A/N: I tried to move this to the crossovers section, but I was having problems with the new chapter, so I left it as is. Apologies for duplicate chapter alerts. As always, reviews are appreciated! C:

The Spotted Band: Part Four – The Results

John took a step back and bumped shoulders with Sherlock, who glanced down at him out of the corner of his eye. There was something less than mechanical in those eyes—a brief glimpse past the detective's machine-like exterior. It was too fleeting for John to pinpoint any particular emotion, but there was a general vulnerability to it that made him realize this could be the end.

Thankfully, it wasn't.

Sirens blared as massive hovercrafts suddenly materialized overhead. Heavily-armed soldiers with black uniforms and misshapen helmets dropped down from lowered ropes. Some of them marched into the clearing directly from the surrounding forest, appearing to have sprouted up from the dirt. Lights flashed. Alarms beat rhythms that hurt the ears. All the while, a voice over the intercom was commanding sternly, "Stand down. I repeat, stand down. You are surrounded. Disarm your weapons and surrender."

Most of the robots, confused by this intrusion, disarmed their weapons simply because they didn't know what else to do. John sagged with relief, suddenly breathless as he realized just how fast his heart had been beating. The momentary tide of rushing fear ebbed away, leaving nothing but weariness washed up on the shore. It felt like days since he'd last slept. Sherlock, meanwhile, took a few steps into the crowd of robots and retreated a moment later holding his familiar coat.

The soldiers with the strange helmets—The Shadow Proclamation, John assumed—moved quickly throughout the ranks of sentries and, one-by-one, they were all powered down using small handheld devices. Sherlock, John, and Helen were guided off to the side where two members of the Shadow Proclamation joined them. Both of them unlatched their strange helmets and pulled them off, revealing one of the last things John would've expected. Their heads were shaped like rhinoceroses: complete with the thick, lined gray skin and the horns protruding from their noses. It would certainly explain their thick, bulky, muscular builds and the way their helmets seemed too big for their bodies. John was astonished by their appearances, but he noticed that Helen looked considerably less so. Once again, he felt horribly out of his depth.

"Sherlock Holmes," said one of them gruffly, regarding the Time Lord. His voice was impossibly deep and gravelly. It was difficult to tell with their strange faces, but John could've sworn the one that spoke looked annoyed.

"I perceive you got my message," said the man brightly.

"It was business as usual," said the other one with a Cockney accent, the corners of his wrinkled mouth turned up in a good-natured grin, "when, all of a sudden, all the lines were busy, people from all manner of planets callin' about some bloke who'd appeared on their telly. Sayin' he had a message for Mycroft. Finally someone useful sends in the video feed, and Mycroft knew who it was straight away. Next thing y'know, we're all here."

"Yes," agreed the other one reluctantly. "This better very well have been important, Mr. Holmes."

"Well, as you can see," said the detective dryly, "we were quite on the brink of death when you arrived, so yes, I would deem your presence important at this time."

"We're not your personal bodyguards, Mr. Holmes," replied the soldier sharply.

"Oh, I know," said Sherlock casually. "I can assure you, however, that you're here for a reason."

John chose to intervene at this point. "Yeah, there is just a bit of illegal stuff going on," he said.

The one that had spoken first shifted his sleek black gun in his gloved hands and asked sharply, "Who're you?"

"Dr. John Watson," said Sherlock calmly, before John could answer. "Colleague of mine."

"Colleague?" repeated the one with the Cockney accent.

"Friend," corrected John, lifting his chin slightly. "Anyway, I think you'll find that the inhabitants of his planet—or certain members of it, at least—have been abducting various life-forms from surrounding solar systems and experimenting on them without their consent."

John didn't miss the slightly impressed glance that Sherlock cast him. "A small but direct violation of Article V, I believe," said the Time Lord. "Now, if you don't mind, I have a few matters to attend to."

