Sherlock Fic: Be My Voice in This World
I AM AT WORK AND POSTING THINGS! More kinkmeme fic dumping, oh god i am going to get firedddd. :(
Title taken from the song Local God, by Everclear, because I was honestly just calling this "TORTALL AU LOL" and am uncreative when AT WORK.
Title: Be My Voice in This World
Rating: PG-15
Word Count: ~10300 ...what.
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock, Mycroft/"Anthea", Mr. & Mrs. Holmes (...kind of), Lestrade!
Warnings: Crossover with Tamora Pierce's Tortall universe, and therefore an AU. VIOLENCE, irreverent view of nobility/monarchy in general, intentionally not brit-picked (o Tortall, u so American!).
Summary: In which Sir John of Fief Watson (aka Mad John) becomes Sir John of newly-created kind-of-a-Fief Baker Street and meets the demigod of insanity via divine intervention-slash-matchmakerness. Together they fight crime, and people explode!
John is in front of a campfire, the great Carthaki desert stretching out beyond him. A woman sits on the other side of the fire, and the only truly remarkable thing about her is how astonishingly tall she is. That and the fact there's a woman in the middle of the desert with him.
"I could have sworn I was dying," John comments, because the last thing he can remember is an arrow piercing his shoulder and people screaming and his horse rearing as the mages advanced-
He can't remember what she says exactly, but it's important. She kept him alive. She wants something in return for it. It sounds like something John would be happy to give. The woman is incredibly tall, and her eyes are light and indescribable, incredibly noteworthy even if he can't think of a single way to describe them.
And the next thing he knows he is in a small tent in the camp, his battered armor at his side. His shield, he notices, isn't the argent background and sable swallow insignia of Watson. Where there used to be one black bird, there are now three of them, with a big azure chevron that makes the border between each bird's dominion. The chevron is so bright and big that it's more than a little annoying, to be honest.
John can read a shield just like any other knight. Whatever the woman in the desert wanted, she's not secretive about it - his debt is written all over his shield with that big upside-down V pledge of loyalty to someone John doesn't doubt for a moment isn't the King.
"Gods, John? Is that you?" someone calls from the opening of the tent, and John notices that he's still bleeding. In fact, there's still an angry black arrow sticking out of his shoulder. The world is blurry enough from blood loss that he can barely see who is rushing him to the healer's tent.
"Am I dying?" John asks.
The answer is no, but he thinks about that mark on his shield and can't help but wonder for a moment if it'd be better off dead.
*
There are a few things people aren't really supposed to do, but do anyway. One of these involves Beltane. Well, a lot of them involve Beltane (because come on, it's Beltane), but it's generally considered a good rule to stick with your chosen partner, because the realms are dangerously close together that night and you never know who might come out to play.
Nobody really bothered to remind people after age ten, though, so it makes sense that if someone was to stumble into a courtyard on a particularly warm Beltane and spot an ethereal woman and think hey, maybe she'd want to drink with me, it'd be an already-drunk amnesiac from Tyra.
Oddly enough, she smiled and went to him without him ever having to ask.
After all, he was everything she loved best in the world - intelligent, lost, and wrong in the head.
*
Corus looks a hell of a lot different after spending years in Carthak. The trees are amazing. So is how absolutely nothing happens in Corus these days. Oh, there is the occasional whisper about royal intrigue and the ever-more-liberal royal court, but nobody ever really does anything. John spends more time watching the pages play at fighting than anything else, and then he limps his way from room to room and does his best to ignore the stares.
If knights came back wounded, it was usually with a missing finger at the least. Not with a limp and a shaky hand and a strange blankness to the once-lively city. It didn't help that they all still remembered his Ordeal, when John had rolled his way out of the Chamber's massive doors and not done the standard stammering and crying and apologizing and shaking. Instead, he unnerved the entire palace and three-fourths of Corus by laughing hysterically for two hours, and smiling for three days.
There are two schools of opinion on why that happened: the first being that John was, miraculously, peerless and therefore the Chamber of the Ordeal had nothing to really break him of. The second was that John was stark raving mad and his Ordeal was the Chamber's attempt at warning the kingdom. After all, you can't punish a person for being crazy; it's not their fault.
Besides, after what happened to Fief Watson it seemed only natural that something would have gone just as wrong in John as it did with Harriet.
Rumors thrive in Corus. Gossip is Corus' primary export. There isn't a single thing to do in the entire city, it seemed.
Of course, the moment he sits down on a windowsill and lets himself think it, a messenger shows up."You're Mad John, ain't you?" the boy asks. "The knight what has the blue chevron and loud nightmares?"
John sighs. "That's me."
The boy beams at him. "A lord sent me here with a message for you," he says proudly, and hands over a slip of paper. "You don't look too loony to me, sir."
"All the more reason to worry," John says dryly, and the boy laughs before running back to whatever he was doing before.
The paper is an official (but unsigned) order to place Sir John of Watson as the official protector of a street in Corus. Also known as they took Fief Watson's lost status (belonged to Tusaine for five generations now) and decided to make Fief Watson a street in the city.
He'd never really expected to have actual land to deal with. Let alone one street to deal with. Gods, he'd have to deal with politics, wouldn't he? John shudders at the thought. Politics. Maybe he'll just set Harry on the court and see if they're willing to reconsider just to get the Lady out of the palace. Mithros knows a drunk lesbian makes most of the court too nervous to have a good time, and with the palace's occupation with meaningless parties, John could be out of having actual land obligations in no time.
Except then John notices the big blue chevron at the end of the small slip of paper. That, and the ‘not as bad as you think’ written in tiny neat letters beneath it.
John's a man of his word.
He grabs his cloak, and heads out towards the brand new domain of Watson, which was just plain old Baker Street until about three minutes ago.
*
When the amnesiac Tyran's next Beltane in Corus came around, the same tall and unremarkable woman was waiting for him. She had a baby in her arms and told him it was named Mycroft Holmes. The amnesiac Tyran (who had been going by Tyran) had the last name of Holmes, and the woman had not only given birth to their child, but was also kind enough to have remembered his name for him.
When Beltane was over, Tyran Holmes took care of the almost unnervingly intelligent baby Mycroft, and loved every tiny wisp of bright red hair on his three-month-old head. People worried about letting a man so touched in the mind act as the single parent for such a lovely child, but honestly? It seemed like Mycroft mostly took care of himself. Tyran was just there for providing milk, hugs, and clean diapers.
And, after a while, the neighbors even found themselves forgetting the baby existed.
*
Baker Street isn't the best part of town, but it isn't the worst either. There are students from the university, and the bakers that you would expect, and he finds himself standing in front of a door with a blue chevron painted on a board next to it. Rooms Available is also under it.
The blue roof: the universal sign of a house looking for renters.
John is infinitely glad he swore off everyday finery in Carthak, because he would feel even more awkward knocking on the house's door.
When it opens, he's looking at a friendly older woman with a pleasant, honest smile. "Well hello there, dear."
"Good afternoon," John says awkwardly. "I saw your sign-"
"Oh, come in!" she says, and John obeys, following her into the house and up a flight of stairs. "Are you the one Sherlock's expecting, then? He's in a horrid mood, but that shouldn't be a surprise. The city's been so dreadfully peaceful that I'm starting to think the Black God must be on vacation!"
"I see," John replies, but really, really doesn't. "I'm John, by the way."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, dear," the woman says, knocking on a door at the top of the stairs. "I'm Mrs. Hudson, and I own the house. Ever since my husband was executed."
John stares at her. "I'm so sorry."
"I'm not. The world's a better place for it, mark my words," Mrs. Hudson says cheerily, and John thinks she might be the most pleasantly unusual woman he's met in years. She knocks again.
"Go away," a man shouts through the door.
"But Sherlock, dear-" Mrs. Hudson says to the door.
"Mrs. Hudson, if you don't leave me alone-" the door shouts back.
"Excuse me, but I think you're waiting for me," John shouts, and Mrs. Hudson and the door go quiet. The awkwardness crashes on him all over again. "The blue roof? The chevron? I'm-"
The door swings open, and John is looking at a tall man with curly black hair and strangely familiar eyes. He's wearing a blue robe, and it's the exact shade of the chevron. It swirls around him dramatically, and for some reason John's having a hell of a hard time not laughing as the man (Sherlock, he recalls) looks at him with this excited, piercing gaze. "Recently returned from Carthak, yes?"
John sighs. "I'd have been here sooner if I'd known where you wanted me."
Sherlock frowns at him for a moment before saying, "Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," grabbing John by the shoulder and yanking him inside the room. He kicks the door shut behind John, and then John gets stared at some more. "Let me guess. You felt compelled to do something, but couldn't quite remember what it was, and your feet just found their way here."
"Nope," John says.
Sherlock just keeps frowning. "Then you're." His eyes suddenly widen. "Oh. Oh. I wasn't expecting you for years, Mycroft only just got his two years ago."
John just watches him. "I have no idea what you're on about."
"All the way to Carthak," Sherlock mutters, and sighs. "Well, John. There's a second room upstairs if you'd like it. Rent can easily be split between us. Does music bother you? I play the violin at odd hours, and continue for hours at times."
"Doesn't bother me, no," John says, and takes a deep breath. "Look. Sherlock. I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. I'm-"
"Sir John of the long-gone Fief Watson," Sherlock says. "Your family may have no land, but since it goes back to the Book of Gold you're guaranteed status as nobility, unless a new law is passed. You hate palace life, so it only seems natural you'd come looking for lodgings in the city. After all, you'd be bored to tears outside of Corus."
"I'm not sure about tears," John mutters, and it earns a pleasantly surprised burst of laughter from Sherlock. The man looks about ready to bounce around the room. "And it's actually Sir John of Baker Street now." He pauses. "Well. Sort of. Either that or Baker Street is now Fief Watson, but I think that'd just be a bit odd to rename one street in Corus. Easier to just rename myself."
After a moment, Sherlock smirks. "Welcome home then, Lord Baker Street."
*
The seventh Beltane Tyran Holmes spent in Corus (and he intended to spend every Beltane in Corus, he and his amazingly intelligent little boy who was already the smartest person Tyran could remember ever meeting), the woman was different. Oh, she was still ridiculously tall and her eyes were still indescribable, but everyone could see her. The woman stood out, loud and vibrant in the night, and people actually stared at them as she and Tyran and Mycroft spent their one night of the year together. Mycroft and the woman spoke of things Tyran couldn't even begin to understand, and when they'd put Mycroft to bed, the woman told Tyran her name.
Tyran spent thirty minutes screaming into his pillow when he woke up the morning after Beltane, because for the life of him he couldn't remember it.
*
Nobody really comments when Sir John the Mad of Fief Watson Baker Street moves everything from his comfortable rooms in the palace into a small attic room in a house on Baker Street. The good people of Baker Street certainly notice, since his belongings going down the street cause comment. There's only a few things, really (in comparison, any other noble would have needed to buy an entire house for storage), but the things are fine enough that people know what's going on.
It's considered strange until they realize he's moving in with Sherlock Holmes, at which point people on Baker Street seem to just go oh, well then.
When Sherlock sees John's magically altered shield, he laughs so hard he falls into one of the chairs in front of the fireplace and demands they hang it directly above the mantle. While he ignores John's protests and does his best to figure out how to mount John's shield while still keeping it functional and ready to move at a moment's notice, Mrs. Hudson stares at the man and says, "He's so happy that I'm almost worried I need to talk to the city guard."
"Why would you need to do that?" John asks.
Mrs. Hudson looks more than a little guilty when she says, "Well, Sherlock, he's never had the best impulse control, you understand." John doesn't, so Mrs. Hudson sighs. "He works with them, sometimes. And sometimes they think he's the one they're looking for. He has a...way about him, I suppose. Like he forgets the way things work in the world outside his head."
"He's not very practical, either," John notes. John's a practical man. This is why he knows that you never actually need to mount a shield to the wall, particularly a shield that was saving his life and taking others a little over three months ago. "What do you mean, he works with the city watch?"
"He helps them figure out who's a criminal and how they did it," Mrs. Hudson says, and winces right along with John as the shield clangs onto the ground.
