Sherlock, the consulting detective, could solve cases neutrally, without affecting the results, without pursuing suspects and ensuring convictions, but where would be the fun in tonelessly declaring the criminal's identity to the Yard, and not rub in the success, the quick turnover of cases, the new forensics procedural approach (or the barely legal approach at all)?

As a criminal mastermind Sherlock would revel in being a kind of Jim Moriarty – or worse. In extreme, I'd see Sherlock as a Jekyll and Hyde character, solving cases by day and exploiting crime by night. If morality wasn't a value in our friend's life, what could keep him from fending off the boredom by manipulation of humanity at large?

'And his John Watson?' I ask in trepidation.

The traveller recalls: 'He had been a mercenary for hire before he joined forces with Holmes. Some super soldier with a large chip on his shoulder.'

I rub my bummed shoulder absentmindedly.

The detective interrupts my wandering thoughts, irritation permeating his every jerked movement: 'Not John, that's preposterous!'

Is it? I silently ask myself.

My detective friend is always so fast and so keen to see the best in me. It's incredibly touching. He's quick to describe me as a very talented doctor, an incredible marksman, a young and fit Londoner. Sometimes I wonder if the most observant man in London is really so oblivious to my grey hairs, my stiff shoulder, the patients and soldiers I lost on the battlefields of life. I lose my gaze towards the wall portrait of a skull with deep dark recesses for orbs.

'No, John', Sherlock declares warmly. 'Never you. The world may shift and turn, but your constancy will always keep me in the right path', he declares with too much passion for a self-proclaimed sociopath.

I shake my head, burying my hands in my pockets. I carry my fair share of darkness, whereas Sherlock, for a man obsessed with the macabre and random body parts to experiment on, always attracted me as bright and luminous. He keeps my shadows at bay by his presence in my life.

'I can't', I mutter. Have to clear my throat to carry on. 'I just can't imagine you turning to the dark side without a reason, maybe if it were an act in order to save lives, or you were trying to give meddling Mycroft a heart attack...' I smirk weakly at my humour attempt. Broken pleads, that's what it must sound like.

Silently our guest shakes his head. I'm reminded that he knows a darker Sherlock, and that tea and telly may not be the only things in which the man is constrained by his flatmate. I shudder, and turn away.

It's aggravating, all these worlds of fantastical possibilities, all these aborted realities that remain lingering on in parallel universes, all these men who are us, and yet are not like us at all. Elemental differences acquired by serendipity and tiny changes in our lives. Could we have ended up being so different from who we are now?

I gather it doesn't matter, not really. The choices we didn't take, the paths we didn't follow at the crossroads of roads once travelled. We'd be different, yes, but we'd hardly be ourselves as well.

Frightening as it is to face the fragility of our constructed selves, we've been focusing on the differences all along, when we should have noticed the similarities, the true core of who we'd always be meant to be. And Sherlock and I were meant to change lives and correct wrongs. I'm sure master villain Sherlock was just a wrong turn, and he'd soon find his way back to his true north, dragging his John along. One moment in time is a snapshot, hardly a life sentence. We were meant to do so much more than we ever thought possible. I as a blogger, and Sherlock as the impartial examinator of crime scene evidence, they're just the images we decide to portray. As a matter of fact, we wouldn't be ourselves without homing this lost traveller and trying to not only solve his portal malfunction troubles but help him regain his voice upon his return. It's what we do. We meddle with human lives in need, we offer our help, we care. Like the astronomer Sherlock cared, and so many more after him, I'm sure. Sometimes we waste our lives trying to be someone we're not – say a strategist playing world government strings or a evil crime lord spreading tentacles all over London to fend off boredom – but sooner or later we're bound to get back to our path.

'I can show you the portal, if you'd like to see it', the traveller John blurts out. A simple but effective abrupt turn in conversation and Sherlock takes it eagerly.

'Is it behind Mrs Hudson's flowerpots? Under the old coal shaft? Beside the chimney piece on the roof?' the detective fires a quick succession of guesses. I realise it's been nagging him dearly not being able to deduce where this parallel universes portal resides.

The argonaut smiles. 'Mrs Hudson's bins, actually.'

'Behind the bins?' I interpret.

'No, the actual bin. The recycling bin, luckily. It's less grim than the general waste one. I once went inside the wrong one by mistake, so I should know. Definitely the recycle bin. No one ever suspects a bin to be the gateway to a different world, but they're just big enough to allow passage for a human adult, ever wondered why that particular size?'

Sherlock tuts away at his obvious miss, I'm left blinking away in stupefied silence.

The bin?

.

Hell hath no fury life a wronged landlady, so we quickly come back up unsuccessfully from our expedition down to Mrs Hudson's back lot. She wasn't impressed by our imperious need to check her recycling bin – she muttered something about the right to secrecy, and how Sherlock ruddy Holmes can deduce anything about anyone's life by the contents of their recycling bin – and she was even less impressed with a second John Watson, even going as far as to threaten to raise the rent if there was a new tenant in.

Strategically retreating to higher ground safety as a military manoeuvre, we returned to 221B, quietly deciding among ourselves to strike again at the cover of night.

I volunteer to make us all some breakfast. Sherlock grumps something about obstructive letting queens and goes sooth his wounded professional pride with a spot of violin playing. I just get the kettle going and reach for the rapidly dwindling stash of teabags.

Suddenly I notice I'm under close scrutiny.

'Sherlock put you up to this, hasn't he?' I ask drily.

Our guest opens his mouth in honest shock, then shakes his head, timidly. 'Your Sherlock doesn't boss me around, actually.'

'Then what is this all about?' I grump. In the back of my mind I keep the vivid memory of a very cold morning shower, with all the hot water depleted and the boiler recovering from near extinguishing.

'I just like your tea, John', he admits awkwardly. 'I thought you could teach me how to make tea like you do. Wait, why would Sherlock ask me to ask you about tea?'

'Because he always burns the tea leaves.'

'How can you even burn tea leaves in boiling water?'

'Beats me, but the genius manages every time... Look, never mind.' I sigh and get myself together. 'I'm not showing Sherlock how to make tea, we're done; thousands of times, yet keeps saying his tea never tastes like my tea. Which is probably right, because his tea often tastes burnt. Gosh, if we were going by tea alone I wouldn't be allowed to ever leave the flat!'

John chuckles, much to my surprise. When I raise a Captain Watson eyebrow to him, he folds quickly. 'Are you sure it's your tea and not your presence your Sherlock requires constantly?'

Before I can squeeze an answer from my confused brain, he adds: 'My Sherlock keeps me at the flat all the time. He says he doesn't like how the flat is too quiet when I'm not there.'

Stockholm syndrome comes to mind, but I'm not that kind of doctor.

'You're here now. Won't he be missing you terribly?'

'I know he is', he tells me with beguiling honesty. 'That's why I'm trying to get back home. Sherlock doesn't know it, but he needs me.' The traveller casts a forlorn and weary look at the violinist in the room. 'For geniuses they can miss the obvious a lot, don't they?'

I narrow my eyes at the man standing by my side, as he earns my respect. He's definitely not as clueless as he clearly likes to portray.

.

TBC