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John Watson, despite his many years of military service, had spent relatively little of it in Top Secret Military Installations. Considering the last one in which he had spent any measurable amount of time had started with him pulling rank, which he technically no longer held, in order to gain entry, and ended with him cowering in a cage in a lab while Sherlock scared the shit out of him playing growling noises over an intercom to prove the effects of an experimental drug on a “normal” brain, John wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of going back to one. He hadn’t exactly been keen on the idea of speaking to his flatmate after that particular incident, either. However, he’d eventually forgiven Sherlock…or at least chalked it up as one of Sherlock’s less than admirable traits that weren’t likely to change anytime soon, say in his lifetime. So, if John could endure Sherlock leaving body parts rotting in the fridge, or shooting holes in the walls of Baker Street, or the occasional exploitation of any psychotropic drugs John might have in his system, what was a visit to another Top Secret Military Installation that also appeared to be a Classified Underground Bunker System?
The young Air Force lieutenant who had met them at the guard station at Cheyenne Mountain provided visitor badges before he led John and Sherlock onto the lift. Pushing the button for Level 16, he informed them, “Colonel Sheppard is waiting to meet you outside the brig.”
“The brig?” John raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Not for us, I hope.”
It had been meant as a joke, but the lieutenant only stared straight ahead at the doors of the lift. “I’m not aware of the details of your visit, sir.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes at the response. “Careful, John, I fear the Americans are more clever than I gave them credit. They lured us all the way from London by requesting our assistance, only to lock us up and throw away the key once we arrive. If only this ploy worked as well with the Taliban.”
John’s lips quirked in response to the mischievous flicker in Sherlock’s eyes. Of course, Sherlock was enjoying every second of this, even though neither of them knew anything as to why they were in Colorado. However, the Americans needed them badly enough that a private flight had been arranged, and Sheppard himself had called and requested their assistance. Sherlock, nonetheless, had refused until Dr. McKay had done the same and sullenly admitted Sherlock was the only one who could provide the aid they required.
The doors opened and John’s face broke into a friendly smile. “Colonel Sheppard, it’s good to see you again. Although, once more, the circumstances are a bit… ominous.”
Sheppard took his hand and shook with a smile of his own. “At some point we need to just make plans to get together and have a beer.”
“Maybe once we’ve finished up here,” John offered. “That is, if Dr. McKay doesn’t plan to collapse the mountain on us.”
While they hadn’t been inside the mountain in Afghanistan that Rodney had destroyed during their prior time together almost a year before, it had been a rather spectacular sight to behold.
“No promises,” Sheppard said with a shrug. “After all, we are at the SGC.”
Stargate Command. Even John would admit he knew only the most rudimentary of facts about the organization; still, it had turned his world on its ear. Ancients, Go’auld, interplanetary and even intergalactic travel through giant rings that were portals to wormholes… it was the stuff of comic books and movies become real. It had also almost cost Sherlock and Sheppard their lives when the Go’auld device they had been sent to Afghanistan to retrieve had freed Sherlock’s memories of Moriarty from their prison in his mind palace to take over his body and run amok in the Ancient compound. As surreal as all that had seemed at the time, Sheppard and McKay had made it rather clear that alien possession and Ancient devices exploding with the power of a nuclear weapon were all in a day’s work for them. John may like to think Sheppard was joking, but he had his suspicions that there was at least a kernel of truth to Sheppard’s comment.
Sheppard turned his attention to Sherlock, but didn’t offer a hand as Sherlock’s were stuffed deep in his coat pockets. “Sherlock,” he drawled in way of greeting.
“Colonel,” Sherlock returned with a dip of his head. “And where is our self-proclaimed, alien-explosives expert, the illustrious Dr. McKay?”
“Dealing with a bomb,” Sheppard told them matter-of-factly as he indicated they should follow him down the hallway with a hitch of his head.
Watson stopped in his tracks. “So we really should worry about the mountain collapsing on us?”
“Oh, no,” Sheppard dismissed with a shake of his head. “It’s your standard, run of the mill, C-4 vest bomb. Purely Earth-based.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “C-4 vest bomb?”
Watson knew immediately where Sherlock’s thoughts were going, as that was one of Moriarty’s favorite toys. A fact Watson knew intimately well, as Jim Moriarty had fitted John with one within a few months of him meeting Sherlock.
The expression on Sheppard’s face suggested he knew something about it, as well. “Sound familiar?” he asked as his eyebrows rose in a poor charade of innocence.
“I’m sure you’re well versed in my involvement in the bombings that plagued London a few years ago. Bombings carried out on innocent people chosen at random by Jim Moriarty to coax me to play his little games. However, why, all this time later, you would feel the need to call us across the Atlantic to assist you with one of these bombs when you no doubt have a highly skilled bomb squad on base is a bit of a puzzle. Jim Moriarty, and anyone associated with him, is dead; I made sure of that myself.”
“Your Moriarty may be dead,” Sheppard stressed as he opened a door into the viewing area of an interrogation room. “But I’m going to go out on a limb and say his isn’t.”
On the other side of the one way glass sat Sherlock. Only it couldn’t be Sherlock, because Sherlock was standing beside Watson on this side of the glass. John looked from his Sherlock to the other Sherlock then back again.
“How…?” he started, but just couldn’t find the words to finish his question.
Sherlock, the one standing next to Watson, tilted his head curiously. “A clone?”
Sheppard shook his head, crossing his arms across the black shirt of his uniform. “An alternate version of you from another reality… or the multiverse; Rodney’s kind of a stickler about getting that right.”
Watson heard the words Sheppard was saying, but they didn’t make one bit of sense. It was Sherlock beside him; that he knew for sure. Sherlock, who had called Mycroft straight away to determine if his brother was the one truly behind their being summoned to the SGC. Sherlock, who solved three cases for Lestrade, one of which the detective knew nothing about, on the cab ride to the airport just because he wouldn’t be around for a few days. Sherlock, who had deduced aloud that the flight attendant was having an affair with both the Second Officer on the flight and one of the ground crew, so that their in-flight meal consisted of half-frozen Chicken Kiev dropped haphazardly on his tray followed by a packet of peanuts flung deliberately at his head. Sherlock, who had refused to vanish into his mind palace for the flight over and instead complained of his boredom for nearly seven hours straight until John had finally given up on trying to pretend to be asleep and handed him a magazine and asked him to deduce the history of every person in the photographs. That had kept him occupied for a few hours, although John almost wished Sherlock hadn’t taken to it so enthusiastically, considering the lamenting of how pathetically easy it was to read a celebrity, and one would think a supposed actor could hide his resentment for his wife a little better, at least in public, and why waste money on designer shoes when the bag was obviously a fake? That Sherlock, his Sherlock, was standing beside him, and yet….
Same dark wavy hair, same arrogant set to his jaw, same grey eyes alert yet somehow also horrifically bored, same coat with the collar turned up, same scarf wrapped neatly around his neck….
John would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that the man sitting with those same long legs stretched under the table until they peeked out the opposite side was indeed Sherlock Holmes, who shared a flat with him at 221B Baker Street in London.
“How…?”John tried again.
“There are these things called quantum mirrors,” Sheppard explained. “They’re gateways into parallel realities…worlds kind of like ours but with differences. Sometimes the differences are small, other times huge.”
“And he’s from one of those other realities?” Watson asked.
When Sheppard nodded, Sherlock asked, “So why did you bring him over into this one?”
