Title: London is Strange

Disclaimer: I own no rights, I make no profit.

Chapter 8 - Recovery

It had been something of a running joke in Kamar-Taj that despite all the quasi-psychoanalysis, self-reflection, and meditation which were part and parcel of sorcerer training, John Watson would learn more from his cup of tea afterwards than from the original exercise. This time, John thought to himself, it wasn't even his own cup of tea that sparked enlightenment as he placed the steaming mug in a bare spot on the coffee table strewn with files. John sat down in his chair. As he had expected, it was only a moment later that Sherlock's hand snaked out seemingly of its own accord, snagging the mug and bringing it to his lips.

John smiled.

The last six months had been interesting to say the least. John had been well aware from the first time he truly woke from the coma that, unlike television, the road to full recovery was going to be long and tedious. What he hadn't expected, however, was Sherlock's behavior. From the very first time when he had grabbed onto Sherlock's hand to present, he had been there supporting John every step of the way. Of course, over that same time he'd also alienated three doctors and run off two physical therapists with his caustic remarks and abrasive manner. John knew, however, that without Sherlock's advocating, prodding and seemingly encyclopedic knowledge on a disparate number of subjects he wouldn't be as far along as he was in his recovery. Sherlock always could read him like a book. He would deduce when something was physically too much or too soon as well as when more action or even an entirely different approach was necessary. In addition, he seemed to have an almost psychic ability to tell when encouragement as opposed to distraction was necessary; or even when just a simple 'suck it up and get on with it John' type statement would work better. He wasn't terribly obvious about it. Not everyone would understand that the time he deduced the physical therapist's private life and habits was an effort to get the man to focus on his job, that the grizley case story was distraction, or that the scratchy violin playing was encouragement to do better. John did and appreciated his support all the more.

John also found it interesting that during the entire period, Sherlock had not once complained of boredom. He had also not undertaken any major investigations of any sort. He'd steadfastly declined the private clients and only occasionally consulted for the Yard. He very rarely went to a crime scene and then never stayed very long. Instead, he seemed to be content to plow through the yard's extensive collection of cold case files. So far, he'd managed to close out 27, suggest new angles and avenues for investigation in 35 others, and identify 3 cases where the crime in question hadn't actually been committed at all. He also, in an uncharacteristic fit of cooperation with his brother, deigned to engage in what John suspected was extremely high level and secret analysis work. Sherlock tended to refer to these as "looking into minor problems for Mycroft." Given the level of grumbling and introspection that those "minor problems" produced, John had decided that he really didn't want to know what constituted a "major problem" on either Sherlock or Mycroft's part.

Sherlock put down the now empty tea mug with a thump and shuffled the papers he'd been looking at for most of the afternoon and early evening. After a minute or so he piled them all together and slipped them into a folder. Then he leaned back in his chair, hands steepled in front of his face. His eyes focused on John for just a moment then he half-closed them with his gaze seemingly pointed somewhere above the fireplace.

Mind palace. John recognized the pose and the abstracted gaze. Yet even that was different now. Before when Sherlock went into serious thinking mode loud noises and simple touch would not have roused him from his contemplation. Now it seemed that Sherlock kept a little bit of himself aware of the here and now. Whatever that part was would prompt him to become fully alert when certain parameters were met. John was still trying to determine just exactly what Sherlock would now react to in this state. Certain things like loud sharp percussive noises and anyone who wasn't John moving outside of his line of sight were sure fire triggers. Normal street noises or Mrs. Hudson on the stairs wouldn't provoke a response but the sound of the front door opening would. From his inexact observations John had concluded that the 'hiatus,' as Sherlock had dubbed it, had not been entirely uneventful. If John had to guess this new awareness was, at least in part, Sherlock's version of PTSD symptoms.

