Chapter 1-London under a Shattered Sky

John jerked awake to the sound of his name being wailed making his head ring so painfully that he rolled into a ball and put a hand over his ear instinctively. It was the echo of a voice he had missed for so long his entire being had become defined by the loss. "Sherlock," he muttered, flinging his other hand out to clutch the sheets, as if by doing so could grasp his long-lost friend's hand.

He didn't know how long he stayed that way, minutes or hours, but it was the buzzing of his morning alarm that finally penetrated shaking him out of the daze. "Nightmare," he muttered; he knew it was. Not like the others, involving roofs or war zones, but nowhere outside of a dream, could it be that Sherlock Holmes would wail his name like he was the only real thing left in the universe. A shudder passed through John as his mind replayed that memory for a moment.

With a jerk he banished the tatters of dream and memory to roll out of bed and start his morning. He dressed carefully: dress slacks, shirt, and jumper; all of business-like charcoal. The outfit was formal enough that he could impress those who needed a professional look but comfortable enough to *move* in. As such it had practically become his uniform in the last few months. He wore it as such, scrupulously clean, and precise. He picked up the jacket that went over all, moved to the sitting room of 221B and performed the next part of his morning ritual. It was just one of the habits that he had used to patch himself back into some sort of working order since the world had gone insane. Now Captain John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers could no longer stay by the sidelines and mourn in peace.

He folded his jacket neatly over a chair, went to the kettle, and carefully made two cups of tea. Then he took them both to the windows, set one down near a dust filmed violin case and drank the other while he contemplated the sunrise.

It was always the sunrise or sunset sky that made the present situation of his world most apparent to John. The sun still rose, although he had been told it was an illusion brought about by people's need to *have* a sun in the sky. He could well believe it, too, because seeing it was always like looking at its reflection in a cracked mirror. The outlines of the glowing orb were jagged, with different parts moving faster or slower than the whole. Then the eye was drawn up to where other parts of the sky held the same effect, like cracks in a teapot. John waited until he saw a flash of light slice through and lance down like a celestial spotlight. "You would have deduced the pattern of those flashes in a day," he said to the dusty violin case. "Then you would deduce why the sky was broken, who had done it, and we'd be off chasing them within half a breath." He sipped the last of his tea waiting for Mrs. Hudson's knock to come in and share their breakfast. It was prudent to combine resources when the rationing had begun; so they shared most breakfasts since John had moved back to 221B. The morning knock wasn't long in coming, and John courteously opened the door. However, he was mildly surprised to see former Detective Inspector Lestrade right behind her. "Greg," he asked without asking.

The silver-haired detective grinned and lifted a bag. "Had an early morning and an incoming caravan. I was able to get some of the first pick, and I thought you might appreciate some real sausages and fresh vegetables; tomatoes, onions and mushrooms. The world that the caravan just came from was in the middle of harvest and had extra." Lestrade also glanced at Mrs. Hudson. It was winter here, and with the rationing her health was not as good as before … well, just before.

"I'm out of milk, too," John smiled.

"Got it," Lestrade grinned back. "It's not exactly from a cow, they tell me, but it's … comparable."

"It'll be just fine for us, John," Mrs. Hudson said. "I checked them all over." She twiddled her gloved fingers at him, took the bag from the former DI and bustled into the kitchen.

John shook his head with a half-smile, and stepped back to let his friend through. He watched Lestrade stare at the untouched tea, and almost moved to intercept him grabbing it. The DI contemplated it for a long moment, then made a vague gesture of salute before turning back to John.

"It must help to have a land lady with psychometry," he said ruefully. "Maybe I'll join you more often."

"Only if you bring more like you did today." John shut the door and started to lay the table, trying to ignore the pang in his heart when he didn't have to move a microscope or various experiments. Greg gave him a knowing look and helped. "Anyway, it's better than some of the skills that are turning up. Poor sods going mad because they can hear everyone's thoughts, or feel other peoples' emotions…. We're having a hard time finding places for them all."

Mrs. Hudson turned slightly away from the stove. "At least all I have to do is wear gloves, dear. I feel for those who can't turn it off, I really do."

"Actually, some of those that came last night say they can help them. Train them how to turn it on and off." Greg said as he sat down with a tired sigh.

"Do you think they really can?" John asked. It was his business to ask this. Somehow, not long after the almighty storm, which heralded what had come to be called the Shattering, he found himself placed in charge of the ministry in health and human services that had to do with "oddities".

"Yeah," Greg said. "Most of them are of that gray-cloaked lot who helped us fight off the troops of the nutter who set himself up in St. Albans. And the ones that weren't were vouched for by them."

