Title: London is Strange
Disclaimer: I own no rights, I make no profit.
Chapter 6 – Mirror Mirror
It was a couple of months after what the tabloids had labeled The Battle of Greenwich when John first noticed the anomalies. At first it was little things; an extra jumper he hadn't bought appearing in his wardrobe, his RAMC mug having a white background not a cream one, less contact with Mycroft; although the last one could have been explained as a side effect of the cleanup efforts from the battle. Then there were larger indications: a building that had minimal damage one day being a full-blown construction site the next, road closures and traffic diversions now being labeled as road repair as opposed to reconstruction, and even more telling there was a distinct lack of hysterical speculation about the entire set of events from the tabloid press. To make matters worse his limp was back intermittently and anywhere outside the London Sanctum itself Londinium's presence was quiet in his mind. It almost seemed to John that he was constantly slipping in and out of a version of reality where things were almost, but not entirely, the same. That thought prompted major research binge and ultimately a call to Stephen.
"Interesting," Stephen said after John had set out his observations and his tentative conclusions based on his research. "I've never heard of the mirror dimension being only partially invoked but it fits what you've been observing."
John replied, "I do have one last hypothesis but it's really speculative."
"Shoot."
"What if someone was attempting to trap me in their version of the mirror dimension using something like maze magic?"
"But there's no physical construct," Stephen objected. "All the maze magic I know about requires a physical maze of some sort. The amount of power required to do something like what you are postulating would take a rather large maze. A new one would show up in the media one way or another and if a pre-existing maze became magically active someone would have sensed the power draw from the local ley lines at a minimum. According the records the last time a maze went active it was Chartres France. That time the cause was all the religious pilgrims walking the labyrinth praying and it finally gained enough power. Apparently, everyone sensitive within about 1,000 miles or so of the place knew when it came online and there were ripple effects worldwide."
"There is a reference in one of the older books here," John countered, "magic that ensnares the unwary in dreams as if they were lost in a labyrinth. The language is archaic but the descriptions of examples fit. Also, there's no mention about needing a physical construct"
"Nothing about how to break out of it?"
"Just one sentence about rescue by a beloved followed by some word that is obscured by a rather large smudge." John sighed, "Nothing else seems even close to in the sources I have here."
"I'll see if Wong or his assistants can find anything in the library here or at Kamar Taj." Stephen paused for a moment then added, "Are you sure that this is aimed at you?"
"Rule of three," John replied. "Even if it's not aimed at me, I'm caught up in it so it's up to me to do something."
Stephen made a rude noise, "It's a bitch being a responsible guardian of reality isn't it."
"You wouldn't have offered me the position if I wasn't."
"Too true. So, I assume you have a plan?"
"Well…" John hesitated, "not a plan per se."
"So you're just going to make it up as you go?" John could hear the teasing in Stephen's voice.
"No, it's more on the lines of giving whomever enough rope and seeing if I can tie them up in it rather than vice versa," John admitted. "I'm assuming they don't know much, if anything about my position and capacities. If they do, then I'm probably buggered six ways from Sunday and you'll need to come and save my sorry ass."
"Anything particular that I should be looking for that would indicate you needed saving?"
"Hell if I know." John replied. "I'm going to disguise my sling rings and create a physical anchor to Londinium. There are instructions for doing both here. I'm putting the anchor on my dog tags and I'll be wearing them constantly from now on. Hopefully that will be enough."
"I'd like to be able to give you some better guidance but just like the convergence I don't have a hard enough starting event to conduct a decent search of potential realities," Stephen apologized.
"Understood. Everything seems to have limitations of one sort of another. I mean even the super soldiers can be permanently maimed or even killed. Mr. Marlow nee Falsworth that I ran into during the Greenwich fiasco being a case in point."
"Well, good luck with this. I'll let you know if we come up with anything else that might be helpful on our end," Stephen assured him then rang off.
Now a plan is all fine and good but John knew that plans rarely, if ever, survived the first encounter with enemy forces. So, in addition to wearing the disguised sling rings and his anchored dog tags at all times John stepped up his time table relocating the doorway to the sanctum and putting the house up for sale. It took him less than a month and surprisingly there were no more anomalies during that time. John didn't think his unknown opponent had given up. No, more likely the original set of strangeness had been merely a probing of his defenses. A test to determine just how difficult it was going to be to slowly drag him into some sort of mirror dimension or labyrinth-like dream state.
Hopefully his opponent had no clue, other than the mere association with the house, of John's powers and abilities. It was lucky that most of his overtly arcane actions had been inside the sanctum itself. His actions during the battle also had hopefully escaped notice due to the sheer amount of power floating around due to the convergence. Any minor use of power inside the house would have been also muted as the house was shielded due to a simple artifact of construction methods used in many of the older London properties. Masonic glyphs carved into walls and foundations did wonders magically speaking. John figured that any move would come when he completely vacated the premises. That would be logical because constantly running in and out of a shielded building could very well disrupt whatever magic was being used. All of which meant that to catch his opponent John needed to go back to being a normal denizen of greater London and living in an unshielded building like a great majority of the populace.
