Archive of Our Own

The rumble of thunder shook the high glass windows of the museum and the light flickered.

The guide raised her eyes to the chandeliers and then gave an uncertain smile to the high school students around her.

"Ah, maybe it's better to hurry up. If you want to follow me, I'll show you the reconstruction of the hotel room where Tesla spent the last years of his life.

While the students followed the guide, Reginald looked around in search of his friend Sherlock, and found him sitting on a windowsill, watching the rain falling on the glass, lost in thoughts.

"Sherlock, the guide told us to go."

The sixteen-year-old sighed, but didn’t move.

"Give me a break, Reginald. She’s saying so much nonsense that my ears are hurting."

"I think she's cute," he chuckled, and Sherlock frowned.

"What's her physical appearance has to do with her skills?"

Reginald rolled his eyes.

"Nothing, nothing. Come on, move."

"Go ahead, I'll wait for you at the exit."

"As you wish."

The Tesla Museum was cool, but their guide was putting a great effort in making the visit boring.

Sherlock wasn’t interested in the life of the scientist, besides he had already noticed that the reconstruction of the hotel room was inaccurate and full of anachronisms.

Instead, the section of the museum that reproduced the numerous Tesla’s inventions was much more interesting to him: some of the machines worked for real, but that stupid guide of them had devoted only a few minutes to the most interesting halls of the museums.

Making sure not to be seen by anyone, he went back, as a lightning broke through the black clouds and a thunder rumbled through the desert corridor.

In the last years of his life, Tesla had come out with some bizarre theories, including the one that time travel was possible, and for this reason he had been derided and ostracized by the scientific community, and many people had defectively called him a crazy visionary.

Perhaps it would never have been possible to put into practice all Tesla’s theories, but the scientist possessed the enviable ability to think outside the box, and people of his time hadn’t understood his genius.

And for this reason Sherlock felt that Tesla was similar to himself.

The boy came into one of the halls, where there was a strange machine, built by Tesla in person during the years spent in Colorado Springs, composed by a large steel turbine with copper spirals on the inside and three electrostatic spheres. According to the caption, Tesla thought that it was possible to time travel with this machinery.

Sherlock put his hand on it, and at that moment a deadly lightning struck the dome of the Tesla Museum: the electricity ran along all the electrical wiring of the building, involuntarily activating the machinery the boy was touching.

Sherlock was hit by a wall of light and found himself floating in space, invisible, without a body anymore, he was just pure thought, a Sherlock-Thought.

Around him, images began to flow, like frames of a film projected at high-speed.

It was the film of his life, a life which saw him finish high school, moody and bored student, and start the university, even more restless than before; then there was the discovery of drugs, a few moments of peace, followed by the ordeal of addiction and rehabilitation, the idea of ending his own life, because everything was so vacuous and unbearable that it was not worth living.

In the next frame he was in the laboratory of the St. Bartholomew's Hospital, alone, musing about suicide, but then Mike Stamford entered the room with an old friend in search of a flatmate, John Watson.

Mike introduced them, their fingers touched and in that moment everything changed, the young Sherlock-Thought who was watching his life perceived it clearly: that meeting was a Copernican revolution, and life was attractive and worth living again.

For eighteen months Sherlock and John lived together, and they were eighteen months of perfect, unconditional happiness, adventures and adrenaline. The relationship with John became increasingly important and fundamental to him: the Sherlock-Thought wasn’t just watching his life, he also felt his own emotions.

But then…

The great deception, the fall, the return, but something was broken, their relationship was no longer what it had been before, and all the happiness he had experienced living with John, disappeared the day of his marriage with Mary and didn’t come back anymore.

From that moment on, it was only a long trail of mistakes, lies, rage and regret, a psychopathic sister (a sister? Ah... yes, now he remembered) and a mess, a mess, just a fucking mess getting worse and worse.

And regretfully, that wonderful miracle that had been their relationship died.

Sherlock and John now were two scraps, two strangers, two dead leaves floating on the surface of the stormy sea in different directions for never meet again.

"I don’t want it," Sherlock shouted, "I don’t want this! John..."

He tried to stretch his arms toward him, even though he hadn’t a body, then it was dark again.