"See if I save you from an arrow next time someone decides to shoot you," John says, sighing.
"Oh yes, because you've clearly mastered that," Sherlock says, glaring at the wall and ignoring the shield entirely.
"Sherlock!" Mrs. Hudson scolds him sharply, and Sherlock turns to frown at them, looking as if for all the world he has no idea why she's upset with him.
John thinks he's starting to understand Mrs. Hudson's description a bit more. "Why bother being insulted? It's the truth," John says, and confiscates his shield while Sherlock rummages through the room for a hammer. Divine meddling leading to becoming some kind of prophesized roommate or not, it's still John's. Besides, he still needs to take it to an armorer to remove a few of the more stubborn dents.
Mrs. Hudson sighs. "He doesn't deserve you, John dear," she says, and leaves.
John's starting to wonder if moving in to Mrs. Hudson's rooms instead of some other place on Baker Street was really a good idea.
He's even more concerned when a captain of the guard comes into the room, looks straight at Sherlock as he comes out of some clutter with an a-HA! and hammer in hand, and says, "We need you."
*
There is a cycle, for gods. It can depend on anything; the seasons, the stars, the economy, who knows? Gods aren't the sort of creature to meddle with. They are sly and, more often than not, don't care a bit about mortals.
The eighth Beltane Tyran Holmes spent in Corus, when the woman appeared with a baby named Sherlock Holmes in her arms, Tyran could describe her eyes. He could remember her name. He could undoubtedly paint a portrait of her face down to the last detail, down to the last dimple in her smile and the awkward curls of her red hair that tangled in the breeze.
"Mummy," Mycroft said, his hand in hers as he watched Tyran hold onto Sherlock and cling to the woman's side. "Mummy, why doesn't Dad ever talk about you?"
"Because he doesn't remember me," she answered. "Not until the seasons grow closer to Beltane. Your father's a remarkable man, Mycroft. Just remembering me for half the year is a feat in itself."
Tyran watched Sherlock suck on his thumb, and watched Mycroft and the woman watch Tyran watch Sherlock suck his thumb, and Sherlock watched them all in return.
"He's going to be trouble," Mycroft said.
The woman smiled, hugging him tight. "See? I told you there was a touch of seer in there, didn't I."
Tyran didn't know which of them she was speaking to. He just watched Sherlock watch them all. He watches. He watches-
"Oh, love," the woman says, and her voice is deep and beautiful. "Not yet. Our boys need you. You can come to me later, I swear, but not yet."
He whispers her name. He loves her. He loves Mycroft and he loves the baby, but oh, how he loves her. More than anything.
When Beltane is over, he can remember her name and has no idea why the crib is back out of storage, no matter how many times Mycroft shows him the reason.
*
John has no idea why he's following Sherlock and the captain into an alleyway he knows has a gruesome murder in it. And oh, is it gruesome. It reminds John of when the Carthaki mages had really gotten angry.
"Hmm," Sherlock says. "The killer's definitely Mithran-trained. Also definitely not used to combat magic, so probably a scholarly mage. One who likes to experiment." And he smiles. "Oh, this might be fun."
"There was another one like this three days ago, but I didn't bother asking for your help since that body was even more." The captain lets out a deep breath. "Well. It was worse. Still don't even know if the remains were a man or a woman, to be honest."
"He's losing his grip, then," Sherlock says, and the captain nods. Sherlock grins. "Fantastic."
John's starting to understand the whole 'think he's the murderer' thing. Particularly when Sherlock just casually picks up a severed arm to look at a scar.
"She was suicidal, but didn't get herself healed when she tried to slit her wrists. Honestly, who uses stitches anymore?"
"Me," John says, noticing the sky is a particularly lovely shade of blue today.
He hears the squish-thud of the arm hitting what's left of the body. "You're a doctor. I knew I was missing something. I was hoping spy." Sherlock sighs. "A giftless healer. How disappointing."
"You do realize I can exile you from Baker Street, right?" John asks, amused more than anything else. "Or put you in the stocks and toss rotting cabbage at you for a few hours."
"You like me too much to do that," Sherlock says, and uses a stick to start moving things around. "Besides, that requires paperwork these days."
John grins. "In Corus, yes."
It takes a moment, but Sherlock smirks. "I suppose you're not as much of an idiot as I thought," he says, and stands. John decides to take that as a compliment. "There's not much else I can do, Lestrade. Not without doing some very illegal things."
Lestrade nods, scowling at the world in general. "And for the sake of the poor woman's soul, I'm not going to look the other way this time," he says, and John can't help but wonder what kind of city guard Corus actually has, since it sounds like not not arresting Sherlock for illegal activities is a rare event indeed. "We have a witness from the first attack, but she didn't get a clear look at who went into the alley. She just heard it."
"That's good enough for me, since you undoubtedly missed everything important," Sherlock says, and with a nod Lestrade hands over an already prepared slip of paper with directions on it. Sherlock reads it, and then he runs off. He just runs, leaving John standing next to an exploded body and a completely unsurprised Captain Lestrade.
"With all due respect, Sir John, I think maybe locking him in the stocks and throwing cabbage at him might not be a bad idea," Lestrade says, and nods respectfully before he, too, leaves.
John looks at what's left of the body one last time before leaving the alley, and realizing that he has absolutely no idea where he is.
Which is, of course, when the carriage rolls up right in front of him and the driver has a crossbow pointed straight at John's head.
"Get in," the man says.
John does.
*
It is his...his what now? It is Beltane. That's all that matters. It is Beltane, and she will be here again. She'll come for him. She'll come for him. Mycroft will take care of...of. Of the baby. But he's not as much of a baby as he was, is he? And Mycroft looks more grown up than he remembers.
He's fairly sure his last name is Holmes.
Sherlock, yes. The baby's name is Sherlock, and his name is not quite Tyran, and he and Sherlock and Mycroft are a tiny happy family for the most part, and it is Beltane and where is she where is she where is she-
"Take him," Mycroft says the moment the woman appears. Sherlock looks so big now, doesn't he? A head full of curly black hair and intelligent eyes too old for his face. Tyran loves him so, so much. But he loves the woman so much more. "Please, Mummy. Just take him. It's torture at this point."
Their mother looks at her boys. Their boys. Their beautiful, intelligent boys. "I don't want to leave you two alone," she says quietly.
"Take us too, then," Sherlock says, only to be shushed by his older brother. "What? It's not like there's anything interesting here. Everyone forgets you and everyone makes fun of me and Daddy's crazy-"
"Daddy can't help that," Mycroft says patiently. "And think of him first, hmm? Mummy and Daddy love each other very much. Wouldn't you rather they were happy?"
"I'd rather go wherever Mummy goes," Sherlock states, pouting.
Mummy shakes her head. "If I took you and Mycroft, you could never come back. And I can promise you both you'd be bored out of your minds," she says, soft and honest, and takes Tyran Holmes' hand. He can think of nothing more glorious than the feel of her skin.
"One more Beltane and I'll take you, my dear," she whispers against his palm, and he could melt. He loves her, he loves her he loves her, wants to lose himself in her completely. He wants her to consume him, swallow him whole. Then they could be together forever and ever and ever.
*
When John steps inside the carriage, there's a woman going through papers strewn across the adjacent seat. She doesn't even bother looking up at him, instead scribbling all over seemingly random pages with a quill, miraculously avoiding getting a single smudge of ink on her fine shirt and skirt.
John tries to make conversation. He might as well be trying to stir a rebellion from the stones in a quarry.
When the carriage stops, John gets out first, and finds himself in what looks like an abandoned inn, with a man standing at his ease in front of the fireplace. It's a newly abandoned inn, he notes. The bar's wet and it hasn't rained in a week.
The man knows more about John that he's comfortable with. Down to the whispers that John came back from Carthak wrong, the man has it all written down in a little book he's more than happy to slowly page through while John's hands clench at his sides. John isn't going to back down just because of some dramatics and inside information, though. He faced down the entire Northern Army of Carthak. One man with an umbrella and attitude isn't going to make him lose nerve.
"I didn't think I would frighten you," the man says as he pages through the journal, and John knows he didn't say a word. "I trust my sources' information about you, John. The question is whether or not I trust you." He looks John up and down, long and deliberate and assessing in a way that's so superior it's insulting. Insulting, and awkward. "But I can already see my opinion isn't going to change much in this situation. I'll simply ask that you be...cautious, hmm? Sherlock Holmes is a very unusual man."
"I'd noticed," John states.
The man gives him a tight smile. "Of course. And are you planning to marry him?"
John gapes. "I. What? I only met him today!"
"And you've already moved in with him and taken lordship over his entire neighborhood, not to mention started solving crimes together." The man pauses for a moment. "You do realize that, as a noble whose lineage goes back to the Book of Gold, you sharing permanent quarters with him means he's legally your consort, yes?"
"We're sharing rooms, not a room!" John shouts. "He is not my consort! And most of this was divine intervention anyway, it's not. It's not like that." He swallows. "It's just not."
The man gives him a tight smile. "Be sure he knows that, then," the man says, and soon enough John is ushered back into the carriage and back to Baker Street and back home.
When he walks in, Sherlock is excited and, John notices rather grudgingly, extraordinarily pretty. "He's following Ryland's Enigma," Sherlock says.
"And hello to you too," John replies, fetching his sword as Sherlock nearly bounces around the room talking about harmonization and entrapment and tapping the unharnessed well and things John really has no clue about. He's giftless and always concentrated on how to save people's lives if they're all drained and only have him to rely on when they have gaping wounds in their sides.
"So we'll have our killer in only a night, John. Now. What did he want?"
John frowns.
"Your abductor," Sherlock says, throwing himself onto the couch and kicking his feet up dramatically. He seems to do everything dramatically, really.
John can't help but laugh a little. "Oh, you wouldn't believe me. Who was he?"
"A very, very dangerous man, possibly the most dangerous man you'll ever meet," Sherlock says, and is watching John now. "I'll believe it. What'd he say? Did he ask you to spy on me?"
"No, actually," John says. "He wanted to know if we were getting married."
Sherlock scoffs. "Please. Not for a year, at least."
John stares at him. He stares at him for a long, long moment. "I'm sorry, what?"
"We're obviously going to be together." Sherlock frowns. "You didn't really think a goddess sent you to me just to be roommates, did you? Have you ever heard of divine intervention for destined really good friends? Honestly. What did you expect?"
John is torn between punching the disbelieving frown off Sherlock’s face and sitting down and staring at the wall for a good bit of time. "I expected at least a little control over my life, I suppose." He settles for staring at the wall, sitting himself in his preferred chair and watching the wall do absolutely nothing. He incidentally watches Sherlock shifting awkwardly on the couch.
"Maybe that wasn't the best way to tell you," Sherlock says.
"Probably not, no," John agrees, and swallows. "You knew this the moment I showed up, didn't you?"
"Yes." Sherlock sighs. "I've been expecting you for years, John."
And it all makes so much sense now. The excitement when he showed up. The lack of pleasantries - or pleasantness in general. Already taking him for granted. If John had a destined husband (...which he does, apparently) he might treat him just the same.
So he decides to.
"Alright then," John says. "Explain how this happened, and then we'll go for dinner."
Sherlock grins like he just won the moon in a dice game, and tells him the strange sad story of not-quite-Tyran Holmes.
*
The next Beltane, Sherlock is ten years old and his father is stark raving mad. Mycroft is already so involved in Tortallan spy games that Sherlock doesn't doubt he'll be in charge of the country by the time Jonathan V takes the throne. And Sherlock is slowly realizing that while Mycroft can become inhumanly forgettable, Sherlock is cursed to be the most negatively memorable boy in the world.
"My boys," Mummy says, giving first Mycroft and then Sherlock kisses on the cheek. His father clings to her when she allows it, and he earns the same gesture of affection. "I think it's time I take your father. I'll bring him next year, don't worry."
"I don't want him back," Sherlock says.
Mycroft glares at him, but Mummy smiles. "But I'll be bringing him back with his mind and memory intact."
"After prolonged contact with you? Really?" Mycroft asks, intrigued.