The drawback of being plane old John Watson, MD meant that once after he arranged for the house to be sold his apparent "job" for the charity was done. That in turn meant living on his savings, his army pension and, thank you Mycroft for the initial fudging of the certifications, finding work as a physician. Luckily, St. Barts was always in dire need of qualified people who could take locum shifts on short notice in the A&E. His army credentials along with recent history in both New York and in the Battle of Greenwich aftermath almost guaranteed that they snapped him up, especially after he indicated he didn't have any real preference regarding shifts so long as he could get a decent bit of sleep between same.
It also meant getting a flat share. Once again, John's penchant for being in the right place at the right time kicked in. A couple of the A&E nurses, Ms. Morstan and Ms. Trevor, had been looking for a two-bedroom flat but had only managed to find one with three bedrooms that was just out of their initial price range. They had taken it anyway but were finding the rent somewhat difficult to manage. They were seriously discussing looking for a cheaper place when John just happened to walk in on the financial discussion in the staff room. It was only a matter of minutes and the deal was struck. John moved in the next day.
Less than a week later the anomalies started up again. The changes seemed to be subtler this time. John noticed it first in the tabloid coverage. There was less and less about the exploits alleged private lives of the more prominent members of the superhero community as the days went on. That lack of coverage carried over into the mainstream press, the television news and eventually into normal everyday conversations to the point that one wouldn't think superheroes even existed anymore. Each shift in information seemed to coincide with John being scheduled for spate of locum shifts that would have left most medical professionals exhausted to almost the point of incoherence. However, most medical professionals hadn't served in a war zone. John thrived in such an environment although he was careful to make it look like he was as tired as all the rest of his colleagues from dealing with the unexpected influx of ailments from the minor to the catastrophic.
Things settled down a bit over the next month with everything seeming normal. If John hadn't been watching closely he might have missed that many the buildings which had been damaged in the Battle of Greenwich were now "closed for seismic retrofitting" or "undergoing renovation." Only a few had been demolished but even those were, according to the signage on the properties, replacements with newer construction rather than demolition due to being unsafe. He also noticed that Ms. Trevor seemed to be less and less evident in the flat allegedly due to conflicting schedules. By the end of the month Ms. Trevor had seemingly moved out, transferred to another Hospital on the other side of the city. Despite losing the other tenant he and Ms. Morstan still managed it financially when they really shouldn't have been able to do so. By the end of another month John realized that contacts from both Mycroft and Londinium had trailed off to nothing.
Another month went by and life went on. Ms. Morstan, Mary, received a promotion and John decided to take her out to celebrate. They had agreed to meet at the Landmark hotel. It was supposed to be a nice celebratory dinner but for the annoying waiter with the pseudo-French accent and genuine French attitude. As he'd turned to politely tell the waiter off for being an obnoxious prick John got the shock of his life. The waiter was Sherlock.
Not knowing quite what to think or whether this was real or a construct of his enemy John decided to go with his gut reaction. He got mad and threw a punch. Things changed rapidly from that point on. He managed to get them thrown out of the restaurant, a café, and a kebob shop and bloodied Sherlock's nose. By the time he and Mary got back to the flat, John was reeling from the sudden onslaught of changes. It seemed that the flat now only had one bedroom, he was in a committed relationship with Mary, and somewhere in the midst of everything that had happened that evening he'd become engaged to her.
The next morning was even more confusing. He shaved off his mustache, which he hadn't had the night before, because everyone hated it then went to work at a local clinic instead of St. Barts. Mary, it seemed was also working at the clinic. John just went along with it, noting the changes and occasionally touching his dog tags when he had a private moment. By the end of the shift he knew what he had to do. He needed to go and see if Sherlock was real or merely a figment of this particular mirror verse.
That was how John found himself in the early evening pausing in front of Speedy's on Baker Street. He really didn't have a plan and he needed one badly. There were several possibilities he needed to consider. If Sherlock was fully part of the real world, any mention of the alternative dimension timeline that was forming around him would result in Sherlock's deductive talents becoming fully focused on John. That would be a bit not good. If Sherlock didn't conclude he was delusional or drugged then the use of his oft repeated maxim when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, would in all likelihood result in the exposure of his arcane training not just to Sherlock but also to Mycroft as well. If Sherlock was solely an artifact of the mirror dimension then in all likelihood he'd attempt to convince John that this alternative was in fact the real one. Any indication that he didn't fully believe in the current alternative state of affairs would result in Sherlock's deductions, probably with the same result. John didn't even want to start considering the potentialities if everyone around him, Sherlock included, happened to be partially in and partially out of the trap. John decided to go on and beard Sherlock in his den so to speak. He hoped that he knew Sherlock well enough to tell if he was a construct or the real person. If it was the latter, John vowed, he'd attempt break out of the mirror verse immediately one way or another.
With that decision made John started moving toward the door to 221 only to be bumped rather rudely by a man hurrying down the pavement. When John turned to comment he felt someone grab him along with the prick of a needle in his neck and everything went black.
Author's Note: I'm back. Work got crazy and my muse stonewalled this for a bit. Luckily the whole thing is now drafted and I should be able to post on a more regular basis now that I'm in edit mode. Enjoy.