"Oh, no you don't," said the first one, grabbing Sherlock by the forearm before he could turn away. "I'm not going to let you just jump off into your ship and leave us to clean up the mess. We've got questions, and you've got answers."

"For goodness' sake, at least let me go to the Medical Bay," snapped the Time Lord, brandishing his wounded hand. "Look at my hand, it's broken."

The two soldiers exchanged glances before the second one nodded and turned back to Sherlock. "Fine, but I'm accompanyin' you on your ship," he growled.

"Fine," agreed Sherlock, but as he turned away, John saw him roll his eyes in an exaggerated fashion.

A few minutes later, they left the Cockney-accented Shadow Proclamation soldier waiting just inside the door while Sherlock led them to one of the five doors on the back wall. This one was on ground-level, which was understandable; if it was a medical bay, it would need to be situated so that it could be reached easily from the door. John, casting a wonder-filled gaze up at the ceiling, was still baffled by how enormous it was, and was also somewhat satisfied to glance down and see that Helen was, too.

"This is beyond anything I've ever seen," she said in an awed voice. "What is this place?"

"His time machine," John explained, feeling almost as proud of the place as if it were his own ship. In a way, he supposed, it was. "It's bigger on the inside, apparently."

"Apparently," she agreed. Then, incredulously, "Hang on—time machine? Yeah, go on."

"No, seriously," said John, though he couldn't help but grin at her reaction. Sherlock said nothing on the matter, and though his back was turned, John could just picture the annoyed roll of the detective's cynical blue eyes.

Sherlock pushed through the bronze-plated door and flipped a switch to reveal a room so vastly different than the one they'd just left that both John and Helen threw up their hands to shield their eyes. The blank whiteness and stark light of the place seemed to give it the impression that the very walls were glowing. When John's eyes finally adjusted and he looked up to see an absence of ceiling lights, he realized the walls were glowing. There was a total of six beds in the bay, each spaced a fair distance apart, and each with their own tables and drawers full of equipment. In the very back was a large capsule-like apparatus with enough space to accommodate one person inside. All manner of robotic arms with surgical instruments for fingers poised, stationary, over the empty space.

It didn't take John long to realize its purpose. "Is that—can that do surgeries?" he asked in awe, regarding the unfamiliar machine.

Sherlock nodded curtly. "Not the best option for delicate procedures," he admitted, "but it's very useful if there isn't a surgical team on hand." He paused. When John didn't move from where he was standing, Sherlock said sarcastically, "Feel free to fix my hand whenever you like."

John cast him an irritated glance. Sherlock helped him find the supplies, and he patched up the man's hand—making disapproving remarks each time he cringed or complained—with a proper splint and some gauze. Next he stitched up Helen's cut and bandaged it. It wasn't terribly deep, but he didn't trust it to close on its own. Sherlock, to John's slight embarrassment, insisted on treating the abrasions on his face. He applied a clear salve over the sores on John's lips which tasted just a bit like peppermint. A moment later and their sting had been replaced with miraculously cooling relief.

What followed after was a bit of a blur for John. In the haze of his sudden respite, he didn't remember much other than the big events. They were questioned; Sherlock gave an account of the last day or two so detailed that John's and Helen's presence were unneeded; the Shadow Proclamation dispatched more ships to apprehend the citizens of the planet and determine who was responsible; the robotic army was packed away into the cargo holds of the hovercrafts and essentially confiscated. John had to admire the uniform way in which the organization functioned. There was no confusion or arguing—everyone seemed to be on the same page and of the same opinion. Simultaneously, however, he found it chilling. He felt that someone could be sentenced to death unjustly and there would be no deliberation about the punishment.

While the soldiers—the Judoon, Helen said they were called—were questioning Helen, John took advantage of the moment and turned to Sherlock, asking in a low voice, "What are we going to tell her?"

"Nothing," answered Sherlock, as if it were obvious.

"But—she'll find out eventually, won't she? Next time she goes to the doctor's, or tries to pass through a metal-detector…?"