“We didn’t,” Sheppard insisted. “For some reason, the mirror in their reality accessed ours, and sent them over.”
“Them?” Watson asked in alarm. “There’s more than one alternate Sherlock?”
“No!” Sheppard assured. “At least not here in this reality. Whatever the device was from the other universe, it scanned the system here at the SGC for Sherlock and found three other names associated with him. There are four people that came through to here--that version of Sherlock, and alternates of you, me, and McKay.”
Watson’s eyes widened. “There’s another me here?”
Sherlock shrugged, unfazed. “Well, if I’m here, obviously you’re here, too, John.”
There was something rather heartwarming about the way Sherlock just assumed Watson would be with him, although that changed quickly enough.
“He wasn’t with you,” Sheppard informed them. “He came through with a version of me. Apparently, in that reality, Watson and I had both been assigned to Atlantis.” Sheppard hitched his chin at the man behind the glass. “This Sherlock has never even heard of John Watson.”
Sherlock’s brows dropped darkly at the news. Before either of them could ask any more questions, Dr. McKay joined them.
“So are they up to speed yet?” Rodney inquired impatiently.
“Getting there,” Sheppard told him. “So, Thing One, how is Thing Two doing?”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “You mean the Beta McKay? Better, at least now that we got the bomb off of him he’s calmed down enough to stop going on about a pool and Moriarty, and moved on to a few choice words about the SGC in general and Sherlock specifically.”
Watson’s eyes widened. “McKay was in the vest? But that means he was with Sherlock in London.”
Rodney nodded. “Roommates, apparently.”
Now it was Sherlock’s turn to stare in open disbelief. “That is not possible…in any reality.”
“Look,” McKay snapped, “I find it just as hard to believe, not to mention as disturbing, as you, but things are different in the multiverses. People are different, they make different choices. As a result, things often happen at different times and in different places than they do here. Sometimes, they never happen at all.” Rodney turned his attention back to Sheppard. “From what I can gather, that McKay quit the SGC rather than go to Siberia. He moved to London since Jeannie was there while Caleb was teaching at Oxford, met Sherlock, and they became roomies. He hasn’t had contact with the SGC in almost two years.”
“So I’m assuming he doesn’t know why their quantum mirror sent them here,” Sheppard surmised glumly.
Rodney shook his head. “Not a clue.”
“Look,” Watson interrupted, tearing his eyes from the mirror Sherlock on the other side of the glass, “as fascinating as all this is, why are we here? We don’t know anything about any quantum mirrors or alternate realities or anything else to do with this.”
Sheppard pointed an accusatory finger at the glass. “Because he won’t talk to any of us.”
“And?” Watson prompted.
With a contemplative shrug, Sheppard continued. “And the way I figure it, there are only two people in our reality Sherlock Holmes trusts enough to open up with. One is you, Watson; but like I said, that Sherlock in there has no idea who you are. And the second person….”
“Is me,” Sherlock chimed in. “Or, more correctly, himself. And since he won’t have a discussion, at least aloud, with himself, you need me to chat him up as the next best thing.”
“I always thought you were a narcissist who was in love with the sound of your own voice, Sherlock,” Rodney confessed with a cheerful rock back on his heels. “Ends up today, that’s exactly what we need.”
* * * * *
“Not yet,” Sherlock stated simply.
Rodney’s smug expression changed to chagrin. “What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”
“I need more information,” Sherlock countered.
“Why do you think we brought you here?” Rodney exhaled in exasperation then jabbed a finger at the Sherlock behind the glass. “You’re supposed to be getting information from him.”
It had been a long day for Rodney, to say the least. First Sherlock had shown up in the quantum mirror storeroom. Simply stepped out into the hall and asked the armed guards responding to the alarms if they had a mobile he could borrow as his didn’t seem to be working properly. Since then, that Sherlock hadn’t said much of anything else. Less than an hour later, however, the alternate McKay had shown up in the room, pale and wide-eyed, thanks to the bomb he was wearing. That had sent the entire base into lockdown. When the alternate Sheppard and Watson arrived a few minutes later, it seemed almost anticlimactic in comparison.
Rodney hadn’t even seen those two yet, which was fine by him. The thought of Sheppard on Atlantis with Watson just rubbed him the wrong way for some reason. The fact that the Beta McKay had never even gone to Atlantis was even worse.
Then there was the whole problem with the mirrors. Rodney hadn’t even known they found a new one almost a year prior until he and Sheppard had been called back to the SGC when everyone started showing up. Next, whatever mirror was being used on the other side, it didn’t work like the ones they’d seen before. This one could pull anyone from anywhere in that reality, no touching of the surface required. Although, how the damned thing worked was less important to Rodney right now than why it had brought these four here in the first place.
“If I go in there now, without the full story, I will not obtain any useful information. No, I need to speak with Sheppard and Watson first.”
Rodney didn’t miss the emphasis on John Watson’s last name. As far as McKay remembered, Sherlock had never called Dr. Watson anything other than John. In fact, he had insisted his flatmate be referred to as John the first time Sheppard and McKay met them in Afghanistan, and had never deviated from that assertion. The accusatory glance he shot at the Watson from this reality said it all, however; he was as unhappy about the pairings in the other reality as was Rodney.
McKay threw up his arms. “Fine. We’ll talk to them first. I’m kind of curious about what’s going on in Atlantis without me to save their collective asses on a daily basis.”
It ended up things were going fairly smoothly as far as the Wraith were concerned.
“Wraith?” the mirror Watson asked in surprise as he shared a chuckle at the question with the Major Sheppard sitting next to him on the opposite side of the table from Rodney and Sherlock.
Colonel Sheppard and the Watson from this reality had stayed out of the room and were watching from the other side of the glass. It was hard enough having two Johns in his reality; Rodney couldn’t imagine the confusion with four of them in one room.
“Why would we be at war with the Wraith?” the Beta Watson continued. “There are hardly any of them awake, and those that are cull a few people here and there then disappear. We stay out of their way, and for the most part, they stay out of ours.”
Rodney frowned at the dismissal. “And you’re okay with the Wraith just eating people in Pegasus?”
Alternate Sheppard shook his head. “It’s not SGC policy to interfere with the skirmishes between the native populations of Pegasus. Besides, we’re kind of occupied with the Athosian Wars right now.”
With widening eyes, McKay asked, “Who are the Athosians fighting in a war?”
“Us!” mirror Sheppard told him.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Rodney insisted with a wave of his hands. “You’re telling me that the SGC is at war with Athos? And Teyla is okay with this?”
“Teyla Emmagan?” Major Sheppard crossed his arms with a snort. “She’s the one who declared war on us.”
Rodney’s mouth was hanging open in shock, but he couldn’t seem to form words. Teyla, who had been their first ally in Pegasus, who was their teammate, who named her son after John Sheppard? Teyla, whom Rodney considered a friend, hell, she was family. That Teyla had declared war on the expedition?
“And not to mention that religious zealot, Halling,” mirror Watson added. “You’d think the Lutherans had set up shop in the bloody Vatican the way he’s always going on about, ‘the Ancestors built Atlantis, it’s not meant for mere humans! Sacrilege! Sacrilege! ’ It’s maddening. If it wasn’t for their allegiance with the Genii, we’d have wiped them out years ago. “
“How…?” was all Rodney could manage to ask, because, yes, Halling could be a little enthusiastic about his beliefs regarding who should live in the city, but he’d never declared a religious jihad against the expedition.
