Chapter 2: Sherlock Holmes Is Alive ~
John is laying on the floor in his own filth again, and wakes up groggy and disgusted. No, he hasn't developed an alchohol problem, it just happens to be that his emotions make him so distraught that his stomach twists, and this is the end result. It's probably some pyschological condition of chronic thought-induced nasuea, but he'll be dead before he goes back to his therapist. And dead before he leaves the flat where he lived with him. Together like brothers, once upon a time...
He fetches a bottle of disinfectants and some wipes, and sets to cleaning up the floor where he passed out first, when he hears it again.
"Doctor Watson?!"
A voice, calling out to him from the street. Not one he knows, and with a decidedly American accent.
Mrs. Hudson is out with her lady friends, as it is already almost tea time, so she's not opening the door anytime soon. John lately sleeps in long binges to make up for his long insomniac episodes, again emotionally induced.
He rubs his forehead , annoyed with himself. Sherlock has been dead for a long time now; it's time to be past all of this.
Dead. Oh, why did he allow himself to think it! Dead. And gone. And...never coming back.
"HEY!" calls the voice from the street. "Doctor! Please, it's really important! "
Something about the desperation in the man's voice...
John stands full upright, and goes to his kitchen sink. He washes his face, making sure the facial hair he's sporting now is clean ,at least. He peals out of his shirt, because it's filthy and leaves it in the sink. If its a man at the door, he won't care ( at least he hopes not...) and if there's a woman with him, maybe she'll find him attractive ( the old John Watson would have been very eager for that, this phantom version smiles wryly at the laughable idea that the eye of society might ever smile on him again ).
In that spirit, John shuffles downstairs to the door, and thrusts it open.
His eyebrows fly up in surprise.
Because there stands Captain Steve Rogers, the immortalized "Captain America" , who was all over the telly with that airstrike from Elsewhere that happened in New York ( John had actually been seriously disturbed by that, and had gone off on a long tangent of questions about it to the invisible spirit of Sherlock, who he hoped might have an answer for them all, and who never replied. John had sunk even deeper into depression, thus, remembering that of course Sherlock was not going to come up with some clever deduction to solve all the chaos behind the scandal in New York...Sherlock was dead...)
"Doctor Watson, right?" asks Rogers, swallowing, almost shyly.
John nods, still unsure what to say to the famous super-soldier.
"Sherlock Holmes lives here too, yeah?"
Oh...
"No,...Well...he did, but not anymore..." John says stiffly, and swallows.
"He ,he ,he ..." John lets out a gasp, closes his eyes, and forces himself to address this man as a commanding officer,with the respect he feels the Captain deserves.
"He jumped from the roof of St. Barts about 2 years ago, sir. He's...dead."
Finally, he has accepted it. Aloud.
"Oh my God...you mean...they didn't tell you?"
John looked up, bewildered.
"I saw it with my own eyes..." he defended, almost harshly.
The Captain shook his head.
" John, I'm...really sorry to come here, like this, obviously you're not well. I'm even more sorry that I have to be the one to tell you that Mycroft Holmes is as big a liar as Commander Fury. "
" What...are you on about?"
Because the Captain was respectful, John found he could not be angry with him for making what seemed like such an out-of-left-field accusation about Mycroft. He didn't know who Commander Fury was, but judging by Rogers' tone , they must have butted heads about some ethical issues quite a bit in the past.
"John, I know this is gonna be pretty hard for you to believe. I was sent here by Commander Fury ,formerly of S.H.I.E.L.D., which was an allied intelligence division, kinda like MI6 or the CIA in the States, and actually we did jobs for them both. My mission was to bring you Mr. Holmes' file, and a file for Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, a...dear friend of mine...who is being held hostage by the K.G.B, and that I was informed Sherlock would be able to find. Sherlock Holmes, is actually the child prodigy of what we called in S.H.I.E.L.D the "science of deduction" or the " alternate form of intelligence seeking". Having known Sherlock , I can spare you the lecture, because you already know what it is, but before Sherlock it was all theory. Agent Carter of S.H.I.E.L.D, an intelligence agent during the War ( uh, by War, I mean World War 2...) as she got too old for field work, became a nanny for children in Witness Protection. When she was Sherlock's nanny, she recognized that he had the potentials to turn the theory into reality, and taught him how to do it. From the age of 7, he developed the skills to become the "Consulting Detective" and was taken out of his abusive home, and placed in S.H.I.E.L.D protection, becoming the offical "Consulting Detective"of S.H.I.E.L.D ( which had different child labor laws, you see obviously) and later would work ,on special occasions, for MI6, because he was actually highly overqualified for their work. He is the special agent, particulary assigned for your protection, which is why he planted the little bug in Mike Stamford's ear about needing a flatshare, because he already had intel on your living conditions, and needed a casual, appearing civilian means of rendevouz with you. He doubled as the consulting detective for New Scotland Yard for 5 years ,drying out from forced drug addiction in an Afghani cartel, waiting for you to be sent home from the War on Terror, having already been invalided himself, and in a complicated situation, he couldn't go back in for you, because he'd become a danger to you. I'm sure sorry I have to be the one to tell you that this whole stint on Baker Street, posing as a police tipster, was actually just a diversion for what he was really doing. I have the files here if you don't believe me..."
Steve handed John a file with Sherlock's photographs at different stages of development, clipped to the front, and stamped with the word "INVICTUS". There was another file in his hand, that said "BARNES, J.B..."
John was gaping , shaking his head in disbelief, flipping through the file. There were photos and reports ,some of Sherlock, some created by him, of the Afghan War, particularly the War that John remembered, with special focus on John's status in it, stating in Sherlock's words that he "has medical skills, and general healing abilities the like of which I have never seen, and I have been exposed to a vast demographic of physicians. Doctor Watson may be the qualified individual for the "X-Medical" unit of S.H.I.E.L.D , capable of researching and healing wounds and deficiencys found only in the mutant hybrids scattered through our population, a.k.a the mystery-enshrouded "X-Men", as well as treating medical cases of scientific phenomenon, such as the victims of post -Hydra experimentation..."
John looked up at Steve in suspensful amaze.
Steve nodded.
"It gets..harder than that. John,you remember the drug they used in Baskerville to trick you into believing you were being hunted by a Hell-hound?"
John nodded, somehow already knowing where this was going.
"If I told you that you were dosed up with a hybrid of that drug by Sherlock himself the night before he jumped, and then that he tricked you into thinking he had jumped, to make his disappearance and death very believable...would you believe me , now that I've brought you proof? This conversation would have gone much smoother if Mycroft had come clean to you the week after Sherlock left the country, and explained to you that he had to fake his death to disband the Moriarty Network, which had a special mission to destroy you, actually because of your friendship with Sherlock, and then because they found out that you had the qualifications to be the " X-Physician" as they're calling it, that you could be the doctor S.H.I.E.L.D. trained to reverse sick scientific experiments on people, which Professor Moriarty and Company excelled at."
John's knees were knocking now, and he slumped forward, the Captain catching him around the shoulders.
"..So...you're...telling me...that..." John licked his lips...
"Sherlock Holmes...is alive?"
Steve nodded.
" Yeah...And...it's our mission to ...locate him..."
John blacked out.