"Most likely, yes," replied the Time Lord, unconcerned. "For now, however, I think it would be best if she were given time to recover before having any such news broken to her."

John protested, "Sherlock, she's been missing for two years."

"I have a time machine, John. That's hardly an obstacle."

John fell silent at this; he was right, admittedly.

At long last, after hours of standing about, they were given permission to leave (though Sherlock was expected to answer immediately if they called him for any more questions). "I think it's time we took you home, Helen," said Sherlock in the cool manner that John had come to realize was usual for him. He led them away, towards the TARDIS.

"Hold on," said John, and Sherlock stopped and turned. He sidled up next to Sherlock, muttering, "She's done a lot for us today, including saving our lives. I think we ought to repay her."

Sherlock's tone was icy and indifferent in his ear: "How do you suggest we do that?"

John replied quietly with a suggestion that, to his surprise, Sherlock responded to with an agreeable nod. He straightened and addressed Helen: "Before I take you home, there's someplace else we'd like you to see, first."

She looked wary, but she nodded and followed after without question. It struck John just then how trusting she'd been towards them. From the moment they met, she answered their questions and did everything she was told. He had to wonder if that would change when she found out she was missing out on two whole years of her life.

"Mr. Holmes," she said as they headed back through the trees, "you never did explain to us how you knew what killed Julia."

"Or how you shook off those robots," added John.

"The first one was simple," said Sherlock, waving his hand dismissively. "Obvious, really. Both you and Julia had been taken from New Earth—specifically, the New New York Hospital. It was a reasonable assumption to make, then, that whatever killed Julia was from the same place. That hospital in particular has a special brand for those belonging to the psych ward, which is a bracelet of a tan color. Those who are mentally too unstable to interact properly with others are given bracelets of that color with black spots on them. It wasn't entirely difficult to connect the dots between that and Julia's last words—'the spotted band.' Whoever had killed her had come from the more dangerous sect of the psych ward.

"There were no other marks on the woman other than the three we found on her arm. That was enough to tell us the cause of death. From that, it was an easy jump as to what exactly had killed her and how. The scientist running this little 'experiment' wanted some sort of predator to test your survival skills against; and what better predator than one that kills by instinct?"

John's second pulse of pity for the Chandrax was overwhelmed by his admiration for Sherlock's skill. He had enough trouble keeping the regulations of local hospitals straight; he couldn't imagine having the capacity to memorize the finest details of all the hospitals in the universe and the types of illnesses—psychological illnesses, no less—that all the different species suffered from. To him, it sounded impossible, but apparently it was child's play for the mind of an exceptionally gifted Time Lord.

Before John had time to say anything more than, "That's brilliant," Sherlock launched into his second explanation.

"The robots were simple enough to take care of. I was able to lead them further downstream, where I found another signal-blocking tower and cut one of the cables loose. I lured most of them into the creek before dropping the live cable in the water. The sudden excess of electric current was enough to sufficiently overload their circuits for a good long while."

"Hang on," said John, holding up a hand. "Were you standing in the creek when you did that?"

Sherlock frowned. "Yes, of course."

"Jesus Christ, Sherlock!" John was equally frustrated and incredulous. Even Helen looked shocked as she reconsidered the detective.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "I'm fine," he snapped. "I had a close call when one of them snagged my coat, but that, obviously, has been rectified." He plucked proudly at the collar of his coat so that it stood upright.

They had reached the TARDIS, still disguised as an old beaten-down shack. Sherlock pulled open the door for them, and they crossed into the completely out-of-character interior. As accustomed as Helen was to Shadow Proclamation soldiers and sonic magnifying glasses, she was still shocked to see, even for the second time, the interior of the TARDIS. She turned in a slow circle, craning back her neck until she was staring straight up at the ceiling in awe. John hesitated, but Sherlock brushed past her, hardly noticing.