Both mirror Sheppard and Watson pointed at the other man and declared simultaneously, “He did it.”
“Yeah, okay,” Rodney exhaled with a frustrated roll of his eyes, “you need to explain what happened.”
Previously in the Alternate Pegasus Galaxy….
“We do not trade with strangers.”
The woman was smoking hot. Granted, it was in a Red Sonja, could definitely use some Right Guard, sort of way. Still, there was no way Sheppard could deny that Teyla Emmagan put all of the Earth-based, sexy, barbarian-warrior-princess Halloween costumes he’d seen over the years to shame.
“Is that a fact?” Colonel Sumner asked.
His CO was, as expected, being a total dick. Why? Take your pick-- because he was a Marine, because he didn’t think Sheppard should be on the expedition much less this particular mission, because he’d never gotten around to having the stick surgically removed from his ass before they left Earth. Any or all of those would explain it, but Sheppard wasn’t going to let that stop him from making a new friend. Besides, he’d never slept with an alien before and he’d never pass on the chance to expand his résumé.
Turning on his patented John Sheppard charm, he gave her a small smile. “Well, then, we’ll just have to get to know each other. Me, I like Ferris wheels and college football…anything that goes over two hundred miles per hour.”
Teyla looked puzzled, but intrigued, something Sheppard had seen before, and he knew he was on the right track here. Just reel her in a little more…
“You want to see a real Ferris wheel, you come to London.” Watson’s lips were curled into an engaging grin. “I’ll take you up on the Eye; almost four hundred and fifty feet high. Best view anywhere, bar none.”
Teyla’s eyes widened in alarm. “What sort of creature has an eye so large?”
The flirting tone in Watson’s voice took on a hint of panic as he backtracked. “Oh! No, no, it’s not a creature; it’s a machine that you ride, a giant circle….”
Catching on to a concept she could follow, Teyla said, “You mean like the portals we travel through?”
“Well, yes, sort of like that only much, much bigger with basket type seats you ride in, and it doesn’t create a wormhole… or take you anywhere… other than…just…around,” Watson tried to explain, realizing how lame the whole thing sounded.
Teyla’s brow furrowed. “For what purpose?”
“You know,” Watson mumbled before clearing his throat awkwardly, “just for fun.”
Sheppard rolled his eyes and wished like hell he had brought that young guy, Ford, instead of the doctor, Watson. But Weir had insisted a medical doctor might be able to help out if they came across a more primitive society, which the Athosians definitely qualified as, by offering advanced medical help in exchange for food and other necessary supplies. Things would be going well if Watson had just stuck to that plan and brought the medical know-how while Sheppard brought the charm. Apparently, Sheppard should have pulled him aside and called dibs on the hot alien chicks before they left.
Having listened to Watson’s description, Teyla turned to Sheppard. “And this machine that does nothing more than turn a person round and round is one of your favorite things?”
“You really have to see it to understand the appeal,” Sheppard said with a shrug.
“And this college football, you mentioned, is it also just for fun?”
Sheppard dropped his eyes from Teyla to his boots. “Well, there is the potential for making a little money on it if you’re up for the occasional wager.”
The Athosian leader was staring at Sheppard and Watson as if they were the most bizarre creatures she had ever laid eyes on, which to be fair, they probably were.
Dismissing the two men and their Ferris wheel stories, Teyla turned her attention to Sumner. “As I said, we do not trade with strangers.”
Sheppard stopped her before she could walk away. “Look, we told you some things, frivolous as they may be, about us. The least you could do is tell us something that you like.”
Teyla straightened her shoulders. “Each morning before dawn our people drink a stout tea to brace us for the coming day. Will you join us?” The challenge was evident in her tone, as well as the way she looked Sheppard straight in the eyes.
Sheppard turned on his brightest smile. “I love a good cup of tea. Now there’s another thing you know about me.” He glanced at Watson, the smugness writ clear on his face that she had invited Sheppard for tea and not the doctor. “We’re practically friends already!”
“What’s a Yank know about tea?” Watson scoffed. “Their idea of steeping is to toss it overboard into a harbor.”
“I know plenty about tea,” Sheppard argued, turning to face Watson.
Watson crossed his arms across his chest. “Oh, yeah? What do you drink for your morning cuppa?”
The truth was, Sheppard didn’t give a shit about tea. All he’d ever had was the packet in an MRE, and that was just to have something hot to drink on a cold night on patrol. It had tasted like bitter dish water, but he had watched enough Star Trek: The Next Generation in college to know the name of at least one tea.
“Earl Grey. Hot.”
Watson snorted derisively. “Everyone knows Early Grey is an afternoon tea.”
“Tell that to Jean Luc Picard.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll take it up with a fictional character straight away. But I’ll give you another shot; do you take your tea with milk or lemon?”
“Depends,” Sheppard countered.
“On what?”
“On my mood.” Sheppard snarled. “Take now, for instance, I’d prefer it black.”
Back in the SGC…
“After that, Sumner kicked us out of the tent and took over the negotiations,” mirror Sheppard explained.
“And how did that go?” Rodney asked.
The alternate Watson leaned forward across the table. “We’re at war. How do you think it went?”
“A war that could have been avoided if someone had just stayed out of my way and let me work my mojo,” Major Sheppard grumbled.
“Oh, here we go again,” Watson lamented with a shake of his head heavenward. “Prepare yourselves for the story of Major Sheppard’s illustrious dick that, in a single shag, can bestow benevolence and peace throughout the land.”
Mirror Sheppard ignored the mocking with a knowing tone. “All I’m saying is that missions have significantly less bloodshed when I’m the one doing the talking.”
“Oh, you mean like the one where you shot me?” Watson accused.
Sheppard shook his head in frustration. “You are never going to let that go, are you?”
“Mmm,” Beta Watson pretended to consider for a moment. “Let me see, you pulled your gun and put a bullet in my shoulder. So, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, no, there’s a very good probability I will never let that go.”
“Hey, the Sheppard I work with in this multiverse shot me, too,” Rodney interjected. “But eventually you have to realize that when someone is under the influence of an alien technology, you can’t hold them responsible for their actions, and you have to forgive them.”
“Yeaaah,” alternate Sheppard drawled, “right, it was alien technology. I think I need to amend the mission report.”
The mirror Watson stared at his teammate with open disdain. “You are a right fucking bastard, but I’m sure you know that already.”
For a second McKay thought the two men were going to come to blows, which for some reason actually made him feel a little better that Beta McKay wasn’t on Atlantis with Beta Sheppard.
Sherlock, who was still watching the whole exchange in uncharacteristic silence, wasn’t necessarily smiling, but he definitely had a pleased curl to his mouth.
That’s when something finally dawned on Rodney. “Wait; so you never woke the Wraith.”
“Woke the Wraith?” mirror Watson scoffed. “Why would we do something like that? The Ancients warned us about them in their records. The last thing we need is to be fighting wars on two fronts.”
Mirror Sheppard sat up straighter and glowered. “She was warming up to me until you jumped in. We could have avoided a lot of bloodshed if I’d just had a chance to drink the damn tea.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, she wasn’t going to sleep with you, Sheppard,” Beta Watson said in what sounded like longsuffering patience wearing thin.
“You don’t know that,” Major Sheppard countered.
Rodney stood and started pacing as he tried to piece together how any of this could have resulted in these men being brought through the quantum mirror, but their bickering was making it hard to think.