Mummy nods, holding their father close. He's shorter than her. Most people are. "If he's in my domain, he can adjust. Time moves differently there, anyway. Enough time, and the madness goes away."
Sherlock feels like throwing things. "What about Victor, then? I drove him crazy and that was only being his friend. And Mycroft's girlfriend can't even remember where she lives!" He does throw something, then. It crashes loudly against the wall and makes his father murmur into Mummy's shoulder and Mycroft grab him by the wrist. "I hate this! I hate that I can't be normal, that everyone hates me and I can't have friends and I know things-"
"Sherlock," Mycroft snaps. Mummy looks like she's ashamed, although Sherlock can't tell if it's of him or his father or herself. "I know many, many people who would kill to have what we do." Kill us to have what we do, Sherlock knows is the end of that sentence, but he doesn't care. He's ten and alone save for Mycroft and a father so crazy that he found him clawing at the floor just in case Mummy had accidentally buried herself alive down there.
Mummy watches them both. "I'm sorry, both of you. I will never regret bringing you into this world-" a peculiar choice of words, Sherlock notes, and doesn't doubt that Mycroft does as well "- but I will try to make right what your bloodline has done."
"How?" Sherlock demands. "You're going to magically find someone Mycroft won't turn into an amnesiac and I won't turn crazy?"
She smiles. "Yes I will, Sherlock," she says, and she says it with such conviction that Sherlock can actually believe it. "And they'll love you for exactly who you are."
"Pretty words," Mycroft says, and it's the most confrontational thing Sherlock has ever heard come out of his mouth to their mother.
She just looks at them. "I swear to you, as the goddess of mind and madness, that I will find them, and deliver them. On pain of consumption by Chaos, I swear this."
A vow like that is more than good enough for Sherlock.
So, he waits. He waits for over two decades, and then Sir John of Baker Street comes walking into his life in shining armor, already absolutely insane and so well-adjusted to it that Sherlock could hold onto him for years and years and years without driving John insane to the point of suicide.
Sherlock can keep John, and will never break him by just being nearby.
*
"You're really fine with the fact your mother was the one in charge of picking your...well. Me?" John asks over dinner. They're eating at the portion of the hill that holds the university, and it seems like everyone in the world knows Sherlock. He would have objected to the attempted romantic gesture of the owner, but...well. Kind of destined whether he wants it or not. And it does make his food easier to see.
"It saved your life and saved me a trip to Carthak, so not really, no," Sherlock says, still staring out the windows. "Our suspect should be coming out any time now."
John clears his throat. "And our...relationship. How's that-"
"John," Sherlock says. "We have plenty of time to figure that out. Right now, I'm trying to catch a man trying to suck untappable magic out of people and making them explode. I'm sure it's an important conversation, but it's not a very interesting one, is it?" When he sees the look on John's face, he clears his throat. "At least, in comparison to a magic-stealing serial killer."
"And a lousy one at that," John comments, more than a little grateful for Sherlock's not terribly elegant method of postponing the so about this destined husband thing conversation. "If they keep exploding, what's that mean for the magic? And the mage?"
"It's all based off a theory called Ryland's Enigma," Sherlock says. "You need a channel to use magic. There's a well of energy inside of you - that's the Gift. If you don't have that way to channel it out of your spirit, you don't have any magic, but you do still have the power. Ryland's Enigma states that if you make a channel, you can take that power, but at the same time, you'd have nowhere to store it."
John frowns. "So our killer is trying to take the untapped power and find a way to store it somehow, and exploding people in the process?"
"Exactly," Sherlock says, grinning. "But he made a mistake with his last victim. Her suicide attempt was an extreme act of will, which tapped into her Gift even if she didn't have a channel. That's why her arm survived while the rest of their bodies exploded completely."
John's tempted to point out they're eating dinner. Or at least John's eating dinner. Instead, he says, "Alright, and why do you think this is the place to watch for our killer?"
"Because the victims all worked or lived around this street, and that building right there happens to be the University Library Annex," Sherlock said, looking terribly pleased with himself. "Ryland's Enigma isn't a very popular topic."
"Shocking," John says, and ignores Sherlock's scowl in favor of eating some rather delicious potatoes. His fork is almost in his mouth when Sherlock shouts out there's our killer! and lurches away from the table, grabbing John's hand and wrenching his arm hard enough that John has no choice but to follow him on a sudden pell-mell chase through Corus. He can't even see their murderer, can only see the mad figure of Sherlock Holmes tearing around corners, and does his best to keep up.
"You're faster than this, John," Sherlock snaps, and John has an idea.
"How far is it to Baker Street?" John shouts.
"Three minutes southwest," Sherlock calls back, scaling a house with inhuman ease. "It's that sword keeping you back, John! Drop it and you'll-"
"We're herding him towards Baker Street," John commands, and Sherlock actually stops to look back at him, eyes wide. "What? I have a plan!"
Sherlock blinks, at the expression is gone, replaced with a glare. "And we've undoubtedly lost our killer now, because of your plan." There's enough scorn in that word to fill up a bathtub. "I'm sure it was brilliant, Lord Baker Street, but-"
"Is this really the time?" John asks, still breathing hard and glaring right back. "Because I have a suspicion this is only going to make him kill again."
Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Of course he's going to kill again. He's a serial killer, and now we've got him excited. His tiny academic mind won't know what to do with itself other than try to solve Ryland's again."
"And that means that shouting at me is the most useful thing we can do right now, obviously," John says. "You're a brilliant crime-solving demigod, so start acting like it instead of like an angry seven-year-old who lost a foot race!"
Sherlock doesn't say anything. He just stands there and breathes and watches, and John has to wonder if this is what the rest of his life will be.
"You really think I'm brilliant?" Sherlock finally asks.
John sighs. "Yes. And I'm going home. Thank you for dinner."
"What did you see in the Chamber of the Ordeal?"
John doesn't like that question. "I'll see you when you get home," he says.
"What if I need you?" Sherlock asks. "What if I need stitches? What if the killer comes after me? I could be fighting for my life to keep from being the next to explode and you'd be sitting in your chair drinking tea and thinking about the weather. How exciting."
John sighs. "Fine," he says, and frowns. "Wait. I thought you were a sorcerer, how could the killer make you explode?"
"I can only touch about an eighth of my Gift," Sherlock says. "The rest makes me and everyone around me insane, so technically I'm both Gifted and not since I can't get to all of it."
"Good to know," John says, and files the information away. "Alright. Where to?"
*
When Mycroft got his someone from Mummy, Sherlock didn't know quite what to make of her. She was beautiful, amazingly intelligent, and seemed physically incapable of telling Sherlock anything about herself, and even more confusingly didn't seem to give a damn that she couldn't remember her name. She had a mind like a steel trap when it came to everything that wasn't about herself, and pages and pages of notes about any information about herself she'd deemed important, and didn't bother with anything else.
Mycroft couldn't make her forget something she'd never known to begin with.
Acute amnesia, Mummy called it. The woman didn't remember herself because she didn't want to remember herself. And if Mummy said it was fine for the woman to keep forgetting herself, it was fine. Gods lie about many things, but no deity would lie about something like that.
The woman didn't find Mycroft first, of course. Nobody finds Mycroft unless he knows they're coming and wants them to find him. Instead, she showed up at Sherlock's door with a smirk-like smile and an enormous book of information on her hip and said, "I'm here to meet someone who isn't you."
"I see. What's your name?" Sherlock asked, because he had no idea what was going on.
"Lorraine," she said, and Sherlock knew it wasn't, but it was a strange one, more like a stab in the dark at answering a question than an intentional misdirection, meaning she had no idea what the answer was. Meaning, she was there for Mycroft, and while Sherlock and his brother had a passively spiteful relationship at the best of times (well, on Sherlock's part at least; Mycroft was infuriatingly indifferent half the time), this was one of the things they had an agreement on.
When it came to people sent by Mummy, they cooperated. That didn't mean he'd have to stand there and watch Mycroft meet his someone, though.
Mummy hasn't forgotten you, Sherlock, Mycroft's voice echoed through the communication sphere he'd conjured up. Mine simply got to me first, which you must admit makes sense. I'm older, after all.
Sherlock ignored him, instead leaving his home with nothing but an absent bye from the woman. She didn't even bother looking up from the book, just waved him away while sitting in his favorite chair, waiting for Mycroft.
*
"The question is how he determines his victims," Sherlock says, and John just nods, fully aware that the other man just needs someone (or something) to talk at. "We know he's a student, an arrogant Mithran-trained one, probably at the University for specialized study at the archives, since they have much better records of murders and any attempt at solving Ryland's ends with murder, so how is someone like our killer finding these people?"
"And we only really know one of them, since the rest of the victims are just splattered over the walls," John points out. "I don't know how you think you'll be able to find something in common when there's only one known victim."
Sherlock sighs, pacing in front of the (shieldless, thankfully) mantle. "We have location, but we've already exhausted that, haven't we." He frowns intently at where John's shield had rested, only to suddenly twist and stare at John. "I need your blood."
John gapes at him. "No. I need my blood, in case you haven't noticed."
"You'll make new blood, I promise," Sherlock points out. "And you'd be perfectly safe-"
"Aside from giving a half-mad demigod a piece of myself that Gods know what he's going to do with," John snaps. "No. Fated husband or not, you aren't getting my blood. Not without a reason."
"All you need is a reason?" Sherlock frowns. "My asking isn't enough of a reason?"
"It really isn't," John agrees.
He sighs. "Fine. I'm going to tie you to your new territory. That way, if our killer makes a move on anyone tied to Baker Street, you'll feel it and we can go catch our murderous student."
John can't help but be a little uncomfortable. "I'm already tied to Fief Watson, I don't know if I can take another territory in my veins." Harry had to live as close as possible to the Tusaine-Tortall border if she wanted to stay even remotely sane and sober, and...well. John'd been insane from forced spiritual inactivity for so long that he didn't even mind it anymore.
"Trust me, John, this won't be the same. Magic theory is leagues ahead of what they did creating Fief Watson," Sherlock says, grinning in a way that really shouldn't be reassuring. "There's a reason Book of Gold nobles are the weird ones."
"More than the inbreeding?" John asks. Sherlock lets out an honest startled laugh, and despite his better judgment takes out his boot knife and a bowl, and bleeds himself for Sherlock and Baker Street.
*
When Sherlock Holmes entered the university to learn magecraft, it didn't work out very well. He drove people mad, he himself was considered mad as a hatter, and the general consensus about him was that he was brilliant, but such a bastard that they'd rather he kept to his independent studies, thank you very much.
So, he did. After all, a demigod descended from the goddess of the mind isn't meant for boring introductory classes on basic magecraft or the basic elements of the Gift. He studied physical aspects of magecraft, since his own Gift seemed more of a curse and it was always tedious to draw laboratory assistants back out of their Sherlock-prompted insanity after prolonged exposure.
Not that many people (or any) could really understand what he was. There was one known demigod in Tortall, and she already made people uncomfortable enough that someone whose domain was madness wasn't nearly as palatable as wild magic and animal transformations.
That Sherlock Holmes, he was just so irritating that he drove you crazy. Nothing magical about it. It was pure personality. A gifted mage, despite his magic's limitations - everyone knew he couldn't tap into all of it, although only the gods knew why - and a brilliant mind.
But that didn't mean anyone liked him.
He stayed for two years. Everyone involved thought it was two years too long, including Sherlock.
*
"Is there a reason I'm doing this?" John asks as he digs yet another hole on Baker Street. It's the middle of the night, and Sherlock is just lounging around nearby, spinning a bag he holds in his hands. "Or a reason that you're just standing there and not helping?"
"It has to be you, that's why," Sherlock says irritably. "Honestly, don't you think there are better ways I could be spending my time?"
John looks at the hole. John looks at the other six holes he's already dug. "I really do."
Sherlock doesn't seem to notice the implication, and just nods at the hole. "That's deep enough for this one," he says, and tosses the bag inside John's nice neat project. It makes a squishing noise John tries not to think about. "Now, you fill them up."
"Of course I do," John mutters. "And this is going to do what again?"