Watching his flat mate exercise his not inconsiderable intellect made John wonder how long exactly it would be before Sherlock started asking questions that John wasn't quite prepared to answer. Unexpectedly, neither Sherlock nor Mycroft had questioned his claim of retrograde amnesia for the roughly 20 hours between Sherlock's dramatic reappearance and when he'd been drugged and placed under the bonfire. Of course, no one expected that he would retain memories from his roughly 3 months of coma in hospital. It was also surprising that the Holmes' brothers, Sherlock especially, had not deduced that there were the gaps in his knowledge between the Battle of Greenwich aftermath and Sherlock's return. He had to credit Londinium's help in keeping straight what had happened in the real world with the mirror-verse trap memories. It also didn't hurt that he could truthfully say that any particular incident he'd 'missed' just hadn't really registered due to the workload at the time.

John had also managed to pass off many of his mirror-verse memories as bizarre artifacts of his coma-like state. When he'd told Sherlock the details of a couple of his memories, phrasing them as'quasi-dreams' Sherlock actually was able to pinpoint real world events, conversations, and other incidents that had somehow been incorporated into the 'dream.' Explained that way it all made logical sense. The cases John 'remembered' were actually Sherlock telling him about some of the cold case files Lestrade had given him while John was in hospital. The whole drowning in a well sequence was the bout with high fever and pneumonia where he'd needed to be restrained so they could treat him. Mrs. Hudson actually did own an Aston Martin but it was blue, not red, and she could indeed drive in a fashion that would give most movie stunt drivers a serious bout of envy. She apparently had driven Sherlock to the hospital once when John had taken a turn for the worse. His description of the ride, when he repeated it for John later, was a tale in and of itself even if he had been in the passenger seat at the time rather than stuffed in the boot. What was even stranger, as far as John was concerned, was that Sherlock and Mycroft did have a sister whose name was really Euris and who was indeed incarcerated in a psychiatric facility. Said facility, however, was actually in Surry and not on an island off the coast of Scotland that bore a striking resemblance to Azkaban in the Harry Potter movies.

All in all, a good portion of the 'dreams' seemed to have some basis in something that had been said or happened while he was stuck in the coma. The mirror-verse trap had simply incorporated the bits and pieces into a pseudo-memory. In fact, the only incident that seemed to have been made up out of whole cloth, so to speak, were the bits about Mary. John had no clue as to what exactly had caused him to imagine her as an assassin or as someone whom he'd ask to marry him for that matter. The fact that Mary had visited him in hospital as well as helped move his stuff back to Baker Street made him very hesitant to bring those particular mirror-verse memories up in conversation. It was just a little too strange and would possibly raise too many questions even couched in the context of a coma dream.

One of John's biggest concerns early on had been the possibility that Mycroft had brought in one of his MI-13 telepaths to attempt to dig an image of the person who drugged him out of his brain. That fear, however, had been relieved by Sherlock during one of their original conversations about the 'dreams.' Sherlock had remarked in a rather offhand manner, after explaining where a particular piece of John's 'dream-memory' had originated, that it would be much easier if they could have one of Mycroft's people rummage around in John's head and just sort out what was what. Upon John's objection that without an overwhelming need and informed consent such an invasion would be an unethical breach of privacy, Sherlock sheepishly admitted that one of Mycroft's people actually had tried to pull John out of the coma only to discover that he was one of the .01% of people who had natural shields against psychic mental effects. From Londinium's highly amused reaction to that particular revelation, John intuited that his bond with the city had protected him from the worst that prying telepathic minds could produce.

To make matters even more complex John had no real idea what exactly he could or would say when, not if, Sherlock started picking up on things he'd specifically left out of his reports of his exploits during the three years when Sherlock had been officially dead. The only thing worse would be if John had to do something overtly magical directly in front of him. Although, as John continued to consider the problem, the latter case might not be as bad as the former. Sherlock was relatively conversant with the so called 'super powers' and seemed to accept them as things that followed rules even if science didn't have an explanation quite yet. In fact, John suspected that Sherlock had a mental index of known powers with some sort of taxonomical classification system. Sherlock could very easily classify John's omissions as a lack of trust but a blatant enough magical display might just sidestep that whole issue in lieu of the puzzle about the extent and nature of John's powers.