“Watson’s right,” Rodney dismissed with a flick of his hand, “Teyla would have never slept with you. Become one of your most trusted friends and allies, sure. You two danced around it for several years, but you never did the deed. She even had a kid with another guy a few years ago.”
Beta Watson sat back with a vindicated smirk on his face.
Not to lose face entirely, mirror Sheppard jabbed a finger toward McKay. “Did you hear what he said? No war because I became her friend.”
“No,” Rodney snapped as he walked the small space of the holding room, quickly losing patience with the squabbling, “instead you woke the Wraith saving her from a Hive ship, which has resulted in the deaths of millions.”
It took McKay a few seconds to realize the room had gone quiet, and everyone, including Sherlock, was staring at him in stunned silence.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean…”
Christ, how do you explain something like this? He’d never blamed John for what happened with the Wraith. They’d had no idea what they were stumbling into when they crossed through the gate to Atlantis, especially when it came to the Wraith.
Rodney looked guiltily toward the one-way glass, knowing his Sheppard was standing there listening to everything that was being said. And yet, even as he did, Rodney wasn’t worried about Sheppard, because they’d already talked about this, more than once and over more than just one beer. Sheppard understood, just like McKay understood. It was doubtful anyone else did, or even could, unless they’d survived his version of Pegasus, too. Sheppard had gone into the whole rescue of the Athosians and the captured expedition members with nothing but the best of intentions and the support of everyone in the city. Besides, how could Rodney blame John when he’d done just as bad, if not worse, with those same good intentions of making things better? It was the sort of thing he’d thought about way too much, and yet tried not to think about at all. Because when he did stop to count all those who had died because of Sheppard’s actions, and Carson’s, and his own, and everyone else in the expedition who were just trying to do good only to have the repercussions of their actions result in even more death and destruction, it made Rodney want to crawl under his bed and curl into a fetal ball.
“He didn’t do it on purpose,” Rodney tried again. “None of us did any of it on purpose. It just…happened.”
But these two had never had to make those hard decisions in their reality. There had been no Wraith siege in their timeline, no watching a friend go on a suicide run with a bomb you’d built, no Asurans, no Michael, no Hoffan plague. Sure, they probably had other horrors to contend with, but apparently it wasn’t enough to bring about the other things…the team, the friendship, the trust that someone always had your back…that came hand-in-hand with the danger Rodney and his team had faced over the years in their version of Pegasus.
For the first time, thankfully, Sherlock spoke up and changed the subject. “Sherlock Holmes and Rodney McKay in your reality, what do you know about them?”
“Dr. McKay’s name showed up in a few old reports,” mirror Watson told them, “but he’d left the SGC years before I joined them for the Atlantis expedition. As for Sherlock Holmes… never heard of him.”
Beta Sheppard simply shrugged in agreement looking at McKay with a slightly curious but unrecognizing expression that sent an odd chill down Rodney’s spine to consider all the millions of what-if scenarios that were playing out in the multiverses where John Sheppard and Rodney McKay were total strangers.
“Well,” Sherlock said with a forced cheer, “more’s the pity for you.” He stood and turned to the door. “I’ve seen all I need to see.”
Rodney followed on his heels, ignoring the requests from the two men being held in the room to know what they planned to do with them, and when they were going back to their own reality.
Their own Sheppard and Watson were waiting outside the door, and Rodney took the opportunity to say quietly to Sheppard, “Look, what I said in there--”
Sheppard stopped him with a shake of his head. “Was the truth. All of it.”
“Still, I shouldn’t have said that like I did,” Rodney started again glumly.
“Hey, at least we didn’t go to war with Athos.” Sheppard leaned in a little closer and murmured confidentially, “I mean, there are fuck-ups and then there are fuck-ups.”
McKay couldn’t help but let his lips quirk at that. “How has Teyla not kicked their asses by now?”
“I guess we just got one of the good ones,” Sheppard offered with a grin of his own.
Watson continued to stare at the mirror version of himself on the other side of the glass. “That is the most unnerving thing I have ever seen. It’s like finding out you have a long lost twin you never knew about, only there are an infinite number of them out there living their lives.”
“Or dying,” Rodney pointed out. “Chances are you didn’t even make it out of childhood in billions of them or died in Afghanistan in a billion others.”
“McKay…” Sheppard chastised when Watson paled.
“I’m just saying… besides it’s not like it’s actually him. They are completely separate people living completely separate lives that just happen to run along in parallel spots to our own.” Although Rodney couldn’t deny that he felt like he could actually breathe again after leaving the room and that other Sheppard in it. Rubbing at his forehead, he sighed. “Well, that helped us absolutely not one bit.”
“On the contrary, I learned a great deal,” Sherlock assured them.
“What?” McKay hitched his thumb over his shoulder toward the holding room. “That those two don’t like each other, at all.”
“And yet the ones from this world get on brilliantly,” Sherlock observed. “Why do you suppose that is?”
Rodney had no idea where this was going but he would play along. “I don’t know… they were both soldiers in Afghanistan, I guess.”
“They were both forced to leave Afghanistan,” Sherlock amended. “They were forced to rebuild their lives.”
Watson waved a hand between him and Sheppard. “We are standing right here.”
Ignoring Watson, Rodney continued his conversation with Sherlock. “That’s not an easy thing to do.”
Rodney had managed to do it when he went to Atlantis and rebuilt his reputation after his banishment to Siberia. It had been a hell of a lot easier with Sheppard by his side doing the same thing. Even Teyla and Ronon were rebuilding their lives in their own way, and in the process, they’d built something even better together.
“I suppose it could be a challenge.” Sherlock straightened his coat with a condescending sniff.
McKay didn’t know the whole story, but he’d gleaned enough from their last meeting to know Sherlock had disappeared for a couple of years amid some sort of scandal, leaving Watson to believe he was actually dead, then miraculously returned one day. Rodney seriously doubted that had been a walk in the park for the Brit.
“Yeah, wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Rodney rolled his eyes but didn’t wait for a response. “So now will you talk to your alternate self?”
“Not until I talk to the alternate you,” Sherlock told him then looked over at his flatmate. “Although I’d rather take John with me on this particular interview.”
Rodney was kind of relieved he didn’t have to sit with that other McKay. The bomb vest had rattled Beta McKay enough that he had felt himself start to hyperventilate in sympathy panic. Still….
Rodney shook his head. “Let the two Johns do the interview and you watch from outside. Trust me; he doesn’t want to see any version of Sherlock Holmes.”
Sherlock frowned. “Well, that’s a bit odd.”
“No,” Rodney assured him, “speaking from personal experience, it’s really not.”
* * * * *
When Rod had crossed over into Atlantis, it had been obvious he was a version of Rodney McKay. However, there had been enough differences--the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, the easy arrogance that came across as sincere instead of belligerent—that it was easy for Sheppard to think of them as two distinct people who just happened to be genetically identical and share the same name.
But this new version of McKay…
The panic that mirror Rodney was holding at bay by bitching loudly and continuously was so familiar Sheppard had to squelch the urge to call his McKay on the radio to double-check that he was really eating lunch in the cafeteria.
This new Rodney stood as soon as Sheppard and Watson walked into the room. “I demand to speak to whomever is in charge here. I have lived up to every semicolon in my nondisclosure agreement, so you have no right to hold me like this, even if it is a different reality. Is it Hammond in this universe? Is Carter still here? O’Neill? Christ, I’ll even take Jackson if I have to.” McKay took enough time to look them over, obviously taking in Sheppard’s uniform and name patch, before demanding. “Sheppard? Who the hell are you? You weren’t around in my reality.”