Sherlock smirks. "It makes you Lord Baker Street, of course."
"I already am," John says.
"In name, yes, but in blood?" He shrugs. "That's what this is for. Congratulations, John, you're the true authority on this street now."
"You make me sound like some sort of crime lord," John says.
"No, just a true lord," Sherlock says, and glances at the position of the sun. "Well. I'd better be off. You can finish this yourself, can't you?"
"Yes, but-" John begins.
"Congratulations on your lordship," Sherlock says, and quickly strides off down the street, turning onto another before John can even shout at his back.
The strange thing is, John can feel the moment Sherlock leaves. It's like the surrounding area is suddenly missing half the presence it usually does, like Baker Street is close to losing its grip on the ground and will start floating away if John doesn't do something about it.
The moment he's finished covering the hole, it goes away. Oh, the presence of the street is still there, lurking inside John, and the world still feels like it's missing something with Sherlock gone, but it feels more anticipatory than dangerous.
When John moves over to the next hole, slightly deeper than the last, he notices that at the very deepest point there's a pool of silver liquid, traces of blood red slinking through the heavy substance. It's so obviously magical that John covers it as quickly as he can. Children live on Baker Street, after all, and gods knew that children and open pits of magic were never a good mix. Midnight or not, it's a concern.
After filling the final hole - nearly soaked to the brim with the silver-and-red substance - John can actually feel Baker Street. He can feel all 134 people that lived on the street, most of which are sleeping soundly. And, oddly enough, he can feel those who live on Baker Street but aren't present.
He can feel people sleeping in other houses than their own. He can feel people doing far more than sleeping in other houses. He can feel that Sherlock Holmes is lurking around the university library annex again, alone. And how, suddenly, Sherlock is running. It isn't a normal type of running, either, and it doesn't seem like he's chasing anyone, not with how he stops occasionally or retraces his steps and then runs again.
"Oh, you idiot," John hisses, because Sherlock is the one being chased, and John has a good idea of who exactly is chasing him.
He heads inside Mrs. Hudson's house - their house - and grabs his sword, buckling it on with the precise practiced movements of a man who has done it a thousand times before, and starts running for where he can feel Sherlock crouched behind a wall.
The problem is that moment John tries to cross onto Market Street, he can't. It's as if some invisible rope is tying him to the closest hole he'd dug, and as hard as he strains he can't pass that boundary.
John can't leave Baker Street, and he doesn't doubt for a second that Sherlock knew this would happen. He'd probably planned on it.
So, John returned to their house, and grabbed his crossbow.
He stood in the middle of the street, armed and ready, and waited as Sherlock seemed to unwittingly move closer and closer to home.
*
There is a legend (not told very often in Tortall) that once, Jihuk, god of demons and the deep desert, foolishly made a bet with one of his demons that he could survive his own dominion, powerless against the elements, for a week. He survived, of course - after all, gods can't die - but he lost part of his mind in the process. With no power over the desert, it had left Jihuk stranded in the sand and heat, dying of thirst and wind, and the sun had taken his mind. In his madness, he destroyed his own demons. It led to peace for most of Carthak, but it was only the beginning of strife for the country as Jihuk ate and ate and ate at the land beyond his own territory.
In a god's territory, the others must bow to their will. Even the Graveyard Hag had to accept Jihuk's control of the desert, despite her dominion over Carthak.
But there are some dominions that aren't territory.
The god they called has a name, but nobody can remember it. They do remember that the god slipped into Jihuk's mind and took away the blinding sun. In return, Jihuk offered all the power of his storms, all the evils of his demons and all the treasures long lost beneath his sands. The god politely refused, and instead asked for a favor: to keep a man alive, many years in the future. If she had asked it, Jihuk would have fought to give the moon to her, so he readily agreed.
This promise is why the demons of the desert don't kill you. They leave that to the desert, so that Jihuk can judge every man on that promise. The demons will torture you and tear you apart and hurt you and your soul in an infinite number of ways, but they never kill.
Nobody's certain whether or not they should be grateful.
*
Knights and soldiers will confess to having more hatred of the wait than the actual fighting. There's no time to think in the thick of it, but that's all they can really do in the time between battles. The anticipation is what kills in the first attack, often. The men's minds get away from them. Panic sets in until there's nothing but fear of what will happen, what might happen.
John has never experienced that anticipatory panic. For Sir John the Mad, the wait is an emptiness in his mind. It's a stillness and an awareness that takes over and lets him stand in the middle of his domain, crossbow at the ready with a rope tied to it. The feel of Sherlock is fading with every second, but he knows that his inability to leave Bakers Street is fading with it. He can't get more than a foot away from the threshold, but it's enough for now. The moon is barely bright enough to let him see his street, but the lamplighter has done his job, and firelight flickers over the wood and stone buildings.
The city watch hasn't even walked near Baker Street all night, because they can feel it's not theirs to guard anymore.
He can feel Sherlock stop moving only two streets away, and can feel him quickly lurch back into action, even though his...Sherlock-ness is less distinct now. He's still coming home. John can also hear someone laughing, loud and hysterical, in the distance. It reminds him of a lot of things he'd rather not think about, like how you can never trust the crazy ones to put science in front of homicide.
When John can hear the laughter coming down Market Street, he draws his crossbow back and casually raises it, rope appropriately coiled smoothly on the ground. When Sherlock comes running (more like stumbling frantically) around the corner, John's head is clear, and it's so simple to just wait for the young man following him to come tearing around the corner, and he fires. The arrow goes right where he wants it, of course - he's always been the best marksman - and sticks itself firmly in the now very insane scholar's torso.
The laughter stops abruptly, and Sherlock stares at the arrow and rope sticking out of his ever-so-exciting serial killer with drained, hollow eyes. He follows the rope all the way to John, who walks forward, grabs the rope, and pulls the hysterical crying man (gods, probably twenty-five at the oldest) onto Baker Street.
"As the lord and protector of Fief Baker Street, it is my right to pass judgment on any wrongdoing in my domain," John states, the words engraved in his mind since he was five years old and they were useless, with no land to protect. "For crimes against the citizens of the land I protect, including attempted murder in my lands and a string of brutal murders in the city of Corus, you are sentenced to death."
"Gods, he made it so easy," the student says through the laughter, and John knows the man isn't even present enough in the real world to beg for mercy. Sucking magic out of the demigod of madness really isn't a good idea. "And half of them were just asking to be killed anyway, I killed the idiots for learning, for science, isn't that a worthy cause?"
"May the Black God's judgment be kind," John says, unsheathes his sword, and beheads the laughing serial killer in one firm swing.
John recovers his arrow from the torso with a firm tug and a sigh.
"You're ridiculously attractive," Sherlock says from where he's leaning against the side of a building. "And mad as a hatter. We should have sex."
"You don't deserve sex, and you'd probably fall asleep during it even if you did," John says, considering the corpse and sighing. Gods, he'd thought he was done digging holes for the day.
"All I did was make sure he didn't go after you," Sherlock protests. "And tied Baker Street to you in the process. The physical part will wear off in three days, so why the fuss? You should be grateful." He frowns. "And be more sexually accommodating."
"When your mother promised to find me for you, did she ever once promise I'd stay?" John snaps, because he has had a long night and Sherlock is quite possibly the most aggravating man on the planet. It has to be a divine quality, because no purely human creature could ever manage to provoke the level of irritation Sherlock can in about three seconds. John is practically standing on top of the body of a man he'd killed about two minutes ago, and his...his whatever is propositioning him. John scowls, and wipes the blood off his sword.
But when he looks back at Sherlock everything stops, because the other man looks absolutely terrified. "Please don't leave."
"I've only known you for two days," John says, and reminds himself that Sherlock's undoubtedly more unhinged than he usually is (probably), what with a man sucking enough magic out of him that he looks hollow and the other man went even crazier than he'd been before. "I'd need at least a week to make a decision."
Sherlock nods, slow and so obviously exhausted that John has a feeling the rest of the supposed crucial decision week will be spent with Sherlock unconscious. "But I'm your destiny," Sherlock mumbles, and John sighs, helping him up from the wall and towards their home. "You can't run from your destiny."
John thinks about the Chamber of the Ordeal, and says, "Nothing's inevitable."
He'll have to enlist someone to take the killer's body to the graveyard, it seems - that, or someone willing to cremate the man.
"Mycroft will take care of it," Sherlock mutters against John's neck. "That's what he does."
And it's true, John can feel something not quite like intruders on Baker Street and taking the body away (which does feel like an intruder, and a sickness, and it doesn't bother him in the least to know the man is dead), so he concentrates on walking their way up the stairs and into Sherlock's (surprisingly neat) bedroom and dumping him on top of it. The problem is that Sherlock refuses to let go of him, tired grip firm around John's waist. "Don't go."
John frowns at him. "Sherlock, I'm not-"
"I didn't understand it until ten minutes ago and you weren't lost," Sherlock says. His words are jumbled and sound like he's pleading for his life. "Mummy said you'd be perfect but I didn't expect you to be perfect, John, please don't leave."
John considers his options. He thinks about being trapped on Baker Street while Sherlock was running for his life, and he considers the look Sherlock had given him when he killed the killer, and he remembers the look on Sherlock's face when he arrived at the place his shield had been pointing him towards. He thinks about how lost in his own head Sherlock looks, and how John can only feel more of that same serenity he's always felt when other people were driven insane.
"I'm not going anywhere," he finally says, and Sherlock breathes out a sigh as he finally falls onto the bed. The sigh turns into a high, protesting noise the moment John turns towards the door, though. "What?"
"You're leaving," Sherlock points out, and John doesn't know whether or not he should believe the concern in his eyes.
John sighs. "Fine," he says, and puts his crossbow against the wall and his swordbelt next to the bed, and lays down next to Sherlock. "Happy?"
"Mm, yes," Sherlock says, and falls asleep.
John barely gets their boots off before he follows suit, and ignores how well they fit together. He has plenty of time to worry about fate and inevitability, now that he's almost given in.
*
The Chamber of the Ordeal has a system. It scares you into piety and righteousness, and after it decides you'll do for knighthood, it gives you a quest. It gives you a prophecy. It gives you something to do, someting vitally important to your future.
John's ordeal followed the same pattern. The problem was that everything was just so absurd, and there was nothing that really scared him onto the path of good - a path he'd been on already, thank you very much. It threw fire and heights and spiders and corpses (even Harry's, when it got desperate) at him, and John faced it all, laughing at the absurdity of how very not traumatized he was by the Ordeal and absently thinking this is it?
And then, it stopped. Maybe it gave up. Maybe it had judged him. John doesn't know, and he doesn't want to know.
He stood at the base of a waterfall, one he knew down in his blood because it was in Fief Watson, and therefore Tusaine. There is a bridge across it, and he watches two men on the bridge, fighting, and then falling, and John feels like his heart is being ripped out of his chest even though he can't see who they are and doesn't know what is happening.
"I'm supposed to stop this," John says to the fake world around him.
"No," a woman says, but there's no woman there. "You're to let it happen."
John laughs. "You have to be joking. I get a quest, don't I? That's what the Chamber does, it scares you and then it gives you a quest. It tells you the most important part of your life."
"And it's not a quest for you, John," the voice says. "Your quest will be acceptance, and patience."
John can't believe what he's hearing. He can't. "My great quest is to do nothing? The rats must be getting to you, you must have predicted it wrong, because that's not right."
"Yes it is," the voice says. "Your quest is to not stop them. Your quest is to help this happen."
John remembers how it felt when he saw the men fall, like a knife was cutting his chest open and he was vomiting his heart out, and the room never lies, so he starts to laugh. It starts quiet, and he closes his eyes, and he can't stop laughing, because of course this is the divine quest the useless lord of Fief Watson gets. He gets to commit soul suicide by negligence.
He doesn't even notice he's out of the chamber until people are calling the healers to try and salvage what the Ordeal had left of his mind. John doesn't care - it's not like it'll matter, is it? - and just sits, and laughs.
Some day, years in the future, John will sit down and tell Sherlock he's going to die and John's supposed to just sit back and watch. Sherlock will look bothered until John tells him how he knows this, and then he'll smile, relieved and amused and devilish.