A few moments later, and Sherlock was practically shoving her back out the door. This time, however, they were met with a rather different scene.

The concept was the same—strange, remote jungle planet—but the landscape was completely different. They had landed near a 6-foot waterfall that tumbled merrily over glistening rocks. Trees with curling branches reached for the heavens, leaves of all shapes and sizes drooping under the weight of a recent rain. The trunks were almost black with the moisture that seemed to pervade the air, stuffing the jungle with enough humidity to make John feel short of breath. While it made him uncomfortable, however, Helen seemed to be in her element. She took a deep, satisfied breath and let it out in a sigh through her nostrils.

All these things, however, quailed under the one prevailing feature of the jungle: its flowers. They were everywhere: long, tube-shaped flowers stretching for sunlight; broad petals spotted with droplets; flowers with tongues; flowers with fuzz lining the center; flowers that coated tree trunks in splotches; flowers that opened and closed periodically as he watched; flowers that swayed on their stems like charmed snakes despite the absence of a breeze… Their brilliant colors dazzled John: red, blue, pink, violet, yellow, turquoise, indigo—he was sure one type of flower was even shining silver. Another particular cluster was incandescent, catching the sun's rays and reflecting them like they were made of diamond. The scents of all of them mingling together, combined with the humidity, made the entire place feel like one great big greenhouse.

"What is this place?" asked Helen, who was gazing about in awe. She didn't seem particularly stunned about the fact that they'd just disappeared from one planet and reappeared on another.

"Andraxia," answered Sherlock, "when your kind was nothing more than a group of primitive lizards with opposable thumbs."

At this remark, she looked utterly stunned. "You mean we—we travelled in time?"

"Of course we did. Have you never heard of a TARDIS?" The words were cold, but his eyes sparkled faintly with amusement.

Her attention stolen back by the beautiful landscape, she didn't answer. Instead, she stepped away from the TARDIS (which was now disguised as a particularly thick tree, the door being a hollow under the roots), walking carefully through the underbrush. John watched for a moment as she touched a few flowers, as if to make sure they were real, cupping them in her hands as she inhaled their scents. Then he felt a soft touch at his sleeve and looked up to see Sherlock standing by his side.

"Walk with me," said the detective, starting off through the forest. "I've got a lot of explaining to do." As he passed her, he said to Helen, "John and I are going for a walk. Don't wander too far."

She nodded vaguely, hardly glancing at them as they departed.

They had crossed over the stream by means of a fallen log and walked until the sound of flowing water had long faded behind them before either of them said a word. Finally Sherlock said, "I'm not a soldier, John."

John wasn't sure what he meant. He couldn't recall ever saying anything to contradict this; he had certainly never took Sherlock for the soldier type, anyway. "Sorry?"

"I didn't fight in the Time War. As soon as it broke out, I jumped in my ship and ran." His voice had taken on a steely tone, but John could tell it was only to cover up a sudden fragility beneath. He recognized the importance of silence and didn't say a word and, after another moment, Sherlock uttered a noise of impatience and muttered, more to himself than John, "No, I can't explain it… I'll have to show you."

"Show—" started John, puzzled, but Sherlock had stepped in front of him, making him halt suddenly in his tracks. The Time Lord brought both hands up to either side of John's face where they hovered for an instant. John's face felt hot as he realized how close they were standing, and he found it difficult to hold Sherlock's intense blue gaze.

"Please try to relax your mind," the detective instructed, aligning his fingers to specific points on John's head and pressing gently on either side. Before John could ask what he meant or what was going on, there was a sudden rushing in his ears, and he felt as though he were suddenly pitching forward. Within the span of a second, the minds of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson had become one.

I slammed the door of my TARDIS behind me, stumbling in my haste as I ran up the walkway to the console. Alarms were blaring everywhere. One of the controls was sparking, and steam was curling up from another. It was happening. My worst nightmare. Gallifrey was at war.