Wasn’t that the weirdest shit he’d ever heard? Even Rod had worked with a version of John Sheppard… a MENSA-meeting John Sheppard, but a John Sheppard all the same. The concept of never meeting Rodney McKay was like never going to Atlantis. The two were inseparably linked in his mind--peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, Sheppard and McKay—you rarely thought of one without the other. They’d practically stepped through the gate together and pretty much been in lockstep ever since. But if there was one thing Sheppard had learned during his time with the SGC, it was that the more things stayed the same, the more likely that theory was going to get blown out the water.
“We never met over there,” Sheppard told him evasively. “I didn’t join the SGC until after you left.”
Thankfully, Watson stepped in and offered a hand in greeting. “John Watson. I’m a special attaché between the British Army and the SGC.” It was the role he’d played during their mission in Afghanistan, and while not technically true now, it worked for the occasion.
Rodney took his hand and shook warily. “So has the British Army been keeping tabs on me in London?”
“If they have, I’ve played no role in it,” Watson told him honestly, indicating McKay should take his seat again, then seating himself after Rodney had. “But we are very interested to know about your relationship with Sherlock Holmes.” Watson pulled out a small notebook from his shirt pocket and a pen. “He’s your flatmate, isn’t that right?”
McKay sat with crossed arms and snorted at the question. “Not after today, he’s not.”
Sheppard remained standing, leaning back against the one-way glass where he knew Sherlock was watching. “So you think Holmes had something to do with the bomb?”
Rodney barked acidic laughter. “I guarantee it. Anything that involves Jim Moriarty also involves Sherlock Holmes. They are practically joined at the hip.”
“They’re friends?” Watson could barely hide the alarm in his voice, although there didn’t seem to be the surprise Sheppard thought there would be.
“I think the correct term would be frenemies,” McKay corrected. “Kind of like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, only it depends on the day who’s dropping the anvils and who’s defying the laws of physics.”
“How long has this being going on between them?” Watson asked.
“Well, I didn’t know it at the time,” Rodney admitted, “but practically since the day I met Holmes.”
Previously in the alternate London…
Sherlock Holmes was fucking insane.
Anyone who tried to tell Rodney any different deserved to be locked up in the same padded cell the so-called “consulting detective” so desperately needed. Unfortunately, the alternative was continuing to live with Jeannie. When it came down to it, sharing a walk-up with a guy who thinks checking out murder scenes is a fun night out on the town was nothing compared to the hippy commune his sister’s life had become. He still hadn’t decided which was more repulsive: the steady diet of vegan casserole featuring something called textured vegetable protein (seriously, who would eat anything that has the same descriptive modifier as wall spackling compound?) or the accompanying dinner conversations about some long dead poet. Dry, bland, pretentious…and don’t even get him started on the food.
So, yeah, Holmes was a crackpot, but at least he wasn’t tofu.
The first case he’d taken Rodney on had been the first day McKay had moved into Baker Street. The body was of a dead woman with a proclivity for pink rivaling that of Rodney’s niece. At least Madison had the excuse she was only four years old; this woman was an adult, at least physically. Rodney wasn’t about to bet money that her IQ was congruent with her physical age.
Sherlock and Scotland Yard were obsessed with something the woman had been scratching into the wooden floor. The forensics investigator thought it might be German.
Sherlock was saying it had to be something important because she’d ripped her nails off scraping it, and she was obviously a smart woman, so whatever she was writing it must have been significant.
Rodney had snorted. “She’s not that smart.”
“She’s smart enough to hide a string of lovers,” Sherlock pointed out along with an unclean wedding band on her finger.
“That doesn’t make her smart, it makes her a slut,” Rodney countered. “And if she was so smart, why didn’t she use her ring that she never took the time to clean, to scrape the word into the floor? I mean, you said it yourself, ripping her nails off would have hurt like hell. She’s wearing a fucking diamond, the hardest substance on Earth. It doesn’t take a genius to know that would work much better, not to mention faster, so that she could have actually finished the word before she died. Any intelligent person would know fingernails aren’t very hard, even if they are reinforced with enough polish to paint a small house; that is, if you didn’t go blind looking at the color. Speaking of which, why would a murderer choose someone dressed as brightly as her for a victim? She might as well be wearing a flashing neon sign saying, ‘Look at me, here I am!’ She’s so conspicuous someone at the train station surely saw her getting into a car. Wouldn’t it be a better use of your time to question potential witnesses and view video surveillance than try to figure out what she ruined her manicure trying to write? Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station probably noticed an intensely bright pink speck moving through London; maybe we should tweet them and ask if they saw who picked her up.”
“Surveillance videos aren’t a half-bad idea, Sherlock.”
At least the detective inspector agreed with Rodney. La Pue, Labatts, Lamaze--Rodney had always been terrible with names, although he had been fairly diligent about reminding himself it was Sherlock not Sherwood, else he feared it was back to the land of soy product and sonnets for him.
“Everything I need to solve this case is right here at this crime scene,” Sherlock insisted.
“Not only am I leery of the supposed intelligence,” Rodney stressed the word with air quotes, “of the victim, I’m seriously questioning the aptitude of the murderer. Given his idiocy, he’s probably driving around right now with some neon pink suitcase in his car.”
Sherlock stood suddenly, glared at Rodney, then stormed out of the room grumbling under his breath about sodding pink suitcases.
Of course, Holmes had found the case in a dumpster. Sherlock had even figured out that the woman had been scraping the name of her deceased daughter, giving them the password for her still missing phone, an act Sherlock practically declared to be the most clever thing he’d ever seen.
“Clever?” Rodney had only shaken his head in disappointment. “No numbers, no special characters, the name of a family member. That is the worst password I have ever heard. And seriously, did she even have to scrape the name into wood? You just had to Google her lazy ass to figure that one out.”
Of course, later that evening, Rodney had eaten a very nice meal at Angelo’s while Sherlock went running after a cab he’d lured to the restaurant.
Sherlock’s question of, “Well, aren’t you coming?” as he darted toward the door, was answered by an indignant McKay pointing to the hot breadsticks and salad that had just arrived at the table. And, honestly, the meal had been even nicer with Holmes off running down alleyways and hopping over rooftops, allowing Rodney to finish the breadsticks without having to share them with Sherlock.
When Holmes had finally returned to the restaurant, no closer to catching his killer, Angelo had just delivered a nice bottle of Chianti to Rodney. It was to go with his ravioli in a meat sauce so chunky he felt compelled to Tweet a photo to Jeannie.
As he snapped the photo of his meal, Rodney observed casually, “Hey, you know who picks people up all the time, especially at train stations? Taxi cabs.”
Rodney captioned the photo, mmmm tasty, tasty murder, in response to Jeannie’s assertions that meat was, in fact, murder. He hit submit on his phone and looked up to see Sherlock glaring at him silently. It was the same silence that accompanied Holmes out the door of the restaurant as he left McKay sitting with most of his meal still uneaten in front of him. With a shrug at his new roommate’s moodiness, Rodney dug into the food.
A few minutes later, Jeannie responded to his photo with a terse, Hope you’re happy, Mer. You are an accessory to murder! comment on his account.
Wiping his hands on his napkin, Rodney took up his phone and replied, Actually, I think it’s the cab driver.