Just as John came to that conclusion Sherlock made a huffing sound. John immediately was able to classify the noise. It wasn't the hmm of the end of a successful deduction. It wasn't the 'Oh, I've been stupid' scoff. No this was the 'I've gone as far as I can with this information' huff. Sure enough, Sherlock opened his eyes, sat up in his chair and grabbed a pad of paper. He scribbled for a bit then tore off the top paper. He gathered up the file, added his written note and dumped the whole thing into the file box under the table. Clearly the score was now 35 cases with new lines for investigation.

"So, closed or more investigation needed?" John decided to test his hypothesis.

"Both," Sherlock replied picking up his mug and looking surprised that it was empty.

John took that as his cue to get up and make some more tea however Sherlock shook his head and set down the mug. John subsided back into his chair.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given the state of the file but why they didn't take a closer look at the ex-brother in law originally is inept even with the Yard's low standards."

"Oh?"

"At this point in time," Sherlock continued, "they won't even be able to arrest him unless he was stupid enough to keep the leftover blue paint."

"Credit card receipts?"

"Probably not. He was clever enough to hide his relationship with his ex-wife's sister so I doubt he would have used a card to purchase paint."

Londinium mentally showed John an image of a paint brush.

"Well," John said conversationally, "if he was the do-it-yourself type he may have kept whatever he used to apply the paint. You know, attempting to clean the paint brush rather than just tossing it out. Getting those things fully clean of the previous paint residue is well-neigh impossible."

Sherlock thought for a moment then fished the file back out from the box under the table. After flipping through it, clearly looking for something specific, he added a line to his original note and kept the file on the table.

"Consider it further investigation needed," he proclaimed.

John started. He hadn't thought he'd been that obvious.

"Clearly you've been counting," Sherlock continued, "the box was slightly rearranged."

"So how many would you count as solved enough to get a conviction?"

"23 with another 4 that have a high degree of probability."

Well that tallied with John's solved case count

"Any estimates about the 35 others?" John was curious if Sherlock had bothered to speculate on any of those cases beyond the basic 'go look for this evidence' notation.

"If they find the evidence that I'm postulating exists, 19 of the 38."

John was confused, "You counting some of Mycroft's in that bunch?"

"Nope." Sherlock popped the terminal p, paused then added as an afterthought, "They still have to locate the evidence that indicates there was no crime after all for three of them."

Ah, John thought. There's the discrepancy.

Sherlock seemed to be on the verge of saying something else when suddenly his mobile, which was sitting on the table next to the file, went off. He looked at it and then, to John's surprise, answered it.

"I suppose you are going to tell me it wasn't red."

Judging by the look surprise on Sherlock's face, John determined that whatever he had thought Lestrade was calling about was not the purpose of the call at all.

Sherlock was now listening intently and pursing his lips.

"Locked from the inside and nothing on the surveillance camera feed?"

Sherlock nodded, humming at the reply.

"I'll come and take a look then," he responded and rang off.

As John had expected Sherlock bounded up from his chair and disappeared into his room to change into something a little less casual. It was only a short while until he was back out again heading for the door presumably to grab his coat and be off. He didn't make it to the door. Instead he stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the sitting room and turned to look at John, cocking his head. John was used to what he had long ago mentally labeled the 'Sherlock Scan.' He just sat still and let Sherlock see whatever Sherlock saw. There was nothing to do at this point but wait for the inevitable chain of deductions.

"You know anything much about DNA sequencing?" Sherlock asked after he'd looked John up and down.

"That it exists and its rather useful in tying perpetrators to crime scenes among other things."

"You interested in a tour of one of the newest labs in London?"

John was not quite sure where this was going but replied, "Yes?"

He had been getting a little stir crazy trying not to do too much too fast and a lab tour, presumably involving information on DNA sequencing techniques, didn't seem like it would be too taxing even if it was at ten o'clock at night. John had taken a longish nap after his physiotherapy appointment earlier that afternoon and wasn't tired in the slightest.

Sherlock grinned at him and commented, "There's also a dead body in a locked room."

John had to grin back as he levered himself out of his chair, "Oh God Yes!"