"You shouldn’t believe everything my mother tells you."
Title taken from the song Local God, by Everclear, because I was honestly just calling this "TORTALL AU LOL" and am uncreative when AT WORK.
Title: Be My Voice in This World
Rating: PG-15
Word Count: ~10300 ...what.
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock, Mycroft/"Anthea", Mr. & Mrs. Holmes (...kind of), Lestrade!
Warnings: Crossover with Tamora Pierce's Tortall universe, and therefore an AU. VIOLENCE, irreverent view of nobility/monarchy in general, intentionally not brit-picked (o Tortall, u so American!).
Summary: In which Sir John of Fief Watson (aka Mad John) becomes Sir John of newly-created kind-of-a-Fief Baker Street and meets the demigod of insanity via divine intervention-slash-matchmakerness. Together they fight crime, and people explode!
John is in front of a campfire, the great Carthaki desert stretching out beyond him. A woman sits on the other side of the fire, and the only truly remarkable thing about her is how astonishingly tall she is. That and the fact there's a woman in the middle of the desert with him.
"I could have sworn I was dying," John comments, because the last thing he can remember is an arrow piercing his shoulder and people screaming and his horse rearing as the mages advanced-
He can't remember what she says exactly, but it's important. She kept him alive. She wants something in return for it. It sounds like something John would be happy to give. The woman is incredibly tall, and her eyes are light and indescribable, incredibly noteworthy even if he can't think of a single way to describe them.
And the next thing he knows he is in a small tent in the camp, his battered armor at his side. His shield, he notices, isn't the argent background and sable swallow insignia of Watson. Where there used to be one black bird, there are now three of them, with a big azure chevron that makes the border between each bird's dominion. The chevron is so bright and big that it's more than a little annoying, to be honest.
John can read a shield just like any other knight. Whatever the woman in the desert wanted, she's not secretive about it - his debt is written all over his shield with that big upside-down V pledge of loyalty to someone John doesn't doubt for a moment isn't the King.
"Gods, John? Is that you?" someone calls from the opening of the tent, and John notices that he's still bleeding. In fact, there's still an angry black arrow sticking out of his shoulder. The world is blurry enough from blood loss that he can barely see who is rushing him to the healer's tent.
"Am I dying?" John asks.
The answer is no, but he thinks about that mark on his shield and can't help but wonder for a moment if it'd be better off dead.
*
There are a few things people aren't really supposed to do, but do anyway. One of these involves Beltane. Well, a lot of them involve Beltane (because come on, it's Beltane), but it's generally considered a good rule to stick with your chosen partner, because the realms are dangerously close together that night and you never know who might come out to play.
Nobody really bothered to remind people after age ten, though, so it makes sense that if someone was to stumble into a courtyard on a particularly warm Beltane and spot an ethereal woman and think hey, maybe she'd want to drink with me, it'd be an already-drunk amnesiac from Tyra.
Oddly enough, she smiled and went to him without him ever having to ask.
After all, he was everything she loved best in the world - intelligent, lost, and wrong in the head.
*
Corus looks a hell of a lot different after spending years in Carthak. The trees are amazing. So is how absolutely nothing happens in Corus these days. Oh, there is the occasional whisper about royal intrigue and the ever-more-liberal royal court, but nobody ever really does anything. John spends more time watching the pages play at fighting than anything else, and then he limps his way from room to room and does his best to ignore the stares.
If knights came back wounded, it was usually with a missing finger at the least. Not with a limp and a shaky hand and a strange blankness to the once-lively city. It didn't help that they all still remembered his Ordeal, when John had rolled his way out of the Chamber's massive doors and not done the standard stammering and crying and apologizing and shaking. Instead, he unnerved the entire palace and three-fourths of Corus by laughing hysterically for two hours, and smiling for three days.
There are two schools of opinion on why that happened: the first being that John was, miraculously, peerless and therefore the Chamber of the Ordeal had nothing to really break him of. The second was that John was stark raving mad and his Ordeal was the Chamber's attempt at warning the kingdom. After all, you can't punish a person for being crazy; it's not their fault.
Besides, after what happened to Fief Watson it seemed only natural that something would have gone just as wrong in John as it did with Harriet.
Rumors thrive in Corus. Gossip is Corus' primary export. There isn't a single thing to do in the entire city, it seemed.
Of course, the moment he sits down on a windowsill and lets himself think it, a messenger shows up."You're Mad John, ain't you?" the boy asks. "The knight what has the blue chevron and loud nightmares?"
John sighs. "That's me."
The boy beams at him. "A lord sent me here with a message for you," he says proudly, and hands over a slip of paper. "You don't look too loony to me, sir."
"All the more reason to worry," John says dryly, and the boy laughs before running back to whatever he was doing before.
The paper is an official (but unsigned) order to place Sir John of Watson as the official protector of a street in Corus. Also known as they took Fief Watson's lost status (belonged to Tusaine for five generations now) and decided to make Fief Watson a street in the city.
He'd never really expected to have actual land to deal with. Let alone one street to deal with. Gods, he'd have to deal with politics, wouldn't he? John shudders at the thought. Politics. Maybe he'll just set Harry on the court and see if they're willing to reconsider just to get the Lady out of the palace. Mithros knows a drunk lesbian makes most of the court too nervous to have a good time, and with the palace's occupation with meaningless parties, John could be out of having actual land obligations in no time.
Except then John notices the big blue chevron at the end of the small slip of paper. That, and the ‘not as bad as you think’ written in tiny neat letters beneath it.
John's a man of his word.
He grabs his cloak, and heads out towards the brand new domain of Watson, which was just plain old Baker Street until about three minutes ago.
*
When the amnesiac Tyran's next Beltane in Corus came around, the same tall and unremarkable woman was waiting for him. She had a baby in her arms and told him it was named Mycroft Holmes. The amnesiac Tyran (who had been going by Tyran) had the last name of Holmes, and the woman had not only given birth to their child, but was also kind enough to have remembered his name for him.
When Beltane was over, Tyran Holmes took care of the almost unnervingly intelligent baby Mycroft, and loved every tiny wisp of bright red hair on his three-month-old head. People worried about letting a man so touched in the mind act as the single parent for such a lovely child, but honestly? It seemed like Mycroft mostly took care of himself. Tyran was just there for providing milk, hugs, and clean diapers.
And, after a while, the neighbors even found themselves forgetting the baby existed.
*
Baker Street isn't the best part of town, but it isn't the worst either. There are students from the university, and the bakers that you would expect, and he finds himself standing in front of a door with a blue chevron painted on a board next to it. Rooms Available is also under it.
The blue roof: the universal sign of a house looking for renters.
John is infinitely glad he swore off everyday finery in Carthak, because he would feel even more awkward knocking on the house's door.
When it opens, he's looking at a friendly older woman with a pleasant, honest smile. "Well hello there, dear."
"Good afternoon," John says awkwardly. "I saw your sign-"
"Oh, come in!" she says, and John obeys, following her into the house and up a flight of stairs. "Are you the one Sherlock's expecting, then? He's in a horrid mood, but that shouldn't be a surprise. The city's been so dreadfully peaceful that I'm starting to think the Black God must be on vacation!"
"I see," John replies, but really, really doesn't. "I'm John, by the way."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, dear," the woman says, knocking on a door at the top of the stairs. "I'm Mrs. Hudson, and I own the house. Ever since my husband was executed."
John stares at her. "I'm so sorry."
"I'm not. The world's a better place for it, mark my words," Mrs. Hudson says cheerily, and John thinks she might be the most pleasantly unusual woman he's met in years. She knocks again.
"Go away," a man shouts through the door.
"But Sherlock, dear-" Mrs. Hudson says to the door.
"Mrs. Hudson, if you don't leave me alone-" the door shouts back.
"Excuse me, but I think you're waiting for me," John shouts, and Mrs. Hudson and the door go quiet. The awkwardness crashes on him all over again. "The blue roof? The chevron? I'm-"
The door swings open, and John is looking at a tall man with curly black hair and strangely familiar eyes. He's wearing a blue robe, and it's the exact shade of the chevron. It swirls around him dramatically, and for some reason John's having a hell of a hard time not laughing as the man (Sherlock, he recalls) looks at him with this excited, piercing gaze. "Recently returned from Carthak, yes?"
John sighs. "I'd have been here sooner if I'd known where you wanted me."
Sherlock frowns at him for a moment before saying, "Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," grabbing John by the shoulder and yanking him inside the room. He kicks the door shut behind John, and then John gets stared at some more. "Let me guess. You felt compelled to do something, but couldn't quite remember what it was, and your feet just found their way here."
"Nope," John says.
Sherlock just keeps frowning. "Then you're." His eyes suddenly widen. "Oh. Oh. I wasn't expecting you for years, Mycroft only just got his two years ago."
John just watches him. "I have no idea what you're on about."
"All the way to Carthak," Sherlock mutters, and sighs. "Well, John. There's a second room upstairs if you'd like it. Rent can easily be split between us. Does music bother you? I play the violin at odd hours, and continue for hours at times."
"Doesn't bother me, no," John says, and takes a deep breath. "Look. Sherlock. I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. I'm-"
"Sir John of the long-gone Fief Watson," Sherlock says. "Your family may have no land, but since it goes back to the Book of Gold you're guaranteed status as nobility, unless a new law is passed. You hate palace life, so it only seems natural you'd come looking for lodgings in the city. After all, you'd be bored to tears outside of Corus."
"I'm not sure about tears," John mutters, and it earns a pleasantly surprised burst of laughter from Sherlock. The man looks about ready to bounce around the room. "And it's actually Sir John of Baker Street now." He pauses. "Well. Sort of. Either that or Baker Street is now Fief Watson, but I think that'd just be a bit odd to rename one street in Corus. Easier to just rename myself."
After a moment, Sherlock smirks. "Welcome home then, Lord Baker Street."
*
The seventh Beltane Tyran Holmes spent in Corus (and he intended to spend every Beltane in Corus, he and his amazingly intelligent little boy who was already the smartest person Tyran could remember ever meeting), the woman was different. Oh, she was still ridiculously tall and her eyes were still indescribable, but everyone could see her. The woman stood out, loud and vibrant in the night, and people actually stared at them as she and Tyran and Mycroft spent their one night of the year together. Mycroft and the woman spoke of things Tyran couldn't even begin to understand, and when they'd put Mycroft to bed, the woman told Tyran her name.
Tyran spent thirty minutes screaming into his pillow when he woke up the morning after Beltane, because for the life of him he couldn't remember it.
*
Nobody really comments when Sir John the Mad of Fief Watson Baker Street moves everything from his comfortable rooms in the palace into a small attic room in a house on Baker Street. The good people of Baker Street certainly notice, since his belongings going down the street cause comment. There's only a few things, really (in comparison, any other noble would have needed to buy an entire house for storage), but the things are fine enough that people know what's going on.
It's considered strange until they realize he's moving in with Sherlock Holmes, at which point people on Baker Street seem to just go oh, well then.
When Sherlock sees John's magically altered shield, he laughs so hard he falls into one of the chairs in front of the fireplace and demands they hang it directly above the mantle. While he ignores John's protests and does his best to figure out how to mount John's shield while still keeping it functional and ready to move at a moment's notice, Mrs. Hudson stares at the man and says, "He's so happy that I'm almost worried I need to talk to the city guard."
"Why would you need to do that?" John asks.
Mrs. Hudson looks more than a little guilty when she says, "Well, Sherlock, he's never had the best impulse control, you understand." John doesn't, so Mrs. Hudson sighs. "He works with them, sometimes. And sometimes they think he's the one they're looking for. He has a...way about him, I suppose. Like he forgets the way things work in the world outside his head."
"He's not very practical, either," John notes. John's a practical man. This is why he knows that you never actually need to mount a shield to the wall, particularly a shield that was saving his life and taking others a little over three months ago. "What do you mean, he works with the city watch?"
"He helps them figure out who's a criminal and how they did it," Mrs. Hudson says, and winces right along with John as the shield clangs onto the ground.
"See if I save you from an arrow next time someone decides to shoot you," John says, sighing.