I pressed a button and gazed up at the ceiling, watching as a particular piece of machinery descended slowly like a spider on a strand of web. It was round and appeared to be some sort of metal helmet with wires and cables sprouting from its dome. The Chameleon Arch. The name surfaced through the chaotic scatterings of my current state of mind: the name of the device that would turn me into a human being.

I was no soldier. I couldn't fight. I didn't want any part in a war, especially this one. But if I didn't run and hide now while I had the chance, the Daleks would likely track me down and kill me—or, worse, another Time Lord would find me, and I'd be forced to return and fight in the war.

I stared at the Chameleon Arch, swinging slightly on the end of its cables. I'd never had to use it before, and I wasn't looking forward to it now. The device would change my very biological makeup—it would change each and every cell in my body from Time Lord to human being, a process which, I'd heard, was immensely painful. And if I did it, if I went through with it, I'd have to disappear completely, leave behind all my friends, my family—well, my family. And God knows what would happen to me if I did. Any number of things could go wrong—I might lose the watch, it might get destroyed, I might never open it…

Suddenly, the TARDIS gave a rumble and shook violently, and I remembered just what was going on outside of my doors. I opened a slot on the console, removed from it a small fob watch, and inserted it into the back of the Chameleon Arch. According to what I'd been told, the fob watch would contain my consciousness, my very essence, while the TARDIS gave me a new identity with the help of fabricated memories and a few good old-fashioned perception filters.

I pulled it on over my head and, after a long, deliberating hesitation, flipped a switch. Pain like I had never felt before, crippling, blinding, burned suddenly through me, spreading from my hearts down my very limbs. I screamed. I dropped to the floor. I writhed.

Very suddenly, the TARDIS vanished, and I was no longer Sherlock the Time Lord. I was sitting at a typewriter, at my typewriter, in my sitting room. The year was 1884. I had my own independent medical practice which, admittedly, wasn't doing particularly well. I did, however, have one thing to look forward to while waiting for a patient to stumble in: writing.

My name was no longer Sherlock, though the name floated frequently through my mind as I began to type, A Study in Scarlet, part I. Chapter I: Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

The name my TARDIS had given me, as I knew now, was Arthur Conan Doyle. I didn't know at the time what I used to be or what I would become. I only knew that I was having strange, frequent dreams about a detective who was solving crimes with his funny little companion…

Many, many years went by. I wrote the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes; my first wife died, but I married again; I had five children; and all the while, that fob watch sat on my mantelpiece, dusty and broken in my eyes. For whatever reason, I could not bring myself to get rid of the thing at the time. Finally, when I was old and frail and convinced I would never again rise from the bed I was currently resting in, someone asked to see me, someone I'd never met before. It was a man with short black hair who wore a long military coat and whose eyes seemed to sparkle whenever he spoke, as if everything around him amused him.

The man introduced himself as Captain Jack Harkness. He was meandering about the room, saying something about how he'd always wanted to meet the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but before he got far in flattering me, he noticed the watch sitting on the mantelpiece. He picked it up, entranced, flipping it over and over in his hand. The man—Captain Jack—said he could hear things coming from it, voices, whispering things about Time Lords… He handed it to me, telling me I should open it. I protested weakly, telling him the watch had never worked, but he insisted. So, finally, after all those years, I opened the watch.

Everything came flooding back in a sudden great rush that almost gave me a heart attack right then and there. I was a Time Lord again.

What followed after was so rushed it was almost a blur in my memory. Stiff with age, even as a Time Lord, I clambered out of the bed and headed for my TARDIS, which had been disguised as an old wardrobe. Before I could get there, however, I collapsed against Jack, wheezing. A Time Lord I might've been, but I was still dying. Looking down at my hands, I saw that the skin had begun to glow golden, sparking and glittering as if the blood in their veins had been replaced with lava. A sudden fire began to burn through me, a feeling that I recognized from several other instances in my past: regeneration. Instead of dying, I, as a Time Lord, would form myself a newer, hopefully younger body. My personality, too, was subject to change, though my memories, I knew, would remain intact.