"Guess I'll be meeting them today." John nodded absently to Mrs. Hudson as she set a plate in front of him. "Didn't get a chance to talk much during the invasion." John had been recruited to command troops to fight off the horde of … things when what was left of the police force and other London security couldn't stem the tide.

It wasn't long after that that a grey-cloaked army had started to pour out of places they called "Gates"; magical holes that led between world splinters. They brought weapons that, at first, seemed bloody stupid; swords, bows, staves, and the like. They cut down the attackers better than any of the conventional munitions, and every team of grey-cloaks fought like an SAS force unto themselves. They had gone as quickly as they had arrived though; leaving behind knowledge of the other worlds that lay beyond these Gates, some trade contacts, and precious little else. And it was just after that that John had gotten an offer that changed everything...again.

John was doing rounds in one of the buildings pressed into service for the less seriously wounded when a pair of walking suits came right up to him and said, "This way please, Dr. Watson."

He knew immediately who had sent them and he was having none of it. "Tell Mycroft to piss off. I have work to do here." John knew that the personal tragedy he carried was small compared to what was happening all around him. He also knew that in the absence of Parliament it was probably Mycroft that ran the city, perhaps saving it, and could put him up against a wall to be shot without anyone asking questions. He'd be buggered if he would come to heel at the Iceman's call, though. He could neither forget nor forgive the fact that Mycroft had handed Moriarty everything the bastard had needed to drive Sherlock to suicide. It would be a waste of time to fight these minions off but this is where people needed him and the elder Holmes wasn't worth a piss in his mind.

"Doctor, I was told to ask you two things if you would not come away immediately. First, do you think that these people are all that need your care?"

"I know there's more!" John half shouted, then looked around and gritted his teeth, this place was far too public. "Here." John dragged one of the suits to an alcove, "Tell your boss that I'm doing what I can, where I can and he can keep his interference to behind the cameras I know that are on me." John couldn't help another dig, "Tell him to make his power plays behind the scenes while I help those who pay for them."

"Yes sir." The suit said to him, "There is another question."

"Yeah, cheers, I don't want to hear it." John walked away.

"Mr. Holmes asks if you would like to know the real reason his brother Fell." The question cut John so badly he had to stop and lean against a wall, panting at the pain shooting through his whole body. For a minute he was back at the sidewalk in front of Bart's, desperately clutching at Sherlock's wrist to find a pulse that his Doctor's eyes knew would not be there.

John swallowed hard and said, still facing away, "He's not going to leave me alone, is he? Whether he has anything real to say or not, he will have you say anything that will bring me to heel."

The second suit, who John noticed had a sympathetic look, walked over to him. "We only know what we are told, Dr. Watson, but Mr. Holmes was quite adamant that we not come back without you."

John pinched his nose and sighed. "Fine." He said shortly, "But you can wait outside while I find someone to cover for me. There are only a couple of ways out of this place and I'm sure you know how to cover them both." His voice was bitter with suppressed rage.

One of the suits started to protest but the one with the sympathetic eyes stopped him. "Your word is good, Doctor. We'll be at the curb with the car."

John snorted as they walked away, of course *they* had a car, with little gasoline to be had the government were the only ones to have vehicles in use. The rest had to walk and be thankful. It didn't take too long to go up to the barracks like room that the single, former military medics like himself were using to stay close to their patients. It took even less time to find someone to cover for him. Most of the men and women staying here had little else to do with their lives now that London had been cut off from the rest of their world. He felt comfortable here, where no one asked what tragedy had given them nowhere else to be useful. They didn't care that his personal tragedy had predated this cataclysm that the grey-cloaks called The Shattering.

John didn't need anything else with the summer like weather, so he simply walked out and got into the long black car without another word. All his attention was taken up with suppressing the absolute rage that filled him. At least he wanted to wait until he had the proper target. The suits rode in the front of the car and kept silent. They knew that any misjudged word would set him off. It would too. First Sherlock's suicide and then seeing his beloved city turned into a battle field had made John's control of his temper uncertain. No one was safe. When he had been called in to report on the invasion defense to Scotland Yard Sally Donovan had made one remark about 'the Freak'. The next thing John knew they had been dragging him off her, and it had only been Lestrade's intervention that had kept him from being locked in the cells. He wasn't in the least surprised when he had been sent to the other side of the city to treat patients that only recognized him from the newspapers. Everyone had more on their minds by that time than the sensationalism leading up to...the Fall.