"Oh yes, because you've clearly mastered that," Sherlock says, glaring at the wall and ignoring the shield entirely.
"Sherlock!" Mrs. Hudson scolds him sharply, and Sherlock turns to frown at them, looking as if for all the world he has no idea why she's upset with him.
John thinks he's starting to understand Mrs. Hudson's description a bit more. "Why bother being insulted? It's the truth," John says, and confiscates his shield while Sherlock rummages through the room for a hammer. Divine meddling leading to becoming some kind of prophesized roommate or not, it's still John's. Besides, he still needs to take it to an armorer to remove a few of the more stubborn dents.
Mrs. Hudson sighs. "He doesn't deserve you, John dear," she says, and leaves.
John's starting to wonder if moving in to Mrs. Hudson's rooms instead of some other place on Baker Street was really a good idea.
He's even more concerned when a captain of the guard comes into the room, looks straight at Sherlock as he comes out of some clutter with an a-HA! and hammer in hand, and says, "We need you."
*
There is a cycle, for gods. It can depend on anything; the seasons, the stars, the economy, who knows? Gods aren't the sort of creature to meddle with. They are sly and, more often than not, don't care a bit about mortals.
The eighth Beltane Tyran Holmes spent in Corus, when the woman appeared with a baby named Sherlock Holmes in her arms, Tyran could describe her eyes. He could remember her name. He could undoubtedly paint a portrait of her face down to the last detail, down to the last dimple in her smile and the awkward curls of her red hair that tangled in the breeze.
"Mummy," Mycroft said, his hand in hers as he watched Tyran hold onto Sherlock and cling to the woman's side. "Mummy, why doesn't Dad ever talk about you?"
"Because he doesn't remember me," she answered. "Not until the seasons grow closer to Beltane. Your father's a remarkable man, Mycroft. Just remembering me for half the year is a feat in itself."
Tyran watched Sherlock suck on his thumb, and watched Mycroft and the woman watch Tyran watch Sherlock suck his thumb, and Sherlock watched them all in return.
"He's going to be trouble," Mycroft said.
The woman smiled, hugging him tight. "See? I told you there was a touch of seer in there, didn't I."
Tyran didn't know which of them she was speaking to. He just watched Sherlock watch them all. He watches. He watches-
"Oh, love," the woman says, and her voice is deep and beautiful. "Not yet. Our boys need you. You can come to me later, I swear, but not yet."
He whispers her name. He loves her. He loves Mycroft and he loves the baby, but oh, how he loves her. More than anything.
When Beltane is over, he can remember her name and has no idea why the crib is back out of storage, no matter how many times Mycroft shows him the reason.
*
John has no idea why he's following Sherlock and the captain into an alleyway he knows has a gruesome murder in it. And oh, is it gruesome. It reminds John of when the Carthaki mages had really gotten angry.
"Hmm," Sherlock says. "The killer's definitely Mithran-trained. Also definitely not used to combat magic, so probably a scholarly mage. One who likes to experiment." And he smiles. "Oh, this might be fun."
"There was another one like this three days ago, but I didn't bother asking for your help since that body was even more." The captain lets out a deep breath. "Well. It was worse. Still don't even know if the remains were a man or a woman, to be honest."
"He's losing his grip, then," Sherlock says, and the captain nods. Sherlock grins. "Fantastic."
John's starting to understand the whole 'think he's the murderer' thing. Particularly when Sherlock just casually picks up a severed arm to look at a scar.
"She was suicidal, but didn't get herself healed when she tried to slit her wrists. Honestly, who uses stitches anymore?"
"Me," John says, noticing the sky is a particularly lovely shade of blue today.
He hears the squish-thud of the arm hitting what's left of the body. "You're a doctor. I knew I was missing something. I was hoping spy." Sherlock sighs. "A giftless healer. How disappointing."
"You do realize I can exile you from Baker Street, right?" John asks, amused more than anything else. "Or put you in the stocks and toss rotting cabbage at you for a few hours."
"You like me too much to do that," Sherlock says, and uses a stick to start moving things around. "Besides, that requires paperwork these days."
John grins. "In Corus, yes."
It takes a moment, but Sherlock smirks. "I suppose you're not as much of an idiot as I thought," he says, and stands. John decides to take that as a compliment. "There's not much else I can do, Lestrade. Not without doing some very illegal things."
Lestrade nods, scowling at the world in general. "And for the sake of the poor woman's soul, I'm not going to look the other way this time," he says, and John can't help but wonder what kind of city guard Corus actually has, since it sounds like not not arresting Sherlock for illegal activities is a rare event indeed. "We have a witness from the first attack, but she didn't get a clear look at who went into the alley. She just heard it."
"That's good enough for me, since you undoubtedly missed everything important," Sherlock says, and with a nod Lestrade hands over an already prepared slip of paper with directions on it. Sherlock reads it, and then he runs off. He just runs, leaving John standing next to an exploded body and a completely unsurprised Captain Lestrade.
"With all due respect, Sir John, I think maybe locking him in the stocks and throwing cabbage at him might not be a bad idea," Lestrade says, and nods respectfully before he, too, leaves.
John looks at what's left of the body one last time before leaving the alley, and realizing that he has absolutely no idea where he is.
Which is, of course, when the carriage rolls up right in front of him and the driver has a crossbow pointed straight at John's head.
"Get in," the man says.
John does.
*
It is his...his what now? It is Beltane. That's all that matters. It is Beltane, and she will be here again. She'll come for him. She'll come for him. Mycroft will take care of...of. Of the baby. But he's not as much of a baby as he was, is he? And Mycroft looks more grown up than he remembers.
He's fairly sure his last name is Holmes.
Sherlock, yes. The baby's name is Sherlock, and his name is not quite Tyran, and he and Sherlock and Mycroft are a tiny happy family for the most part, and it is Beltane and where is she where is she where is she-
"Take him," Mycroft says the moment the woman appears. Sherlock looks so big now, doesn't he? A head full of curly black hair and intelligent eyes too old for his face. Tyran loves him so, so much. But he loves the woman so much more. "Please, Mummy. Just take him. It's torture at this point."
Their mother looks at her boys. Their boys. Their beautiful, intelligent boys. "I don't want to leave you two alone," she says quietly.
"Take us too, then," Sherlock says, only to be shushed by his older brother. "What? It's not like there's anything interesting here. Everyone forgets you and everyone makes fun of me and Daddy's crazy-"
"Daddy can't help that," Mycroft says patiently. "And think of him first, hmm? Mummy and Daddy love each other very much. Wouldn't you rather they were happy?"
"I'd rather go wherever Mummy goes," Sherlock states, pouting.
Mummy shakes her head. "If I took you and Mycroft, you could never come back. And I can promise you both you'd be bored out of your minds," she says, soft and honest, and takes Tyran Holmes' hand. He can think of nothing more glorious than the feel of her skin.
"One more Beltane and I'll take you, my dear," she whispers against his palm, and he could melt. He loves her, he loves her he loves her, wants to lose himself in her completely. He wants her to consume him, swallow him whole. Then they could be together forever and ever and ever.
*
When John steps inside the carriage, there's a woman going through papers strewn across the adjacent seat. She doesn't even bother looking up at him, instead scribbling all over seemingly random pages with a quill, miraculously avoiding getting a single smudge of ink on her fine shirt and skirt.
John tries to make conversation. He might as well be trying to stir a rebellion from the stones in a quarry.
When the carriage stops, John gets out first, and finds himself in what looks like an abandoned inn, with a man standing at his ease in front of the fireplace. It's a newly abandoned inn, he notes. The bar's wet and it hasn't rained in a week.
The man knows more about John that he's comfortable with. Down to the whispers that John came back from Carthak wrong, the man has it all written down in a little book he's more than happy to slowly page through while John's hands clench at his sides. John isn't going to back down just because of some dramatics and inside information, though. He faced down the entire Northern Army of Carthak. One man with an umbrella and attitude isn't going to make him lose nerve.
"I didn't think I would frighten you," the man says as he pages through the journal, and John knows he didn't say a word. "I trust my sources' information about you, John. The question is whether or not I trust you." He looks John up and down, long and deliberate and assessing in a way that's so superior it's insulting. Insulting, and awkward. "But I can already see my opinion isn't going to change much in this situation. I'll simply ask that you be...cautious, hmm? Sherlock Holmes is a very unusual man."
"I'd noticed," John states.
The man gives him a tight smile. "Of course. And are you planning to marry him?"
John gapes. "I. What? I only met him today!"
"And you've already moved in with him and taken lordship over his entire neighborhood, not to mention started solving crimes together." The man pauses for a moment. "You do realize that, as a noble whose lineage goes back to the Book of Gold, you sharing permanent quarters with him means he's legally your consort, yes?"
"We're sharing rooms, not a room!" John shouts. "He is not my consort! And most of this was divine intervention anyway, it's not. It's not like that." He swallows. "It's just not."
The man gives him a tight smile. "Be sure he knows that, then," the man says, and soon enough John is ushered back into the carriage and back to Baker Street and back home.
When he walks in, Sherlock is excited and, John notices rather grudgingly, extraordinarily pretty. "He's following Ryland's Enigma," Sherlock says.
"And hello to you too," John replies, fetching his sword as Sherlock nearly bounces around the room talking about harmonization and entrapment and tapping the unharnessed well and things John really has no clue about. He's giftless and always concentrated on how to save people's lives if they're all drained and only have him to rely on when they have gaping wounds in their sides.
"So we'll have our killer in only a night, John. Now. What did he want?"
John frowns.
"Your abductor," Sherlock says, throwing himself onto the couch and kicking his feet up dramatically. He seems to do everything dramatically, really.
John can't help but laugh a little. "Oh, you wouldn't believe me. Who was he?"
"A very, very dangerous man, possibly the most dangerous man you'll ever meet," Sherlock says, and is watching John now. "I'll believe it. What'd he say? Did he ask you to spy on me?"
"No, actually," John says. "He wanted to know if we were getting married."
Sherlock scoffs. "Please. Not for a year, at least."
John stares at him. He stares at him for a long, long moment. "I'm sorry, what?"
"We're obviously going to be together." Sherlock frowns. "You didn't really think a goddess sent you to me just to be roommates, did you? Have you ever heard of divine intervention for destined really good friends? Honestly. What did you expect?"
John is torn between punching the disbelieving frown off Sherlock’s face and sitting down and staring at the wall for a good bit of time. "I expected at least a little control over my life, I suppose." He settles for staring at the wall, sitting himself in his preferred chair and watching the wall do absolutely nothing. He incidentally watches Sherlock shifting awkwardly on the couch.
"Maybe that wasn't the best way to tell you," Sherlock says.
"Probably not, no," John agrees, and swallows. "You knew this the moment I showed up, didn't you?"
"Yes." Sherlock sighs. "I've been expecting you for years, John."
And it all makes so much sense now. The excitement when he showed up. The lack of pleasantries - or pleasantness in general. Already taking him for granted. If John had a destined husband (...which he does, apparently) he might treat him just the same.
So he decides to.
"Alright then," John says. "Explain how this happened, and then we'll go for dinner."
Sherlock grins like he just won the moon in a dice game, and tells him the strange sad story of not-quite-Tyran Holmes.
*
The next Beltane, Sherlock is ten years old and his father is stark raving mad. Mycroft is already so involved in Tortallan spy games that Sherlock doesn't doubt he'll be in charge of the country by the time Jonathan V takes the throne. And Sherlock is slowly realizing that while Mycroft can become inhumanly forgettable, Sherlock is cursed to be the most negatively memorable boy in the world.
"My boys," Mummy says, giving first Mycroft and then Sherlock kisses on the cheek. His father clings to her when she allows it, and he earns the same gesture of affection. "I think it's time I take your father. I'll bring him next year, don't worry."
"I don't want him back," Sherlock says.
Mycroft glares at him, but Mummy smiles. "But I'll be bringing him back with his mind and memory intact."
"After prolonged contact with you? Really?" Mycroft asks, intrigued.
Mummy nods, holding their father close. He's shorter than her. Most people are. "If he's in my domain, he can adjust. Time moves differently there, anyway. Enough time, and the madness goes away."