Sherlock opened his eyes, but he was no longer at the Tesla Museum, and was no more a Sherlock-Thought floating into space, he was in his body again, a heavy body struggling to respond to the orders of his mind.

In his field of vision there was a blue neon on the ceiling and a saline IV solution.

A hospital?

"He woke up!"

His parents' face, pale and tired, bent over him. They seemed aged ten years, and Sherlock tried to figure out why. He opened his mouth, but his father stopped him.

"No, you have a nasogastric tube. Wait, I call the doctors and see if they can remove it, okay?"

A tube to feed him? Why? He felt dizzy.

"You've been here for two months, Sherlock.” His brother Mycroft came near to the bed and explained: “A lightning struck the Tesla Museum during the storm, you got a strong electric shock and you've been here since then. Do you remember anything?"

So, the life he had seen was just a dream?

Impossible.

The doctors entered the room to check on him and performed many exams: he was okay, didn’t show any permanent damage, and after a period of rehabilitation he could have come home.

His parents and Mycroft stayed with him all day, but Sherlock couldn’t wait to be alone and reflect on what had happened to him, and he was relieved when they left for the night.

He didn’t think he had a hallucination because of the lightning, what he saw felt real, almost tangible, and then it was Tesla in person, the genius, to have built the machine he had touched.

Yes, Sherlock was sure that he had really traveled through time and had seen his future, all his future.

The memories of the life he had seen were so many that now he was struggling to remember and visualize them one by one, only one was clear and indelible.

The memory of John Watson.

Even though he was young, Sherlock knew himself very well, he knew he was different and didn’t have the same interests and same mind setting of the other boys of his age, and he knew that, for this reason, he would always be alone. To see him as a drug addict hadn’t surprised him that much: although he hadn’t tried anything yet, not even weed, he knew that sooner or later he would come to drugs to silence the chaos in his mind.

But John Watson... John Watson had astonished him. Finding a person who understood him, who appreciated him despite his oddness, who stood beside him when everyone else ran off and called him a freak, had been a miracle.

During the accident with the Tesla machine, Sherlock had seen, had felt himself fall in love with John Watson, and now that he had woken up and was back into his sixteen-years-old body, he still loved him, even if they hadn’t met yet.

But the Sherlock of the future had made many serious mistakes, he had taken John for granted, and in the end he had lost him forever.

Inconceivable.

There was only one thing to do: finding John Watson as soon as possible, and avoid repeating the mistakes he had witnessed.

He had few clues to find him, but they were enough: John had studied medicine and attended the laboratory St. Bartholomew Hospital, he was five years older than Sherlock, and this meant that if he started college the following year, John would be in his final year.

Sherlock knew he didn’t have much time, but he had to meet John before he was enlisted in the army and went abroad, he had to change the circumstances that had led to the final disaster.

He just had to.

But it wasn’t the only problem he had to worry about.

God, his family was such a disater…

One morning, Mycroft entered his office and saw Sherlock sitting on his swivel armchair, reading some documents in a blue Manila folder.

Of course Sherlock didn’t have the proper security clearance to enter the building, and he had just infringed an outrageous number of regulations just being there.

Mycroft rolled his eyes: he had just begun to work in politics, the last thing he needed was his teenage brother playing the spy or something.

"Do I have to list all the laws you have violated to enter here? Mom will be upset."

"I think mom and dad have many other reasons to be upset," Sherlock observed, so serious that Mycroft looked at him carefully: it wasn’t a stunt or a joke, his brother was there for an important reason.

Since he had woken from coma, Mycroft always felt that there was something different in his brother. Whether positive or negative, he still couldn’t say it.

"You've changed," he said, but Sherlock didn’t answer.

"Since you had that incident, you've changed," Mycroft insisted. "You seem to be obsessed with something every moment of your day."

"So what?"

He didn’t deny it, then.

"As your brother, it’s my job to know what it is, to prevent you from getting into trouble. What were you looking for in my office?"

Sherlock handed him the blue folder: Mycroft paled and sit heavily on the nearest chair, while his umbrella fell to the floor.

Sherlock was quite satisfied with the reaction he had elicited.

"How? You-you don’t remember, you've removed the memory..."

"Now I remember everything. I recommend a real psychiatric institution for our sister, and different therapies from the ones she’s having right now."