It didn't take long for them to get to the nondescript building where John supposed Mycroft ran the City. It was a bit of a surprise that he hadn't set up shop in the Diogenes Club but John supposed the administrative staff would have made too much noise for that most silent of places. And John was sure, absolutely sure, that the Diogenes members kept to their rules amid all this chaos. It would take far more than the universe shattering to change that place. For much the same reason John expected to see Mycroft just as he was; immaculate in a three piece suit and an elegantly understated tie. "Ah, Dr. Watson, good of you to join me."

"Piss off," John said with as close to the scathing tone Sherlock employed as he could. He felt an instant of vicious joy as he saw Mycroft's face flicker. In a Holmes it was as good as a flinch.

"Whatever you do think of me, Doctor, I assure you I would not disturb you for less than urgent reasons."

"Ta, yeah. You mean the same kind of reasons that led you to killing your brother?"

John could see Mycroft's jaw firm. The British Govenment sighed in that ever so patient way of his, set down the papers he had been holding and walked closer to John, "John, whatever you may think of me I did *not* kill Sherlock."

John clenched his hands into fists, "No, you just handed Moriarty every tool he needed to kill him for you. I knew you had sibling rivalry issues but..."

"Please Doctor." Mycroft leaned forward but John backed up, incidently placing himself in a good fighting stance.

"But back in the beginning you said you worried about your brother constantly and I was fool enough to believe you."

"John I *do*..."

"But it didn't stop you a second in selling him off, piece by piece, just to get what you wanted. I doubt you've had a single restless night over it." John felt himself settle into the cool almost detached state that he'd had on the battle field.

"Dr. Watson!" Mycroft roared over him, his face contorting "I didn't kill my brother because he is still alive!"

John felt the statement slam through him and light the fuse of his rage, even if for a suddenly different reason. His fist connected with Mycroft's jaw hard enough to slam him to the floor. Then he stood over the prone man, panting, "You had better not be fucking around with me, Mycroft. I don't care if you run the city; lie to me and I *will* kill you."

"I didn't know myself at first but he came to me a few days after. He also asked me for exactly two things. A set of 'clean' identification papers from every country in whose language he was fluent and to keep a tight surveillance on you." Mycroft didn't try to scramble to his feet but just lay on the floor rubbing his already purpling lips. He opened his mouth and gingerly felt his teeth, one coming away into his fingers. He took out a handkerchief and spit some blood into it. "That's why you've seen the CCTV cameras following you. And why you would get sudden visits from Lestrade and others during the first few months."

John finally turned away, wiping his face in his hands, remembering the late night when Greg had showed up just in time to talk John's Browning away from his temple and out of his hand. It had been just before the world had gone insane and suddenly they both had some much to do that John was simply too busy to think of anything other than doing the job that was in front of him. Then his brow wrinkled, "Why? Why all this to begin with?"

"I told my brother once that caring was not an advantage." Mycroft lifted himself to his feet, and brushed himself down. "He could always anticipate physical or mental attacks; could map them out better than many generals I had seen. But he was consistently surprised by attacks directed from emotional motives; he simply could not plan for them. In the end neither could I really and Jim Moriarty was no fool." Mycroft looked at John's still confused face, "Snipers can be such efficient tools, deployed properly."

John swallowed as his memory rang with Sherlock begging him to not move, to keep John's eyes fixed on him. He felt his stomach roll with sudden nausea and he clutched at a chair back, "I was being targeted that day." His tones felt like lead.

"And Mrs. Hudson, and Detective Lestrade. Three guns, three bullets; even Sherlock Holmes could not counter all three in time. They had to see him jump or you would have all died." Mycroft collapsed into one of the chairs, hiding his eyes for a moment. "He didn't tell me exactly how the Fall was managed but did say that Miss Hooper had helped him. And then he *begged* me to watch you, gave me instructions on how to bug 221B in ways you would not see." The elder Holmes looked up at John and his eyes shown with tears that he would never let fall. "My brother has not begged anything of me since he was seven years old."

John stood for very still, clutching the chair back and blinking as he tried to make some order of what he was hearing. Sherlock was alive. His heart pounded out that message so strong John could feel it thumping in his temples. Sherlock had begged Mycroft to keep an eye on John. The Detective had valued John enough to ask a favor of someone that he'd rather chew off his left arm than apply to for help. And above all...above all even though John had called him a machine and Sherlock had said 'alone protects me' the idiot had leapt off a bloody roof to protect the people he obviously cared for. Also John knew there was no guarantee that any scheme involving that kind of risk would work. Any amount of things could have gone wrong and left Sherlock simply injured...or worse, in a vegetative state.