All at once, I went as stiff as a board, my arms flung out to either side and my head tossed back as the energy boiled through me, burning away my old body like a phoenix. It was dreadfully painful, and I know I cried out at some point. My new form began to take shape, and with a sudden release, I found myself whole again and feeling utterly new. I looked down at my hands. Long-fingered they were, and pale, but deft and capable. I looked to be a lean man—not particularly muscular, but not entirely skinny, either. I must've gotten taller, too, because everything below me seemed further away.

Fumbling for some sort of reflective surface, I stood, leaning against the dresser as I gazed into the mirror above it. My new face was, on first impression, peculiar-looking. The high nose over full lips; the prominent cheekbones; the pale, slanted eyes that gave the sense of a cat—I decided I liked it, though.

"You're a Time Lord," Jack said in astonishment, his voice low in awe. "I've only ever met one other Time Lord before. He thought he was the last one. Boy, will he be pleased… Loving the new face, by the way."

I had been prodding at my new cheekbones in fascination, but I stopped at this. "Who was it? Why did he think he was the last one?" I was shocked to hear the voice that came out of my mouth—it was deep and sonorous, nothing like my last one.

Jack looked suddenly somber and slightly uncomfortable. "He went by 'The Doctor.'" The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't put a face to it at the time. "I'm sorry—this is probably news to you, but… There was a massive war. The Time War, he called it. The Time Lords lost, and… Gallifrey's gone."

I was in shock. I stared at him blankly for a moment before saying, "Gallifrey's gone? The whole… The whole planet?"

Jack nodded. "From how I understand it, yes."

"And—And the Time Lords?"

"All of them gone, except the Doctor."

I didn't have much attachment to Gallifrey other than my family—I'd never really liked it there, anyway. But it was my home. It was where I was born, and I was always welcome to return if ever I felt the need. I stood abruptly and made for my TARDIS.

Jack followed me. "Where are you going?"

"Somewhere else," I replied curtly.

"Wait—we should find the Doctor. He'd want to know about you, and maybe he could help—"

"No," I replied, in such a fierce tone that I surprised even myself, especially considering I had a new voice. I had never been so blunt or abrasive in any of my previous regenerations. "No, Jack, listen to me. If you ever see him—the Doctor—again, you must not tell him about me. I have no desire to—to—" I broke off. "Just don't. Don't say a word about me. You never met me, understand? The Doctor is still the last Time Lord."

"Why?" Jack asked, but I didn't answer. I slipped into my TARDIS and closed the door behind me.

John gasped for breath as he suddenly found himself in his own very human body once more. It took his brain a moment to extricate his own identity from Sherlock's. Sherlock had released his fingers from John's face and was watching him, observing his reaction closely.

"I—no, we—I mean—you—you… turned yourself human to escape the war," John summarized, mostly for his own benefit, as it was taking an awful lot of effort to piece together what he'd just experienced, and hearing it out loud seemed to help. Sherlock nodded. "And you became Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." He nodded again. "You wrote stories… based on when you were a Time Lord." Another nod. "And—and now they're coming true…?"

"It would seem that way, yes."

"But how—" John was still finding it difficult to string words together, "—how can that be happening, how did you know."

"I'm still trying to figure that out myself. I think… Well, my ship was under attack when I was going through the process of becoming a human. There might have been a mishap with the time energy in the TARDIS, and bits of my future could've leaked through. That seems the likeliest possibility, at least."

"There weren't any aliens or jungle planets in the original stories, though," said John, confused.

"It was the nineteenth century, John. I probably took a number of creative liberties as an author, as authors do. Or perhaps the visions were filtered so that they made sense to me in that state of mind—I don't know." He looked very uncomfortable admitting it, and John realized that there was very little in terms of things like this that he didn't know. To be in the dark about his own memories must've been agonizing to him.