Sherlock feels like throwing things. "What about Victor, then? I drove him crazy and that was only being his friend. And Mycroft's girlfriend can't even remember where she lives!" He does throw something, then. It crashes loudly against the wall and makes his father murmur into Mummy's shoulder and Mycroft grab him by the wrist. "I hate this! I hate that I can't be normal, that everyone hates me and I can't have friends and I know things-"
"Sherlock," Mycroft snaps. Mummy looks like she's ashamed, although Sherlock can't tell if it's of him or his father or herself. "I know many, many people who would kill to have what we do." Kill us to have what we do, Sherlock knows is the end of that sentence, but he doesn't care. He's ten and alone save for Mycroft and a father so crazy that he found him clawing at the floor just in case Mummy had accidentally buried herself alive down there.
Mummy watches them both. "I'm sorry, both of you. I will never regret bringing you into this world-" a peculiar choice of words, Sherlock notes, and doesn't doubt that Mycroft does as well "- but I will try to make right what your bloodline has done."
"How?" Sherlock demands. "You're going to magically find someone Mycroft won't turn into an amnesiac and I won't turn crazy?"
She smiles. "Yes I will, Sherlock," she says, and she says it with such conviction that Sherlock can actually believe it. "And they'll love you for exactly who you are."
"Pretty words," Mycroft says, and it's the most confrontational thing Sherlock has ever heard come out of his mouth to their mother.
She just looks at them. "I swear to you, as the goddess of mind and madness, that I will find them, and deliver them. On pain of consumption by Chaos, I swear this."
A vow like that is more than good enough for Sherlock.
So, he waits. He waits for over two decades, and then Sir John of Baker Street comes walking into his life in shining armor, already absolutely insane and so well-adjusted to it that Sherlock could hold onto him for years and years and years without driving John insane to the point of suicide.
Sherlock can keep John, and will never break him by just being nearby.
*
"You're really fine with the fact your mother was the one in charge of picking your...well. Me?" John asks over dinner. They're eating at the portion of the hill that holds the university, and it seems like everyone in the world knows Sherlock. He would have objected to the attempted romantic gesture of the owner, but...well. Kind of destined whether he wants it or not. And it does make his food easier to see.
"It saved your life and saved me a trip to Carthak, so not really, no," Sherlock says, still staring out the windows. "Our suspect should be coming out any time now."
John clears his throat. "And our...relationship. How's that-"
"John," Sherlock says. "We have plenty of time to figure that out. Right now, I'm trying to catch a man trying to suck untappable magic out of people and making them explode. I'm sure it's an important conversation, but it's not a very interesting one, is it?" When he sees the look on John's face, he clears his throat. "At least, in comparison to a magic-stealing serial killer."
"And a lousy one at that," John comments, more than a little grateful for Sherlock's not terribly elegant method of postponing the so about this destined husband thing conversation. "If they keep exploding, what's that mean for the magic? And the mage?"
"It's all based off a theory called Ryland's Enigma," Sherlock says. "You need a channel to use magic. There's a well of energy inside of you - that's the Gift. If you don't have that way to channel it out of your spirit, you don't have any magic, but you do still have the power. Ryland's Enigma states that if you make a channel, you can take that power, but at the same time, you'd have nowhere to store it."
John frowns. "So our killer is trying to take the untapped power and find a way to store it somehow, and exploding people in the process?"
"Exactly," Sherlock says, grinning. "But he made a mistake with his last victim. Her suicide attempt was an extreme act of will, which tapped into her Gift even if she didn't have a channel. That's why her arm survived while the rest of their bodies exploded completely."
John's tempted to point out they're eating dinner. Or at least John's eating dinner. Instead, he says, "Alright, and why do you think this is the place to watch for our killer?"
"Because the victims all worked or lived around this street, and that building right there happens to be the University Library Annex," Sherlock said, looking terribly pleased with himself. "Ryland's Enigma isn't a very popular topic."
"Shocking," John says, and ignores Sherlock's scowl in favor of eating some rather delicious potatoes. His fork is almost in his mouth when Sherlock shouts out there's our killer! and lurches away from the table, grabbing John's hand and wrenching his arm hard enough that John has no choice but to follow him on a sudden pell-mell chase through Corus. He can't even see their murderer, can only see the mad figure of Sherlock Holmes tearing around corners, and does his best to keep up.
"You're faster than this, John," Sherlock snaps, and John has an idea.
"How far is it to Baker Street?" John shouts.
"Three minutes southwest," Sherlock calls back, scaling a house with inhuman ease. "It's that sword keeping you back, John! Drop it and you'll-"
"We're herding him towards Baker Street," John commands, and Sherlock actually stops to look back at him, eyes wide. "What? I have a plan!"
Sherlock blinks, at the expression is gone, replaced with a glare. "And we've undoubtedly lost our killer now, because of your plan." There's enough scorn in that word to fill up a bathtub. "I'm sure it was brilliant, Lord Baker Street, but-"
"Is this really the time?" John asks, still breathing hard and glaring right back. "Because I have a suspicion this is only going to make him kill again."
Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Of course he's going to kill again. He's a serial killer, and now we've got him excited. His tiny academic mind won't know what to do with itself other than try to solve Ryland's again."
"And that means that shouting at me is the most useful thing we can do right now, obviously," John says. "You're a brilliant crime-solving demigod, so start acting like it instead of like an angry seven-year-old who lost a foot race!"
Sherlock doesn't say anything. He just stands there and breathes and watches, and John has to wonder if this is what the rest of his life will be.
"You really think I'm brilliant?" Sherlock finally asks.
John sighs. "Yes. And I'm going home. Thank you for dinner."
"What did you see in the Chamber of the Ordeal?"
John doesn't like that question. "I'll see you when you get home," he says.
"What if I need you?" Sherlock asks. "What if I need stitches? What if the killer comes after me? I could be fighting for my life to keep from being the next to explode and you'd be sitting in your chair drinking tea and thinking about the weather. How exciting."
John sighs. "Fine," he says, and frowns. "Wait. I thought you were a sorcerer, how could the killer make you explode?"
"I can only touch about an eighth of my Gift," Sherlock says. "The rest makes me and everyone around me insane, so technically I'm both Gifted and not since I can't get to all of it."
"Good to know," John says, and files the information away. "Alright. Where to?"
*
When Mycroft got his someone from Mummy, Sherlock didn't know quite what to make of her. She was beautiful, amazingly intelligent, and seemed physically incapable of telling Sherlock anything about herself, and even more confusingly didn't seem to give a damn that she couldn't remember her name. She had a mind like a steel trap when it came to everything that wasn't about herself, and pages and pages of notes about any information about herself she'd deemed important, and didn't bother with anything else.
Mycroft couldn't make her forget something she'd never known to begin with.
Acute amnesia, Mummy called it. The woman didn't remember herself because she didn't want to remember herself. And if Mummy said it was fine for the woman to keep forgetting herself, it was fine. Gods lie about many things, but no deity would lie about something like that.
The woman didn't find Mycroft first, of course. Nobody finds Mycroft unless he knows they're coming and wants them to find him. Instead, she showed up at Sherlock's door with a smirk-like smile and an enormous book of information on her hip and said, "I'm here to meet someone who isn't you."
"I see. What's your name?" Sherlock asked, because he had no idea what was going on.
"Lorraine," she said, and Sherlock knew it wasn't, but it was a strange one, more like a stab in the dark at answering a question than an intentional misdirection, meaning she had no idea what the answer was. Meaning, she was there for Mycroft, and while Sherlock and his brother had a passively spiteful relationship at the best of times (well, on Sherlock's part at least; Mycroft was infuriatingly indifferent half the time), this was one of the things they had an agreement on.
When it came to people sent by Mummy, they cooperated. That didn't mean he'd have to stand there and watch Mycroft meet his someone, though.
Mummy hasn't forgotten you, Sherlock, Mycroft's voice echoed through the communication sphere he'd conjured up. Mine simply got to me first, which you must admit makes sense. I'm older, after all.
Sherlock ignored him, instead leaving his home with nothing but an absent bye from the woman. She didn't even bother looking up from the book, just waved him away while sitting in his favorite chair, waiting for Mycroft.
*
"The question is how he determines his victims," Sherlock says, and John just nods, fully aware that the other man just needs someone (or something) to talk at. "We know he's a student, an arrogant Mithran-trained one, probably at the University for specialized study at the archives, since they have much better records of murders and any attempt at solving Ryland's ends with murder, so how is someone like our killer finding these people?"
"And we only really know one of them, since the rest of the victims are just splattered over the walls," John points out. "I don't know how you think you'll be able to find something in common when there's only one known victim."
Sherlock sighs, pacing in front of the (shieldless, thankfully) mantle. "We have location, but we've already exhausted that, haven't we." He frowns intently at where John's shield had rested, only to suddenly twist and stare at John. "I need your blood."
John gapes at him. "No. I need my blood, in case you haven't noticed."
"You'll make new blood, I promise," Sherlock points out. "And you'd be perfectly safe-"
"Aside from giving a half-mad demigod a piece of myself that Gods know what he's going to do with," John snaps. "No. Fated husband or not, you aren't getting my blood. Not without a reason."
"All you need is a reason?" Sherlock frowns. "My asking isn't enough of a reason?"
"It really isn't," John agrees.
He sighs. "Fine. I'm going to tie you to your new territory. That way, if our killer makes a move on anyone tied to Baker Street, you'll feel it and we can go catch our murderous student."
John can't help but be a little uncomfortable. "I'm already tied to Fief Watson, I don't know if I can take another territory in my veins." Harry had to live as close as possible to the Tusaine-Tortall border if she wanted to stay even remotely sane and sober, and...well. John'd been insane from forced spiritual inactivity for so long that he didn't even mind it anymore.
"Trust me, John, this won't be the same. Magic theory is leagues ahead of what they did creating Fief Watson," Sherlock says, grinning in a way that really shouldn't be reassuring. "There's a reason Book of Gold nobles are the weird ones."
"More than the inbreeding?" John asks. Sherlock lets out an honest startled laugh, and despite his better judgment takes out his boot knife and a bowl, and bleeds himself for Sherlock and Baker Street.
*
When Sherlock Holmes entered the university to learn magecraft, it didn't work out very well. He drove people mad, he himself was considered mad as a hatter, and the general consensus about him was that he was brilliant, but such a bastard that they'd rather he kept to his independent studies, thank you very much.
So, he did. After all, a demigod descended from the goddess of the mind isn't meant for boring introductory classes on basic magecraft or the basic elements of the Gift. He studied physical aspects of magecraft, since his own Gift seemed more of a curse and it was always tedious to draw laboratory assistants back out of their Sherlock-prompted insanity after prolonged exposure.
Not that many people (or any) could really understand what he was. There was one known demigod in Tortall, and she already made people uncomfortable enough that someone whose domain was madness wasn't nearly as palatable as wild magic and animal transformations.
That Sherlock Holmes, he was just so irritating that he drove you crazy. Nothing magical about it. It was pure personality. A gifted mage, despite his magic's limitations - everyone knew he couldn't tap into all of it, although only the gods knew why - and a brilliant mind.
But that didn't mean anyone liked him.
He stayed for two years. Everyone involved thought it was two years too long, including Sherlock.
*
"Is there a reason I'm doing this?" John asks as he digs yet another hole on Baker Street. It's the middle of the night, and Sherlock is just lounging around nearby, spinning a bag he holds in his hands. "Or a reason that you're just standing there and not helping?"
"It has to be you, that's why," Sherlock says irritably. "Honestly, don't you think there are better ways I could be spending my time?"
John looks at the hole. John looks at the other six holes he's already dug. "I really do."
Sherlock doesn't seem to notice the implication, and just nods at the hole. "That's deep enough for this one," he says, and tosses the bag inside John's nice neat project. It makes a squishing noise John tries not to think about. "Now, you fill them up."
"Of course I do," John mutters. "And this is going to do what again?"
Sherlock smirks. "It makes you Lord Baker Street, of course."
"I already am," John says.