John felt all the months of barely contained rage spill out of him and he collapsed in the chair facing Mycroft's. "Where is he?" He begged simply.

"The last communication from him was from northern Italy. That was the night before the Storm hit." Mycroft said simply, "After that..." an elegant hand waved helplessly. After that there had been no way to even find other parts of their own Britain outside London, much less halfway across Europe. "Even then he wasn't sure that the entire web had been taken down here. I was working on it personally but it was complicated, levels and levels of communication and compartmentalization... I couldn't be sure I had gotten them all. So all I could do was keep watch and try to protect who my brother treasured most."

"Then why," John clutched his hands together and put them to his trembling lips, swallowing bitterly against the fact that he'd not fully realized how much Sherlock had cared...did care for him, "Why am I here now?"

"Our visitors in the gray cloaks, they call themselves Quest's Children or simply Questers. During the defense, part of their force pulled their attention away from the invasion to attend to what Jim Moriarty left behind. This morning they informed me of their actions just before leaving. I don't know how they did it and they didn't give me a chance to ask. But as of now there is not a single operative I suspected of being Moriarty's. There were a few they delivered that I hadn't even dreamed were involved. The only bodies left were a few that had been on the front lines. They delivered one to me personally that had been on my own staff and was able to confirm to me that every other cell had been eradicated, seconds before he died, that is. They are quite, quite merciless these Questers." Mycroft wiped a hand over his forehead and John could see his discomfort. "Like it was a personal vendetta for them."

John had a thousand questions over why such strangers would care but he wiped them aside for a more pertinent, more urgent question, "Can they find him?" He said with quiet desperation.

"They assured me that they would try, John, but the matter is more complicated than I could ever dream. This...Shattering has hit more than our world, more than even our universe. It's hit every universe we can imagine, any universe we can dream of and a lot we don't they told me. And it is spreading." Mycroft half laughed and John's stomach sank at the note of suppressed hysteria in it, "They even left me evidence of it all." Mycroft lifted himself up and took what looked like a glass paperweight from his desk. It started to glow with rainbow colored lights that resolved into a floating screen similar to a computer monitor. "A way to call for help I was told."

"What's it made of?"

Mycroft looked through the semi-transparent screen at John and for the first time ever the Doctor could see terror in his eyes. "I was told...magic."

After that John had made it his business to stay close to Mycroft; since he figured if any news of Sherlock came in it would probably come there first. At least, it had started that way. John quickly learned that although Mycroft had always seemed to be bedrock stable what was happening now had basically crushed that bedrock into quicksand. It didn't show obviously but there were certain things Mycroft simply could not deal with. After John had found Mycroft going without sleep trying to figure out the 'distress beacon' one too many times he had simply confiscated it and tellingly, Mycroft had let him. That had started a general shift in their working relationship with John starting to handle the odd things that Mycroft couldn't seem to even contemplate. When it had got too big for him to handle alone John had simply brought in Lestrade. He figured if the DI had been able to deal with Sherlock for all those years he was probably flexible enough to help deal with the various madnesses that filled their days.

It had turned out to be a pretty good idea too; Lestrade seemed to be able to keep his cool with whoever and whatever made up the caravans that had started almost immediately to bring in supplies to the undernourished city. John was able to concentrate on taking care of the strange things that were happening *to* the people of the city. It felt strange sometimes when the three of them got together over a bottle of ridiculously rare scotch to compare notes for John to realize that they were in essence running the city of London. At least John didn't have time to be bored. And although they never spoke of it the hope that Sherlock would be found ran like a golden thread under every conversation. John clutched at that thread to keep himself sane.

Mrs. Hudson had made a rule of no business talk at her table so the two men simply dove into their breakfast with minimal conversation. Lestrade's marriage had finally dissolved completely and John didn't have a life other than work these days so they confined themselves to complimenting Mrs. Hudson on her cooking. John had gotten up to grab his jacket when Greg got a text on the phones they had managed to restore to some sort of service. "John," he said, his voice suddenly serious, "There are a pair of Questers who just arrived asking for you by name. By *exact* name."

John felt himself pale. It could only be news of Sherlock. "Greg..." he said helplessly, hope and dread warring in him and paralyzing him. That Sherlock wasn't actually with them could mean he was...no. John shook his head against that thought.

Greg grabbed his short silver-grey coat and shoved John's jacket into his arms. "Focus John. We go and we find out and then we find out what we can do."

John couldn't argue with that. So he simply followed the silver haired man out of the door.