They began to make their way back towards the TARDIS. Deciding to change the subject, John said, "So, this regeneration thing—does that mean you can never die? Like a… get-out-of-death-free-card?"

"No. There are certain things that can kill a Time Lord, completely bypassing the process. And, we only have a finite amount of regenerations—eventually, I'll run out them."

"And then…?"

"And then I'll die, just like any human being."

John wasn't sure what to think of this, and couldn't come up with anything to say, so he changed the subject after a moment. "So you had the name Sherlock Holmes before you even wrote the stories?"

"Just Sherlock, actually. It was a Gallifreyan name. I suppose I added Holmes on the end so it would make more sense for the setting."

They fell silent as they walked, and John found himself reliving Sherlock's memories in his head. Just what he had revealed alone was an incredibly personal thing to share, but showing it in such a manner… John felt honored. Sherlock trusted him enough to bare his very soul to him.

He couldn't help remembering in particular the process Sherlock went through to become a human being. John had been through a lot in the war—his shoulder had been grievously injured, and it had hurt something terrible. But this… This had been agonizing. He remembered from Sherlock's mind the way that the Chameleon Arch worked: it would change his biological makeup cell-by-cell from Time Lord to human being. Meanwhile, his Time Lord consciousness was stored in a fob watch while the TARDIS fabricated human memories for him. What must it have been like, to suddenly realize that the last sixty, seventy years of his life had been a lie? How strange must it have been to look back on that time of his life and see himself doing things that he ordinarily wouldn't have done?

Before he realized it, they'd reached the clearing where the TARDIS sat, still disguised as a gnarly old tree. Helen was sitting amidst clusters of flowers with broad, midnight-blue petals that faded to a deep purple in the throats. Long yellow pistils extended from their centers, ringed by orange stamen. Helen was staring intently at one particular flower, which was being paid special attention to by a creature somewhat like a hummingbird.

A moment after they arrived, she tore her gaze away from the tiny flitting animal. "Time to go?" she inquired, disappointment making her words droop.

John waited for Sherlock to say something about how he was a busy man and needed to get back to his flat, but instead the detective answered, "No, not yet. We haven't been that long."

She looked considerably happier about this and resumed watching the flower until the tiny bird-like thing zoomed away. Then she stood and continued to meander about the clearing, mesmerized by every blossom she laid eyes on.

Sherlock and John, meanwhile, took a seat side-by-side on a boulder. It felt like it had been weeks since John was woken by the distressed TARDIS. For the first time since meeting Sherlock, there weren't innumerable questions fighting each other to be the first to be said out loud. But wait—there was one…

"Sherlock, there's something you still haven't explained to me."

He sounded bored. "What's that?"

John recalled the first conversation they'd had with Helen, and his face split into a grin. "What's a skila?"

To John's surprise, Sherlock began to chuckle. It broadened into a laugh and, a moment later, he managed to say, "It's an otter."

John laughed as well, fuelling a snorting fit of giggles from Sherlock. "An otter?" he repeated, unable to restrain himself. "Oh, my God…" Then, as he took a second to re-evaluate Sherlock's face, he saw exactly where Helen was coming from and burst out with a fresh bout of laughter, "Oh, my God!"

By the time they had wrung out all the entertainment that they could, they were wiping tears from their eyes.

Sometime later, Helen rejoined them and, despite her obvious reluctance, announced that she was ready to return home. She did, after all, have to get back to her sister. So, Sherlock took her back to the New New York Hospital (making sure to adjust the date of their landing as well) and swung the door open to reveal a white-walled area just like any other hospital room. She hugged them each goodbye, thanking them fervently, and left. The door was closed behind her, and Sherlock flew the ship back to 221B.

"What do you think, John?" asked Sherlock evenly.

John wasn't sure what kind of answer Sherlock was looking for, but he was sure about one thing: "I think I could do with a good long rest."