"Eurus is a special case."

Sherlock bit his tongue: Mycroft underestimated what Eurus was capable of, and he couldn’t tell him that he had been in the future and saw the horrors she had done, of course, or he would end up in the cell beside hers.

Actually, finding that Eurus really existed, it had been comforting to Sherlock: it meant that his experience was true, he had really been in the future, and John Watson was real.

"That girl is a timing bomb ready to explode: she needs medicines, many medicines, not a sort of personal Alcatraz. We could visit her every now and then, I'll bring the violin with me, I think it can help her. And we will give back Victor's remains to his family."

"Sherlock, you understand that there would be several things to explain to Victor’s parents, and I don’t think-"

"He was my best friend as a child, he deserves something better than rotting at the bottom of a well," Sherlock interrupted him with a cold voice before he got up.

"But this is not what you’re obsessed with," Mycroft observed: despite the shock, he was still lucid and calm enough to deduce that.

"No, it's something more important."

"More important than your family?"

Sherlock remembers a similar dialogue between Sherlock and Mycroft that took place in the future: "It's a family thing", "That's why John is staying."

"See Mycroft, to a certain extent, this is about family to me."

Sherlock left the suitcase in his bedroom and returned to the garden, looking around, hoping to find John between the thousand students who swarmed around the campus.

The night before he didn’t sleep at all, thinking that he would finally meet John, and that morning he couldn’t eat anything at breakfast because he was so nervous he felt almost sick: the Sherlock of the future had impressed John with a brilliant deduction of his life, and he had to do the same, even though the circumstances of their meeting were completely different now.

And this was a unfathomed abyss to him: in the future life he had seen, he had met an adult John, Afghanistan veteran, and their relationship started from there, but Sherlock knew nothing of John’s life before then.

What would he do if this John didn’t like him? If his plan didn’t work?

He felt sick again.

He approached two older boys, asking them if they knew John Watson.

"The captain? Who doesn’t know him?"

"Captain?"

"He is the captain of the rugby team of this university, and knowing him, he’s on the field for the morning training. The field is beyond the cafeteria, on the left."

Sherlock thanked them and went in that direction: often he couldn’t remember all the details of the future he had seen, ‘cause they were too many, but he was certain that John had never told him that he had played rugby at the university.

There were several things he had never said, probably because he feared that Sherlock would mock him.

And the future Sherlock had been often cruel to John.

No wonder John had grew tired of him.

But now he could fix it.

He reached the training field, following the voices of the players, the cries of the coach and the cheers of some fans sitting on the wooden stairs.

Some players were throwing the ball to each other, but John wasn’t among them.

"Hey, you," said a girl on the stairs, "You can’t step on the field, it's dangerous."

Sherlock ignored her and walked on it, searching for John.

He found him in a corner, near the locker room: he was doing some pushups, smoothly and effortlessly. He was blonder than the war veteran Sherlock had seen in the future, and a childish and carefree smile was on his face.

As John rose up, their eyes met.

Sherlock was enchanted by him, his heartbeat quickened, and he realized he had fallen in love with John once more.

However, John weaved his arms in his direction with a worried look on his face.

Why?

"Hey you! Be careful!" was the last thing Sherlock heard before he was hit by a truck (well, it seemed like that) and fainted (again?)

This time, there wasn’t any time travel involved, and he recovered his senses a few minutes later in the infirmary of the campus, with something cold pressed against his cheek. He opened his eyes and saw John, who sighed with relief. He was holding a ice pack against his face.

"Ah, you’re awake, wonderful."

"What happened?"

"You should tell me," John laughed, "you were wandering on the field, lost in your thoughts, and you got a ball in the face."

"Well, it’s because I've never seen you playing rugby."

John frowned.

"Of course you never saw me, we don’t know each other."

Sherlock felt like dying: he wanted to impress John and instead ended up to look like a total idiot.

He lowered his eyes and murmured a feeble "I'm sorry," but John smiled and shook his head.

"Don’t worry. The only thing that matters is that you didn’t hurt yourself. I'm John Watson, and you?"

"Sherlock Holmes."

"Are you new?"

"Yes, I' arrived this morning."

"You've got a traumatic welcome."

