Title: London is Strange

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

Chapter 11 – The New Normal

John was a bit surprised that after six months of working for the Government that he and Sherlock still had a consulting business to return to. One of his many tasks during that period had been sorting through the messages, letters and e-mails that had not been put off by the automatic 'We are not taking any new cases at this time' messages that he'd instructed their part time office help/book keeper to send out. Most of the persistent inquiries ended up referred either to the police or to certain people that Sherlock deemed 'not entirely idiots.' The remainder were politely told to bugger off and a select few were subject to a scathing Sherlockian reply. Despite his fears however, paying cases seemed to magically start appearing again as soon as he put up a new blog entry announcing that they were back to taking new clients.

Life in 221b didn't quite settle back into its former pattern. One reason was that they still were retained as governmental consultants. That meant that Mycroft, or more often one of his minions, would drop off a flash drive every so often for Sherlock to peruse and see if there was any additional information to be gleaned. Sherlock did the bulk of the work but John would also take a look and ask questions which, more likely than not, would set Sherlock off on another tack entirely. Despite that, it usually didn't take them long to peruse the information provided and formulate a reply, most often in the form of suggestions for additional avenues of investigation. Given that these consulting jobs inevitably arrived just as Sherlock was getting bored John figured Mycroft was actively timing them. Just how he was doing so was unclear. The flat was not bugged. Not only had they searched it thoroughly but also Sherlock had traded some of his time to the MI-6 Quartermaster in exchange for a rather nifty gadget that detected electronic eves dropping devices. John eventually put it down to good old-fashioned human intelligence; an astute analyst putting two and two together from the CCTV street surveillance and their protective detail.

Another reason life didn't quite bump along as it had was after the revelation that John had almost been on HYDRA's "to be eliminated" list, Sherlock had been acting strange; well, stranger than normal. From the start of their association, John had noticed that Sherlock was more tactile with John than with anyone else. During John's recovery from the coma there had been an additional amount of closeness necessarily required as Sherlock had stepped up to provide much of the physical assistance he had needed. That closeness had morphed into something like a language of touch between the two of them. A brush of a hand here, squeeze of an arm there, a bump of the hip when walking was a way of checking in physically and assessing the other's mental state. After the revelation about HYDRA Sherlock seemed to drastically increase the amount of these tactile check ins. In addition, the duration and type of touch seemed to shift from a momentary reassurance into something a bit more lingering.

This shift was a bit concerning. With anyone else except Sherlock, John would have assumed the behavior indicated a desire for more intimacy. He'd assumed long ago that Sherlock was completely asexual. Now with this new development he wasn't so sure. Maybe he was demi-sexual. It would fit the increasing touch intimacy along with the bouts of intently studying John when he thought John wasn't looking. It would also fit Londinium's showing him an image of Sherlock with a wistful look on his face that seemed to have at least a tinge of desire in it. After receiving that particular image on a couple of occasions, John decided that he would experiment a bit and actively reciprocate Sherlock's behavior. However, he also vowed to himself that he wouldn't escalate without some sort of direct indication that Sherlock was completely on board with the idea.

The net result over the next couple of months was highly illuminating as far as John was concerned. Given how quickly Sherlock adapted to the increasing physical closeness John concluded that at the absolute minimum the man had been touch starved for most of his adult life. He also discovered that Sherlock would not only eat but also sleep on a more reasonable schedule, even while working a case, if John simply touched him while he did so. Outside the flat they behaved as much as they had previously; a bump of the hand here, a brush of shoulders there accompanied by a grin or shared look. According to Greg Lestrade every time they engaged in a one of their bits of non-verbal communication on a crime scene the 'Are they shagging and if so when did it start' betting pool at the yard ended up with another infusion of cash. It was currently large enough that all the betting pool participants, both current and past, had agreed that any proceeds would be split with half going to the winner and the other half to the yard's benevolent fund.

All in all, John was quite happy with the situation as is it was developing and not even the Avenger's caused disaster in Sokovia was enough to dampen his mood for long. Everything seemed to be going along swimmingly until Stephen rang him up one day while he was at the homeless shelter's small clinic.

"Have you been keeping up with the Powered Individuals Treaty negotiations?" Stephen started in as usual without any chit chat or other social niceties.

"Only peripherally. Why?"

"I acquired a copy of the latest draft. It looks like most anyone with a so called 'power' will be subject to the provisions."

John waived at the receptionist and mimed that the call would take a bit so she should hold off on his next patient.