The next day at their flat, with all of Scotland Yard there, and Mrs. Hudson saying the cab Sherlock had called had arrived, and Sherlock insisting he never called one, Rodney had pointed at the man in the goofy hat standing in the doorway and yelled, “Hey, it’s him! Remember, Holmes, when I mentioned at dinner about cab drivers? I bet he’s the killer!”
Sherlock had been in the middle of tying his scarf around his neck, like he was actually going to go off in a cab he’d never called, being driven by a man who was obviously a killer. And he was supposed to be a genius? Fortunately for him, Rodney had recognized the danger and the cops tackled the cabbie and handcuffed him on the spot.
“Good work, Sherlock,” the detective inspector said as they led the man down the stairs.
For the life of him, Rodney couldn’t figure out why Sherlock seemed so angry with him, especially when Holmes had gotten the credit for the case McKay had obviously solved.
Things had only gone downhill from there.
The one and only time Rodney came home to find a decapitated head in their fridge, he puked all over it. He had thrown up a second time as he was trying to clean up the mess from the first and he discovered eyeballs in the vegetable crisper. This had resulted in Sherlock donning yellow gloves and taking over the mop and bucket before McKay could contaminate any other experiments he had running.
Rodney couldn’t resist Tweeting a photo of Sherlock scrubbing the floor with the caption, Sherlock Holmes, consulting housekeeper. The next day his Twitter account had twenty new followers.
Rodney never found another human body part in their kitchen again.
After that there had been a series of Chinese numbers at crimes scenes that was obviously a type of code, probably a book cipher. Rodney recognized the copies of A-Z London Street Guide in both of the dead men’s apartments, because Jeannie had given him one when he first moved to London. They were able to quickly crack the code and determine the jade hairpin was being worn by the one guy’s mistress secretary.
Sherlock was on the phone cancelling some tickets to a Chinese acrobatics show when Rodney remarked, “The criminals here in London don’t seem to be very smart at all. I mean, isn’t it kind of, I don’t know, unimaginative to use a guidebook as a guide to break a code? They might as well just wear a decoder ring. Hey, does this mean we don’t have to go meet that graffiti artist tonight? Because I’d rather stay in and watch the new Doctor Who anyway.”
Then had come the night when Sherlock let slip that he thought the Sun rotated around the Earth…or more correctly he didn’t know, nor did he care, which was correct. Despite Sherlock’s flaws, he was, McKay had thought, at the very least, a man of science. His experiments might be more like The Island of Dr. Moreau than Origin of the Species, what with all the rotting body parts stored next the milk and eggs, but Rodney had to believe that even someone more on the caliber of Dr. Frankenstein had understood the Earth orbited the Sun.
Rodney had devoted the majority of his life to studying the intricacies of the cosmos. To him, astronomy was more than an academic pursuit, it was painting and sculpture and music and drama all rolled up into the most illuminating piece of art that ever existed. Only you could just see the top of The Thinker’s head, or hear the first notes of Ode to Joy, or barely catch a glimpse of the snow globe rolling down the stairs in Citizen Cane, because as much as scientists knew about the universe, it was just the tip of the iceberg. If you didn’t even know the basics….well, you might as well have blindfolded Da Vinci and told him to paint the Mona Lisa. Sherlock, in his infinite blasphemy of science and all that is right in the universe, would have given the artist nothing but dull crayons, as well. The worst part was he wasn’t even contrite in his lack of knowledge, actually found it to be a waste of valuable storage space in his brain.
At that moment, Rodney thought his own head might explode, right then and there. Sherlock, no doubt, would have enjoyed that immensely; because, hey, free derma matter to play with and without the pesky trip to the morgue to retrieve it. When, miraculously, his cranium didn’t blow up all over the living room furniture, it loosed Rodney’s tongue.
“A waste of space?” McKay repeated slowly. “There are probably file cabinets in the sanitation department noting garbage pick-ups from thirty years ago that are less of a waste of storage space than what you have chosen to store in your apparently very limited, yet highly questionably prioritized, memory.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Sherlock scoffed. “Waste and Recycling hasn’t kept paper records in over a decade.”
“Oh, that you know!” Rodney threw his arms up in the air. “Great men of science risked their lives, their reputations, their immortal souls to convince the naysayers of their time that the Sun was at the center of the solar system with the planets in orbit around it, and you’d rather just chuck that out the window in favor of how the bins are emptied in London.”
“That could be information critical to a case!” Sherlock argued.
“Astrophysics is critical to the fabric of time and space!”
“Yes, well, how often does anyone really have to deal directly with the fabric of time and space? It’s not exactly something that comes up on a daily basis, now, is it?”
Rodney’s nondisclosure clause with the SGC was really grating on his nerves at the moment, because he would love to fly Sherlock to Cheyenne Mountain and show him just how many times astrophysics had saved the lives of everyone on the planet.
“There are children who know more about science than you, Holmes. Small children whose diapers are filled with more useful knowledge than your brain!”
Eventually, Mrs. Hudson had to come and break up the argument because the patrons at the deli next door were complaining about the noise. Sherlock had given her a befuddled expression as to why they would even care about their argument as they should simply mind their own business. Rodney had captured the look with the camera on his phone and Tweeted, Sherlock, upon learning that Earth, much like himself, is *not* center of universe.
He was up to over two hundred followers on Twitter at this point, including one Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s brother, who responded back with, Ha! That alone is worth £500! Good thing, as that was the exact monthly amount Rodney had negotiated when he'd been surreptitiously picked up by the elder Holmes and asked to spy on the younger; an amount McKay was seriously starting to think wasn’t nearly high enough.
It wasn’t long after that the explosions started, and Jim Moriarty introduced himself as the one behind most of Sherlock’s cases. He used the occasion of this revelation to strap people to bombs and send Sherlock on what turned out to be some fairly simple cases to solve. Granted the first one with the shoes was a little tough, but that had been meant specifically for Sherlock, as he had a history with that case.
Then there was the missing banker…apparently banking was a dangerous profession in London… who according to his wife, was depressed. So he rented a car to kill himself? Only he had lost enough blood to indicate he bled out, but managed to walk far enough away, despite his massive wounds, that his body couldn’t be found?
“He’s obviously faked his death,” Rodney told the detective inspector, although it was loud enough for Sherlock to hear. “Bet his wife is in on it, too.”
The third case involved a dead makeover artist, which Rodney felt was no great loss and said so, but Sherlock insisted on solving it anyway, seeing as a blind, old woman had a bomb strapped to her. McKay kept his thoughts to himself about the loss of a blind, old lady. He let Sherlock go ahead and solve that one, although, really, who didn’t suspect the boyfriend from the moment they laid eyes on him? Not to mention, Rodney wasn’t convinced the brother was entirely innocent. No one sits around stroking a white cat like a Bond villain without being guilty of something.
The fourth one, Rodney walked straight into the art gallery and said, “Hey, look, he captured the Van Buren supernova in the painting!” He frowned at Sherlock. “I thought you said this was painted in the 1600s? The supernova didn’t appear until 1858.”
Lestrade had slapped him on the back. “Nice work, McKay!”
The last he saw of Sherlock was a swirl of black coat as the consulting detective stormed out of the gallery with a growl.
