Chapter 1
Chapter Text
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
There was that incessant knocking again. God didn’t normal people sleep at this hour? He glanced at the mantle where John had placed a clock in the hopes that Sherlock would be more aware of the time, eleven-eleven in the evening and all the consulting detective wished for was to be left alone with his experiment. It wasn’t a case, Lestrade never knocked, and his brother just invited himself in.
“MRS. HUDSON! MRS. HUDSON, THE DOOR!” Sherlock yelled again. She must have taken her soothers for the night then. Where was John? Oh, Surgery hours, right. Sherlock huffed has the knocking resumed again. He set the beaker down and stomped down the stairs, wrenching open the door.
“I’M BACK!” Cheered a slender man in an olive trench coat, a clashing bow-tie and his hair coiffed over in a flopped manner on the right side of his face. But Sherlock did not need to take in these details to know who the man with the frankly alarming smile was at his stoop. He didn’t need to take in any more details before his grit his teeth and promptly shut the door in this man’s face. “Oh come on Stormy! This is how you greet an old friend! It’s the Doctor!” Came the cheery cantor, muffled by the door. Sherlock promptly stalked back up to the kitchen to resume his experiments. However, peace was limited. “You rather liked Stormy, and now it’s so fitting, since you’re all broody and dark. More fitting than Sherlock Holmes. Which, I don’t like by. The. Way! Oh! You’ve redecorated, I don’t like that either!” Sherlock clenched his jaw and turned about.
“How did you get in here?! It’s rude to enter one’s home uninvited!” He snapped. Hurt flashed across The Doctor’s face for a brief moment before he resumed his smile.
“I didn’t B & E, if that’s what you’re implying, Stormy. Your partner invited me in. He just came back from work it seems, lovely fellow, John Watson, a doctor, I love a fellow doctor. Looks a bit like your Dad, don’t you think?” Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the insufferable man as he twirled about the flat, taking in things. John slipped into the kitchen apologetically glancing at Sherlock, while putting away the groceries. “Oh Hello again John, May I call you John or should I just call you Doctor Watson?” John turned about, freezing at being put in place.
“Eh, John’s fine.” He glanced to Sherlock. “How do you two know each other.”
“We don’t.” Sherlock said with an air of finality, which the Doctor promptly ignored.
”Oh please. Stormy and I go way back. I knew him when he was a baby.”
“Wot? ‘Scuse me?” John asked, mouth hanging ajar.
“Oh right, you probably think I’m pulling your leg, is that the phrase? Pulling your leg? Oh that’s an Americanism, right. Regardless.” The Doctor stepped into John’s personal space in a way that reminded him of Sherlock, but wasn’t staring him down in a way that did not remind him of Sherlock at all. “Right, I’m not human. I’m Time-Lord, Time is irrelevant for me, meaning I don’t age. It helps that I just saw you yesterday. ” He glanced at Sherlock. “Time and Space ship, I don’t really know how to explain it to you, you’ll just get confused.” Now that phrase sounded vaguely Sherlock.
“Oh Why are you here?!” Sherlock snapped finally, putting himself between the Doctor and John. The Doctor’s face fell, he fidgeted and turned, pacing the room in a circle before stopping next to the mantle and brushing a finger across the skull. He looked up, sadness in his eyes that resonated even within Sherlock.
“I need you to solve a murder.”
“Who’s murder?”
“Mine. April 22nd, 2011.”
Chapter 2
Chapter Text
“Who’s Murder?”
“Mine, April 22nd, 2011”
Sherlock stopped and stared at the Doctor for a moment, his face held that severity it always kept when his mind was working impossibly fast. John tilted his head.
“Your Murder, Excuse me, but, It’s October Doctor, and you’re standing right here, perfectly alive…did you mean to say you faked your own Death?”
“Don’t try to understand, John.” Sherlock snapped. The Doctor scrunched his nose at the treatment of John.
“Now Stormy, that wasn’t very nice.”
“Don’t call me that. My name is Sherlock Holmes.”
“Yes, I know, I still don’t like it. Too Brooding. But it may grow on me in a few years.” Sherlock was clenching his jaw in annoyance.
“John has a point, why am I solving your murder if you’re not dead.”
“I’m going to die, it’s a fixed point in time, I’m moving around it. You know how this works Stor- Sherlock.”
“I don’t” John muttered.
“My TARDIS allows me to move through in time. Like I said, Time and Space ship. Well, Time and Relative Dimension in Space, but who cares for specifics.”
“Doctor,” Sherlock stepped into the Doctor’s space. “You already know how you’ll die, when you’ll die and who kills you. What could I possibly solve?” The Doctor’s face contorted into a sly smile.
“I know. But you don’t. You have a date, you have a victim. You have no other data to go on. Solve it.” Sherlock stared at the man.
“You’re letting me solve your murder…why?”
“I’m on my farewell tour Sherlock Holmes, world’s only consulting detective. Consider it a gift.” He glanced to John and leaned into Sherlock, muttering quietly. “Since I’ll miss the wedding.” Sherlock jerked his head back, looking flabbergasted. “Of course I know you’re companions or- oh what was the word she used? Ah! Partners!” John tilted his head, raising a brow at the exchange, looking a bit confused at what he missed. “Jack is still cross you wouldn’t join Torchwood.”
“Doctor, I deal with the real, not with the rift.”
“Says the man who wanted to see the entire solar system.”
“I deleted the solar system.” Sherlock retorted, it was not deleted, but the moment Sherlock had stepped off the TARDIS and back into his life as a young boy, anything related to the Solar System was disturbingly forgotten. Memories of stars, other planets, aliens and strange places, gone, wiped, forgotten. The Doctor said it was for the best, he didn’t explain why. That always disturbed Sherlock when he thought about it, once in a very long while. But the older he was, the more faded the Doctor became in his mind. The Doctor glanced at him then dropped his eyes, fidgeting with his fingers.
“Yes, well, enough of that.” He looked up. “You’ve got a murder to solve.”
“You’ll give me no more data then?”
“Oh Stormageddon, we both know that is an insult to your intelligence.”