John laughed and Sherlock found himself laughing in turn, then got up from the bed and put on his shoes.

"Thank you for helping me out."

"No problem, but the next time you want to follow the training session, stay on the stairs, got it?"

"Yes."

"What’s your room number? If you want, I can walk you there."

"No, I'm fine, thank you. My room is n° 26."

"What a coincidence, it's in front of mine. Then we will see each other often."

It wasn’t a coincidence: Sherlock had hacked the school server to have that room, hoping to see John often, even though they had no lessons together, but right now John was probably thinking he was just a clumsy idiot.

The following day Sherlock was back at the rugby field. He had just sat watching John give orders to other players, when he was approached by a robust guy wearing glasses.

"Hi, I'm Mike Stamford: the ball that hit you yesterday was my fault, I’m sorry. Are you okay? Does your face still hurt?"

"No, no, I'm fine."

Sherlock nodded briefly to Mike and then looked back at John.

"Do you like rugby?" Stamford asked.

Sherlock nodded, without removing his eyes from the captain.

"And what's the best role in your opinion?"

Role? There were roles in rugby, as for the actors?

"Uhm... the-the one who passes the ball?" He stammered, but he felt like it wasn’t the right answer.

John looked in their direction, recognized him, raised his arm to greet him and Sherlock waved his hand.

"I see."

Mike chuckled, then joined his teammates on the field and whispered something to John, and the blond boy smiled.

An hour later, John stepped out of the locker room and approached Sherlock, his blond hair still wet from the shower, a towel around his neck, and a bright smile on his face; Sherlock was aware that if he wanted to impress John, he had to do something different than gaping like an idiot at him, but his mind was blank and he couldn’t do anything else.

God, John had probably broken him.

"This afternoon, after the lessons, my teammates and I will go to drink something in a nearby pub, do you want to come with us?"

Sherlock nodded quickly, but then someone screamed and a moment later a girl ran to the field asking for help.

John's doctor instinct kicked in instantly and the boy ran to meet her, grabbing her shoulders.

"Susan, calm down. What’s up?"

"Miss Mayer... Miss Mayer..."

"The theater teacher? What happened to her?"

"She is…” the girl pointed a trembling arm in the direction of the theater, “She's dead!"

While John and Mike were trying to calm Susan, who was on the verge of hysteria, Sherlock ran to the theater, attracted by the crime as a moth to a flame.

A janitor had laid Miss Mayer on the stage and was trying a clumsy CPR on her. Useless, since the woman was rigid, dead for several hours.

"Why did you move the body?" Sherlock attacked him.

"I'm trying to save her."

"Idiot! Don’t you see that she is dead? You tainted the evidence!"

"Who the hell are you? Get out!."

"You’re the only one who has to leave before causing more damage."

A firm hand lay on his shoulder: it was John. The boy walked on the stage and knelt down.

"Forgive my friend, he's very upset," John lied. "Anyway, he's right: the rigor mortis has already set in, she's been dead for at least four hours."

The janitor got up.

"Fuck, I have to warn the police, and the headmaster, too. Fuck, fuck… don’t let anyone into the theater and don’t touch anything."

Sherlock ignored the man and turned to John, still kneeling near the corpse.

"What's your diagnosis?"

"I'm still a student, not a doctor," he protested, but Sherlock shook his head.

"You've already started your training at the A&E of Barts, I know you've got a theory."

"How do you know that?"

"Please," Sherlock fidgeted, "we don’t have much time before the police arrive."

"All right."

John was torn: he had some moral qualms in examining the body, but a part of him was intrigued, and in the end he leaned over the woman and looked at her without touching, got near her face and breathed deeply, and then stepped off the stage.

"As I told you, I'm not a doctor..."

"Yes, duly noted. So?"

"The face is swollen, there are signs of hives on the skin and the lips are cyanotic. In my opinion it was an anaphylactic shock."

"Do you know if she was allergic to something?"

"Ah yes, basically all kind of nuts: hazelnuts, almonds, peanuts... She always brought her own food from home, and if some of the theater students brought a cake or pastries, she never ate them, since she was pretty afraid of anaphylactic shock."

"So everyone knew it."

"Yes, I guess. Why are you asking"

"Because it’s strange that a person so mindful of her allergy dies for an anaphylactic shock."