Back in the SGC…
“The next day, I was grabbed off the street and ended up next to a pool strapped in a vest of explosives. And can you believe it was the fucking IT guy from the hospital that was doing it all along? A guy who spends most of his day asking, ‘Did you turn it off then back on?’ and he’s moonlighting as a consulting criminal with a specialization in explosives. Fortunately, a few minutes after I had the bomb strapped to me, I ended up here.” The alternate McKay’s cooperative tone turned to annoyance. “Although, that was almost nine hours ago and I’m still being held. When the hell do I get out of here?”
“We’re still trying to figure out how you came through in the first place,” Sheppard told him. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas, do you?”
Mirror Rodney rolled his eyes. “Quantum mirror, obviously.”
“Something you were familiar with during your time with the SGC, perhaps?” Watson prompted.
“Wait a second.” The Beta McKay bristled in his seat. “If you’re suggesting I somehow used a quantum mirror to bring—“
He was cut off by a rapping on the window that Sheppard knew to be Sherlock.
“Who’s out there?” Mirror Rodney narrowed his eyes suspiciously, as though he could see through the one-way glass.
Sheppard raised a hand, as if to say, just a minute, then stepped outside the door.
With a shake of his head, Sherlock informed him, “That Dr. McKay knows nothing of how he came to be here, but I think he gave me the answer for who does.”
“Who?” Sheppard asked.
Sherlock gave a secretive grin. “Only I know for sure.” With that pronouncement, he turned in a flurry of black coat and headed for the door.
Watson joined Sheppard outside the room with a puzzled expression as he watched Sherlock walk away. “Where is he off to, then?”
“Only he knows for sure,” Sheppard said in a mocking British accent.
“Well, I certainly doubt that.” Watson was already quick on his friend’s tail. “He has no bloody way of knowing where anything is in this place.”
“Oh, right,” Sheppard realized and took off after them both.
* * * * *
“Jim Moriarty,” Sherlock stated as soon as he walked into the room holding the mirror image of himself.
The alternate Sherlock…Holmes is how he thought of him… brightened considerably to see his latest guest. “You’ve heard of him then? Here? In this…reality?”
“We were acquainted,” Sherlock told him.
“Were acquainted?” Holmes asked, the slightest confusion wrinkling his brow.
“He’s dead.” Sherlock sat in the seat on the opposite side of the table and easily slid into the same casual posture as his doppelganger.
“You killed him.” Holmes seemed more surprised by that than the fact that Moriarty was dead.
Sherlock’s head bobbled with a slight grimace. “Mmm, more like nudged him in the right direction.”
“He killed himself.” The surprise morphed into curiosity.
“He likes to win, at all costs. But you know that already.” Sherlock leaned forward, hands templed beneath his chin and a knowing gleam filling his eyes. “Or maybe you never had the chance to find out for sure.”
Holmes’ lips curled. “Maybe I’ll finally get the chance.”
Sherlock sat straighter and began to recite from an imaginary email. “Dear Jim, my flatmate doesn’t understand how to play the game. He insists on interrupting our fun before it ever really has a chance to get started.”
“Ah,” Holmes brightened further. “So you have a Dr. Rodney McKay in this reality, as well.”
“Ends up, we currently have two of them in this very base.” Sherlock’s grin just grew as Holmes’ smile vanished to realize the McKay bomb hadn’t worked as planned. “Oh, I can understand your dilemma. If I had Rodney McKay as a flatmate, I might be tempted to strap a load of C-4 onto him, as well. Highly annoying fellow. Knows everything before anyone else and loves to gloat about it when he’s correct. Honestly, I have no idea how anyone, especially Colonel Sheppard, tolerates him.”
Sherlock knew Sheppard, McKay, and John were standing outside the room watching this entire exchange. Sherlock’s lips twitched just thinking about how annoyed McKay would be right now.
“No one likes a know-it-all,” Holmes agreed.
Sherlock couldn’t help but chuckle lightly at their shared joke, because they both knew the reason Holmes and McKay never got on was because every version of Sherlock Holmes was probably as big a know-it-all as every version of Rodney McKay.
With a shrug, Sherlock confessed, “Well, I did know one person who liked them, but that was because he liked to show he was smarter than any of them.”
Holmes rested his elbows on the table. “Did you really not like playing Jim’s games?”
“I had something I liked a great deal more and he threatened to take it away from me.” Sherlock sighed and admitted, “He did cause me to lose it for a bit…but like all great know-it-alls, I found a solution.”
“So it was McKay who brought us here, then?” Holmes noted looking around the room. “Secure military installation, McKay’s past work with the Department of Defense that he alludes to but never gives any details about when he will boast nonstop about every other brilliant thing he’s done. Obviously the man had a top secret clearance with a nondisclosure clause he had to sign when he left. I simply had no idea how far the United States military would go to protect him. Although inter-dimensional travel to punish me…that does seem a bit excessive, wouldn’t you agree? Especially since I never planned to let the bomb actually detonate. I simply hoped to scare him into moving out.” Holmes rapped his fingers on the tabletop. “The man really dislikes tofu, it would appear.”
Sherlock couldn’t hide his stunned expression. All along he’d believed Holmes had been the one behind the quantum mirror, but now….
Seeing the look on Sherlock’s face, Holmes smiled in dawning realization. “You thought I came here on my own.”
“But if you didn’t voluntarily come…,” Sherlock started.
“…and the military didn’t bring me here…,” continued Holmes.
The two men stared at each other as comprehension struck. Neither spoke, but Sherlock knew they were both thinking the same name.
Jim.
Holmes was smiling broadly, covering his laugh with his hands. “Oh, now, this is truly, truly brilliant. How would you not want to challenge yourself with this man? Honestly?” With a shake of his head, Holmes said what Sherlock had already concluded. “I wasn’t the main event, I was the diversion.”
And not just Holmes, but the versions of Watson and Sheppard and McKay who’d also come through the mirror. Because one strange man magically appearing and setting off the alarms would draw attention, but four men appearing within moments of each other, would draw all that attention and focus it in the wrong place for far, far too long.
It was then the klaxons started sounding. Sherlock stepped outside the room to find Sheppard and John waiting for him.
“They’ve put the base into lockdown,” Sheppard told him. “And McKay’s gone to look through the surveillance videos from earlier.”
“He’s not here,” Sherlock said confidently.
“It’s been…what… ten, eleven hours since he came through?” John quickly calculated, running a hand through short, blond hair. “At this point he could be almost anywhere…anywhere in the world.”
“Including London.” Sherlock said.
Something John didn’t want to consider, but undoubtedly knew was true. “Sherlock, if there’s a new Moriarty….”
Sherlock cut off his flatmate’s worry. “We’ll deal with him like we dealt with the last.” Seeing John’s disapproval, he amended, “Well, not exactly like the last.” Turning back to Sheppard, he asked, “Are you sure we can send them back to their reality? All of them?”
Sheppard shrugged. “The mirror is still locked on their universe. All we have to do is activate it and send them through.”
“Very well,” said Sherlock, “then I think it’s time.”
With a nod, Sheppard headed down the hall.
John put a hand on Sherlock’s arm to halt him from going back in the room. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Do you really want to turn loose a man who tried to blow up his own flatmate?”
“He didn’t actually blow him up,” Sherlock defended. “Besides, you heard what McKay had to say about the problems with two versions of the same person being in the same reality for too long.”
“I know, I know.” John waved off the explanation. “It just doesn’t seem fair, to any of them really.”
“John, they’re from a completely different reality,” Sherlock reasoned. “And we just discovered that Jim Moriarty has crossed into ours. Don’t you think we have enough to worry about in this universe without also worrying about theirs?”