"Including us?" John asked in a low voice as he shut the exam room door behind himself.

"Not specifically, it mostly talks about innate power rather than learned techniques."

"Why do I hear an incipient 'but' in your voice?"

"Well it defines 'power' rather broadly. Stark has a press release out that he considers the treaty to be applicable to himself as well as to other highly trained people with specialized skill sets."

"Like Barton and Romanoff?" John asked.

"He didn't name names but yes," Stephen concurred and continued, "The structure is pretty simple. Anyone with the power to cause destruction like Sokovia is going to either need to be part of an officially recognized organization under the treaty or to sign and place themselves directly under U.N control."

"Not everyone is on board with this I imagine."

Stephen snorted, "Rogers doesn't see the need for oversight, especially considering the SHIELD debacle, and has publicly clashed with Stark over the issue. Given his history and recent statements I suspect he'll refuse to sign.

"Lovely," John pinched the bridge of his nose, "So what's the plan for us?"

"We stay under the radar until we can't anymore. At that point we become an officially accountable organization under the treaty and offer up a few persons, myself included as figureheads. Then we lawyer up to keep the rank and file mostly unknown."

"I'm assuming that as a Sanctum head I'll be one of those figureheads."

"I hope it will not come to that," Stephen admitted. "If we can manage to contain our activities to the planes and avoid trashing cities like Lagos or the random small country we can probably avoid much of the notoriety."

"That still puts a target on you once word gets out that you are the 'Sorcerer Supreme'"

"It's already out there if you know what you are looking for. Hell, the HYDRA documents practically outed me with their 'hit list' so my days of anonymity are numbered if not gone completely. Besides, I might as well have put up a metaphysical neon sign over my head due to the clash with Doramamu for anyone with the proper senses to see it." Stephen's voice sounded annoyed. "I've already had a few people tell me that I 'radiate' at least half a mile in any direction. What I really need is some sort of forgetfulness spell that would make folks discount the connection," he mused. "Maybe the library has something like that."

"Well, once you've exhausted the Kamr Taj and New York libraries you are welcome to whatever I have here," John offered. "There's a lot of strange stuff in the London Sanctum."

"I'll probably take you up on …," there was some sort of crash that echoed down the line. "I have to go," Stephen said shortly and rung off.

From that point on John started to follow the negotiations on what was quickly becoming known in the popular press as the Sokovia Accords. Sherlock, of course, noticed his interest but didn't comment on it until the final negotiations in Vienna were bombed right as the Accords were about to be signed.

"It will," Sherlock remarked as they watched the footage of the carnage on the television, "be interesting to see who they attempt to frame for this."

"Frame?" John asked.

"It is a power play meant to get the public firmly on the side of the Accords. Anyone who doesn't go along and sign the accords after this event will be ostracized and labeled rogues."

"That means they would most likely have to go underground to avoid persecution."

"Indeed. I also expect that some of our more enterprising lawbreakers will attempt to shift the blame to such individuals to cover up their own activities."

"Oh wonderful. Another round of cases where everyone assumes the superpower did it and doesn't bother to look for physical evidence to the contrary."

Sherlock's voice dripped sarcasm, "One can hope that some of the esteemed members of the yard learned a bit from the last time."

"I'm not going to hold my breath," John smiled.

Of course, Sherlock had been correct. Not more than two days later the press was blaming the Winter Soldier for the attack. There were even some grainy security footage showing the Soldier in the vicinity of the Vienna International Center during the time the bomb had allegedly been planted.

Sherlock had taken one look at the publicly released footage and scoffed.

"That's not the Winter Soldier," he said authoritatively.

"Really?"

"Look at the way he moves. The Soldier's mechanical arm is quite a bit heavier than flesh so he has to compensate in the set of his shoulders and his back. Whoever did this was good with disguise but they didn't account for the weight."

Now that Sherlock had pointed it out, John could see the difference.

"It also doesn't fit his normal modus operandum," Sherlock continued.

"Oh?"

"It is obvious that the references to 'The Asset' in the HYDRA files were to the Winter Soldier. Much to the chagrin of his handlers they could never really get The Asset to engage in large scale destruction where there would be massive civilian casualties. He would always find a way to take out the minimum number of people possible to achieve the stated objective. They finally just gave up and started using him primarily as an assassin of protected targets. This kind of carnage just doesn't match his profile."

"Should we tell someone?" John asked.