"In name, yes, but in blood?" He shrugs. "That's what this is for. Congratulations, John, you're the true authority on this street now."
"You make me sound like some sort of crime lord," John says.
"No, just a true lord," Sherlock says, and glances at the position of the sun. "Well. I'd better be off. You can finish this yourself, can't you?"
"Yes, but-" John begins.
"Congratulations on your lordship," Sherlock says, and quickly strides off down the street, turning onto another before John can even shout at his back.
The strange thing is, John can feel the moment Sherlock leaves. It's like the surrounding area is suddenly missing half the presence it usually does, like Baker Street is close to losing its grip on the ground and will start floating away if John doesn't do something about it.
The moment he's finished covering the hole, it goes away. Oh, the presence of the street is still there, lurking inside John, and the world still feels like it's missing something with Sherlock gone, but it feels more anticipatory than dangerous.
When John moves over to the next hole, slightly deeper than the last, he notices that at the very deepest point there's a pool of silver liquid, traces of blood red slinking through the heavy substance. It's so obviously magical that John covers it as quickly as he can. Children live on Baker Street, after all, and gods knew that children and open pits of magic were never a good mix. Midnight or not, it's a concern.
After filling the final hole - nearly soaked to the brim with the silver-and-red substance - John can actually feel Baker Street. He can feel all 134 people that lived on the street, most of which are sleeping soundly. And, oddly enough, he can feel those who live on Baker Street but aren't present.
He can feel people sleeping in other houses than their own. He can feel people doing far more than sleeping in other houses. He can feel that Sherlock Holmes is lurking around the university library annex again, alone. And how, suddenly, Sherlock is running. It isn't a normal type of running, either, and it doesn't seem like he's chasing anyone, not with how he stops occasionally or retraces his steps and then runs again.
"Oh, you idiot," John hisses, because Sherlock is the one being chased, and John has a good idea of who exactly is chasing him.
He heads inside Mrs. Hudson's house - their house - and grabs his sword, buckling it on with the precise practiced movements of a man who has done it a thousand times before, and starts running for where he can feel Sherlock crouched behind a wall.
The problem is that moment John tries to cross onto Market Street, he can't. It's as if some invisible rope is tying him to the closest hole he'd dug, and as hard as he strains he can't pass that boundary.
John can't leave Baker Street, and he doesn't doubt for a second that Sherlock knew this would happen. He'd probably planned on it.
So, John returned to their house, and grabbed his crossbow.
He stood in the middle of the street, armed and ready, and waited as Sherlock seemed to unwittingly move closer and closer to home.
*
There is a legend (not told very often in Tortall) that once, Jihuk, god of demons and the deep desert, foolishly made a bet with one of his demons that he could survive his own dominion, powerless against the elements, for a week. He survived, of course - after all, gods can't die - but he lost part of his mind in the process. With no power over the desert, it had left Jihuk stranded in the sand and heat, dying of thirst and wind, and the sun had taken his mind. In his madness, he destroyed his own demons. It led to peace for most of Carthak, but it was only the beginning of strife for the country as Jihuk ate and ate and ate at the land beyond his own territory.
In a god's territory, the others must bow to their will. Even the Graveyard Hag had to accept Jihuk's control of the desert, despite her dominion over Carthak.
But there are some dominions that aren't territory.
The god they called has a name, but nobody can remember it. They do remember that the god slipped into Jihuk's mind and took away the blinding sun. In return, Jihuk offered all the power of his storms, all the evils of his demons and all the treasures long lost beneath his sands. The god politely refused, and instead asked for a favor: to keep a man alive, many years in the future. If she had asked it, Jihuk would have fought to give the moon to her, so he readily agreed.
This promise is why the demons of the desert don't kill you. They leave that to the desert, so that Jihuk can judge every man on that promise. The demons will torture you and tear you apart and hurt you and your soul in an infinite number of ways, but they never kill.
Nobody's certain whether or not they should be grateful.
*
Knights and soldiers will confess to having more hatred of the wait than the actual fighting. There's no time to think in the thick of it, but that's all they can really do in the time between battles. The anticipation is what kills in the first attack, often. The men's minds get away from them. Panic sets in until there's nothing but fear of what will happen, what might happen.
John has never experienced that anticipatory panic. For Sir John the Mad, the wait is an emptiness in his mind. It's a stillness and an awareness that takes over and lets him stand in the middle of his domain, crossbow at the ready with a rope tied to it. The feel of Sherlock is fading with every second, but he knows that his inability to leave Bakers Street is fading with it. He can't get more than a foot away from the threshold, but it's enough for now. The moon is barely bright enough to let him see his street, but the lamplighter has done his job, and firelight flickers over the wood and stone buildings.
The city watch hasn't even walked near Baker Street all night, because they can feel it's not theirs to guard anymore.
He can feel Sherlock stop moving only two streets away, and can feel him quickly lurch back into action, even though his...Sherlock-ness is less distinct now. He's still coming home. John can also hear someone laughing, loud and hysterical, in the distance. It reminds him of a lot of things he'd rather not think about, like how you can never trust the crazy ones to put science in front of homicide.
When John can hear the laughter coming down Market Street, he draws his crossbow back and casually raises it, rope appropriately coiled smoothly on the ground. When Sherlock comes running (more like stumbling frantically) around the corner, John's head is clear, and it's so simple to just wait for the young man following him to come tearing around the corner, and he fires. The arrow goes right where he wants it, of course - he's always been the best marksman - and sticks itself firmly in the now very insane scholar's torso.
The laughter stops abruptly, and Sherlock stares at the arrow and rope sticking out of his ever-so-exciting serial killer with drained, hollow eyes. He follows the rope all the way to John, who walks forward, grabs the rope, and pulls the hysterical crying man (gods, probably twenty-five at the oldest) onto Baker Street.
"As the lord and protector of Fief Baker Street, it is my right to pass judgment on any wrongdoing in my domain," John states, the words engraved in his mind since he was five years old and they were useless, with no land to protect. "For crimes against the citizens of the land I protect, including attempted murder in my lands and a string of brutal murders in the city of Corus, you are sentenced to death."
"Gods, he made it so easy," the student says through the laughter, and John knows the man isn't even present enough in the real world to beg for mercy. Sucking magic out of the demigod of madness really isn't a good idea. "And half of them were just asking to be killed anyway, I killed the idiots for learning, for science, isn't that a worthy cause?"
"May the Black God's judgment be kind," John says, unsheathes his sword, and beheads the laughing serial killer in one firm swing.
John recovers his arrow from the torso with a firm tug and a sigh.
"You're ridiculously attractive," Sherlock says from where he's leaning against the side of a building. "And mad as a hatter. We should have sex."
"You don't deserve sex, and you'd probably fall asleep during it even if you did," John says, considering the corpse and sighing. Gods, he'd thought he was done digging holes for the day.
"All I did was make sure he didn't go after you," Sherlock protests. "And tied Baker Street to you in the process. The physical part will wear off in three days, so why the fuss? You should be grateful." He frowns. "And be more sexually accommodating."
"When your mother promised to find me for you, did she ever once promise I'd stay?" John snaps, because he has had a long night and Sherlock is quite possibly the most aggravating man on the planet. It has to be a divine quality, because no purely human creature could ever manage to provoke the level of irritation Sherlock can in about three seconds. John is practically standing on top of the body of a man he'd killed about two minutes ago, and his...his whatever is propositioning him. John scowls, and wipes the blood off his sword.
But when he looks back at Sherlock everything stops, because the other man looks absolutely terrified. "Please don't leave."
"I've only known you for two days," John says, and reminds himself that Sherlock's undoubtedly more unhinged than he usually is (probably), what with a man sucking enough magic out of him that he looks hollow and the other man went even crazier than he'd been before. "I'd need at least a week to make a decision."
Sherlock nods, slow and so obviously exhausted that John has a feeling the rest of the supposed crucial decision week will be spent with Sherlock unconscious. "But I'm your destiny," Sherlock mumbles, and John sighs, helping him up from the wall and towards their home. "You can't run from your destiny."
John thinks about the Chamber of the Ordeal, and says, "Nothing's inevitable."
He'll have to enlist someone to take the killer's body to the graveyard, it seems - that, or someone willing to cremate the man.
"Mycroft will take care of it," Sherlock mutters against John's neck. "That's what he does."
And it's true, John can feel something not quite like intruders on Baker Street and taking the body away (which does feel like an intruder, and a sickness, and it doesn't bother him in the least to know the man is dead), so he concentrates on walking their way up the stairs and into Sherlock's (surprisingly neat) bedroom and dumping him on top of it. The problem is that Sherlock refuses to let go of him, tired grip firm around John's waist. "Don't go."
John frowns at him. "Sherlock, I'm not-"
"I didn't understand it until ten minutes ago and you weren't lost," Sherlock says. His words are jumbled and sound like he's pleading for his life. "Mummy said you'd be perfect but I didn't expect you to be perfect, John, please don't leave."
John considers his options. He thinks about being trapped on Baker Street while Sherlock was running for his life, and he considers the look Sherlock had given him when he killed the killer, and he remembers the look on Sherlock's face when he arrived at the place his shield had been pointing him towards. He thinks about how lost in his own head Sherlock looks, and how John can only feel more of that same serenity he's always felt when other people were driven insane.
"I'm not going anywhere," he finally says, and Sherlock breathes out a sigh as he finally falls onto the bed. The sigh turns into a high, protesting noise the moment John turns towards the door, though. "What?"
"You're leaving," Sherlock points out, and John doesn't know whether or not he should believe the concern in his eyes.
John sighs. "Fine," he says, and puts his crossbow against the wall and his swordbelt next to the bed, and lays down next to Sherlock. "Happy?"
"Mm, yes," Sherlock says, and falls asleep.
John barely gets their boots off before he follows suit, and ignores how well they fit together. He has plenty of time to worry about fate and inevitability, now that he's almost given in.
*
The Chamber of the Ordeal has a system. It scares you into piety and righteousness, and after it decides you'll do for knighthood, it gives you a quest. It gives you a prophecy. It gives you something to do, someting vitally important to your future.
John's ordeal followed the same pattern. The problem was that everything was just so absurd, and there was nothing that really scared him onto the path of good - a path he'd been on already, thank you very much. It threw fire and heights and spiders and corpses (even Harry's, when it got desperate) at him, and John faced it all, laughing at the absurdity of how very not traumatized he was by the Ordeal and absently thinking this is it?
And then, it stopped. Maybe it gave up. Maybe it had judged him. John doesn't know, and he doesn't want to know.
He stood at the base of a waterfall, one he knew down in his blood because it was in Fief Watson, and therefore Tusaine. There is a bridge across it, and he watches two men on the bridge, fighting, and then falling, and John feels like his heart is being ripped out of his chest even though he can't see who they are and doesn't know what is happening.
"I'm supposed to stop this," John says to the fake world around him.
"No," a woman says, but there's no woman there. "You're to let it happen."
John laughs. "You have to be joking. I get a quest, don't I? That's what the Chamber does, it scares you and then it gives you a quest. It tells you the most important part of your life."
"And it's not a quest for you, John," the voice says. "Your quest will be acceptance, and patience."
John can't believe what he's hearing. He can't. "My great quest is to do nothing? The rats must be getting to you, you must have predicted it wrong, because that's not right."
"Yes it is," the voice says. "Your quest is to not stop them. Your quest is to help this happen."
John remembers how it felt when he saw the men fall, like a knife was cutting his chest open and he was vomiting his heart out, and the room never lies, so he starts to laugh. It starts quiet, and he closes his eyes, and he can't stop laughing, because of course this is the divine quest the useless lord of Fief Watson gets. He gets to commit soul suicide by negligence.
He doesn't even notice he's out of the chamber until people are calling the healers to try and salvage what the Ordeal had left of his mind. John doesn't care - it's not like it'll matter, is it? - and just sits, and laughs.
Some day, years in the future, John will sit down and tell Sherlock he's going to die and John's supposed to just sit back and watch. Sherlock will look bothered until John tells him how he knows this, and then he'll smile, relieved and amused and devilish.
"You shouldn’t believe everything my mother tells you."