John actually laughed. “You know, I once thought you were the maddest thing that could ever happen in my life, and then we met Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay. Looking back, our problems were all rather mundane in comparison.”
“We’ll be back to our boring old murders in no time,” Sherlock promised with a smile before returning to the holding room.
Holmes looked up expectantly. “Have you found him yet?”
“Not yet,” Sherlock lamented. “But when we do, I’ll be sure to send him home straight away.”
“Promise?” Holmes asked with a genuine hope.
“Shall I cross my heart?” Sherlock offered.
Holmes leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I am honestly stunned you prefer a world without Jim Moriarty to one with him.”
“While I found Jim’s exploits a worthy challenge,” Sherlock admitted, “they came at a very high price.”
Sherlock had lost everything, everyone, who meant something to him for almost two years. Jim Moriarty had pushed Sherlock’s deductive skills to new levels over the years in which they had been (what had the alternate McKay called it?) frenemies. He’d also pushed Sherlock to the edge…literally. The thought of going up against Jim again, it was definitely intriguing, but Sherlock was wiser now and he wasn’t going to be backed into a corner again.
“You’re getting a gift few people ever get,” Holmes said. “You’re getting a second chance to prove your skill, your cunning, your intellect, and what do I get?”
The door opened and in walked Dr. John Watson, Army Captain, surgeon, and member of the Stargate Atlantis expedition. If he was honest with himself, Sherlock would admit that he didn’t like this John Watson and his dark military uniform and clunky combat boots. John Watson was meant to dress in poorly fitting brown jumpers and boring shoes, any other version was obviously a poor substitute for the real one. Still, even behind the military garb, there was something of his John in the man. Sherlock just hoped it was enough.
“I’m giving you a gift, as well.” Sherlock turned back to Holmes and smiled. “I’m giving you a conscience.”
* * * * *
“There, that’s him.” Watson pointed to the image of the man on the monitor screen. “That’s Jim Moriarty.”
They’d sent their alternate selves back through the mirror with the mirror version of John Watson deciding to tender his resignation from the SGC and return home to London and the alternate Dr. McKay planning to do just the opposite and go to Pegasus as soon as he was allowed.
Although he couldn’t hear the entire conversation, Watson did catch the mirror Sheppard and McKay arguing over, of all things, Back to the Future.
The last thing Watson heard from his alternate self was, “That is simply amazing! How did you ever know that about my sister?”
As strange as it seemed, all appeared right in that other reality, or at least would be soon. He wished he could say the same thing about his own world.
“And less than a minute later, out walks Sherlock,” Rodney noted with a shake of his head. “No wonder nobody noticed Moriarty.”
“That and the fact he was wearing an SGC uniform.” Sheppard crossed his arms, his brow furrowed in thought. “There’s no way he had time to steal one here. He must have come through from his reality wearing it.”
“Chances are he stole the quantum mirror from the SGC,” McKay reasoned. “He probably took a uniform then, too.”
“But how?” Sheppard challenged. “And more importantly why? Why come here at all?”
“Because the Jim Moriarty here is dead,” Watson suggested. “So no risk of that entropic…?”
“Entropic cascade failure,” Rodney finished for him. “But how did he know that?”
“Well,” said Sherlock as he rocked back on his heels, “I’ll be sure to ask him when I find him.”
Watson could only frown at Sherlock’s apparent cheer at the prospect of tracking the madman down.
“At which time we’ll turn him over to the SGC for shipping back to his own world,” Watson stressed.
“Of course.” Sherlock’s smile never wavered. “That obviously goes without saying.”
Watson rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”
“Come, John,” Sherlock ordered, already heading for the door. “He has almost a twelve-hour lead on us; there isn’t a moment more to be lost.”
Watson took the time to shake hands with both Sheppard and McKay. “We’ll contact you as soon as we have any information regarding Moriarty.”
“We’ll do what we can from here,” Sheppard promised.
“I still don’t get how he decided to come to this particular reality,” McKay said more to himself than the other men in the room.
Sherlock had stopped by the door. “Perhaps he didn’t decide. Perhaps he was invited.”
“Invited?” McKay asked in surprise. “Who would invite him here?”
Previously near the alternate Stargate Command….
Ba’al opened his laptop in the coffee shop in Colorado Springs and logged into his email account. Less than an hour before, he’d activated the controller currently resting in his pocket and stepped through the quantum mirror in one reality and into the SGC of another. It had been a big risk; they’d no doubt seen him on their surveillance footage and knew he was alive once more. Stargate Command would obviously be looking for him, and if they killed him in this reality, like they already had his mirror equivalent years before, he would never be able to exact his revenge on the wretched Tau'ri in the world he’d left behind. However, all that could change if he received the proper response to this simple email.
Dear, Jim….
He’d planned this for a while, using the quantum device to travel between worlds until he found the one best suited for himself and his retribution against O’Neill and his little band of miscreants. It was the perfect world; one where Ba’al no longer existed, but Jim Moriarty did.
I have been a great admirer of your work for some time now. You have a certain panache to which I can most definitely relate. I also appreciate how you can accomplish highly intriguing criminal capers while still maintaining a strong fashion sense. Have you considered wearing turtlenecks on occasion? But I digress….
It was a shame Moriarty had died in the alternate world, it would have been much simpler if Jim had still been there and could have taken care of things without Ba’al having to resort to such extreme measures as quantum travel. Still, one did not become a god without learning to deal with setbacks along the way, and one did not become a System Lord without learning to be a sneaky bastard when the situation required it.
I have, in my possession, a device that will allow travel from one reality into another. I am willing to part with it in exchange for your assistance in ridding the world from which I just came of a most annoying adversary. If additional motivation is required, I can promise you this—Sherlock Holmes. A more worthy Holmes than you have ever had a chance to compete against in this reality: a Sherlock Holmes who has already outwitted you once before in his world, a match that unfortunately resulted in your death. I offer you a chance for revenge and access to a device that will unleash the most powerful weapon I can obtain upon Stargate Command—you, my dear Jim. You.
The SGC in this new reality had thought Ba’al was dead and all his clones with him. How surprised they would be to find that they were wrong, and he was back and better than ever. As for the world he’d just left and the role of Jim Moriarty…
Honey, you should see him as a Goa’uld.
Yes, Ba’al would take his revenge on the SGC in the world he’d just left, and he’d do it with the help of Jim Moriarty…as his new host. Ba’al’s power combined with Moriarty’s cunning; it was a partnership that would transcend quantum physics. Two geniuses were always better than one, especially if they were in the same body. The possibilities of this alliance were endless.
In fact, once they had taken care of the SGC, maybe they’d travel back in time and give that pretentious pretty-boy Ra a visit, too.
So, Jim, are you willing to play?
Ba’al hit send on the email before taking a sip of his iced, skinny, caramel macchiato. Although the Tau'ri had, as a race, become much more irritating over the millennia, one could not complain about their advances in baristaring.
Before he had finished his drink, a new email appeared in his inbox.
Intriguing proposition. You’re either insane or heaven-sent; either way you’ll provide an afternoon’s diversion. Rendezvous coordinates forthcoming.
Ba’al leaned back in his seat with a wicked grin. He slurped the last of the sweet, creamy beverage loudly from the bottom of the cup, ignoring the disapproving looks on the other patrons' faces at the noise. Soon enough they’d pay. They’d all pay.
The game, as they say, was afoot.
The End