"Mycroft already knows," Sherlock asserted. "He would have seen the same thing I did in the footage. Couple that with his extensive knowledge of the intelligence information on the Soldier the conclusion is inevitable."

"Well I hope they don't end up cornering him. With his skill set he could cause a lot of damage."

"Even if they did manage to catch him I doubt they'd be able to hold him for long without some extra-ordinary precautions," Sherlock mused.

"Imagine the carnage he would cause breaking out," John added.

That conversation, John would later recall, proved to be prophetic when the Winter Soldier was cornered in Bucharest by a German GSG9 unit on loan to the Romanian government. He was eventually captured with the help of a new superhero, Black Panther, and sent to Berlin where there were facilities which allegedly were equipped to hold him. Given the fact that he broke out less than 24 hours later pretty much proved that the Joint Counter Terrorist Center really wasn't a good location to hold superpowered individuals.

At this point it was clear that the Sokovia accords had caused a major rift between the most visible of the superheroes. Stark and his Iron Man suit was clearly on one side of the issue and Captain America on the other. It all came to a head a couple of days after the Winter Soldier's breakout with a major superhero fight at the Leipzig-Halle Airport southwest of Berlin. Luckily the airport had been evacuated prior to the fight so while the property damage was extensive there was no loss of civilian life.

Surprisingly after the showdown at the airport things seemed to calm down and get back to normal, or what could pass as the new normal in a world rife with superpowered individuals. Most of the so-called superheroes either signed the Sokovia Accords on their own behalf or became officially part of an organization that adhered to the Accords. The Avengers was the most well-known of these organizations but many countries who had official entities employing powered individuals such as MI-13 also quietly signed on. Wakanda was a bit of an anomaly in that regard. The Black Panther entity was clearly in the superhero category. However since he was, in actuality, their King they claimed diplomatic immunity as a 'head of state' on his behalf and refused to sign. There was some grumbling about that. But given the Panther's known abilities and Wakanda's superior technology, no-one really wanted to push the issue too strongly.

Contrary to Sherlock's prediction the next few months did not bring a huge increase in crime being blamed on superpowers. It seemed that NSY had learned its lesson from the initial spate of crimes that were blamed on superpowers and proceeded to rely on the evidence rather than mere speculation by a witness that whatever they said they saw was a manifestation of power as opposed to something mundane. It also didn't hurt that MI-13 now had a set of liaison officers who worked with the police. That particular innovation had been the brainchild and a rather early action of the new head of MI-13, one Peter Wisdom.

Mr. Wisdom had been appointed just before the Vienna bombing and was credited with obtaining a Sokovia Accords certification for MI-13 in an expedited fashion. John figured that the whole appointment thing had been engineered to not only keep Mycroft and his influence in the shadows but also to allow him to avoid the dreaded 'legwork' involved in actually running an intelligence agency. Not that Mr. Wisdom was not eminently qualified to head up MI-13. Public reports indicated that he'd been quietly working for the Government in an organizational capacity for quite some time. In addition, according to John's psychic network, he was some sort of telekinetic who threw power bolts or maybe knives that flamed with arcane energy. Londinium seemed to think it was the latter but hadn't experienced his powers directly and thus couldn't get a good read on them. Regardless of his powers he proved to be a capable administrator and an acceptable public face as the head of MI-13.

As near as John could tell the liaison program had been one of Mr. Wisdom's earliest decisions even though it took a few months to find the appropriate people to fill the positions. The liaisons, at least the ones John knew or had heard about, were usually moderately psychic with some sort of divination abilities, most often precognition or retrocognition. The liaison directly assigned to the Yard, for example, had a bit of psychometry paired with clairvoyance which meant that she only had to touch something to tell if had been moved with a superpower or had just been affected by something normal such as a freak gust of wind.

John had been apprehensive the first time Lela, the Yard's MI-13 liaison, and Sherlock had ended up at the same crime scene. After a few snarky backhanded comments between the two, which reminded John of two cats trying unsuccessfully to ignore each other while occupying the same general vicinity, they seemed to suddenly come to some sort of agreement over who had what territory so to speak. After that first instance in fact, Sherlock was likely to insist that Lestrade call her in if he deduced that a power might be in play. Similarly Lela, when she determined that something was primarily mundane in origin but not blatantly obvious, had been known to turn to the DI involved and politely suggest that he or she give Sherlock a call.

Once again, life seemed to be poised to settle into a predictable pattern for John.