"Are you insinuating she was killed?"

"I still haven’t enough elements for a theory, but-"

Right now the police arrived with the paramedics, and the boys were taken out.

In the courtyard in front of the theater there was already a large crowd of people, including all the members of the theatrical company.

"There was no rehearsal this morning," Sherlock observed, "so why your teacher was in the theater?"

Susan, who had calmed down somewhat, said that Josie, one of the company's members, had suddenly moved to Edinburgh with her family, so Miss Mayer was learning her role for the play, because they hadn’t any replacement.

"It's the curse! This year, Miss Mayer chose Macbeth, and everyone knows that that play is cursed. Besides, her part was Lady M in person," said Craig, one of the young actors.

"Curses don’t exist," Sherlock sighed, rolling his eyes. God, there was such a concentration of idiots in that university...

"It's the curse, I tell you! There were other accidents, she ignored them and now she is dead."

Sherlock became more alert.

"What other accidents?"

"Ah, yes," John interfered, "I've heard of it too. A spotlight fell on the stage a few weeks ago and only by chance nobody was injured, then the trapdoor on the stage opened suddenly, and there was a start of fire in the electric panel of the theater."

"See?” Craig insisted, “It's the Macbeth's curse."

That said, he moved away, upset, and he wasn’t the only one to believe in that theory.

Sherlock insisted that they were all superstitious idiots, and the other students glared malevolently at him.

Like always.

"I don’t think it's a curse, too, but now they're all upset," said John to Sherlock, pushing him away, and Sherlock didn’t miss to notice that John was the only one on his side.

"What do you think, John?"

"The theater is quite old and needs a refurbishment: accidents happen."

"Or someone makes them happen," Sherlock murmured, thoughtfully.

For a couple of days and nights it was impossible to get near the theater, due to the presence of the forensics team. Sherlock tried to talk with the inspector in charge of the investigation, but he didn’t listen to him.

A few days later, the autopsy revealed that Miss Mayer had died for real for an anaphylactic shock caused by nuts, and the police closed the investigation saying that it was an accidental ingestion. A dull accident, in short.

But Sherlock told John he didn’t think so, and in the meantime he continued to gather information about the victim; when the police took off the seals at the theater, he decided to go back there: he was sure they had missed important clues and he needed to see the crime scene again.

Toward midnight, he stepped out of his room; he had stolen from Craig a copy of the keys of the theater, and got in without any difficulty. He lit the lights and climbed a narrow ladder behind the stage to reach the spotlights, and examined the broken holder.

At some point the door opened with a squeak, and Sherlock hid in the shadows to see who the newcomer was.

It was John.

"John!"

"Sherlock, where are you?" The boy shielded his eyes to protect them from the bright light.

"Up here."

John climbed up the ladder and joined him.

"What are you doing here?"

"I’m look for clues. And you?"

"I heard you getting out of your room and followed you." He shook his head, "I don’t know why, but I was expecting something like that from you."

There was no reproach in his voice, and he seemed amused by his bravado.

Sherlock bit his lips to hide a smile and then pointed to the holder.

"It's old and rusty."

"So was it an accident?"

"This one, yes."

He walked down the ladder and to the center of the stage, kneeling to watch the trapdoor that had accidentally opened.

"But here, there are scratch marks on the hinges, it has been tampered. And the electric panel that catched fire? It had been replaced six months ago, so it’s rather strange that it had broken again so fast."

"Very."

"And on the lock of the front door there’re more scratch marks, proof that it was pried open. Many times, I think"

"Why the police didn’t notice anything?"

"Because they didn’t look for clues: that moronic inspector immediately thought that Miss Mayer had ingested nuts by mistake and he didn’t listen to me."

Sherlock walked in the backstage and examined the dressing rooms, noting that the doors had no key to lock them.

"The members of the company have known each other for years and there have never been any thefts," John explained.

"They felt safe here," Sherlock murmured. "Let's go, there's nothing more to see."

They walked through the empty garden of the campus towards the dormitory, thinking about the crime; at some point John looked at him carefully.

"So, you think the police is wrong."

"I don’t think, I know it for sure: Miss Mayer was a careful and scrupulous woman and she wouldn’t eat anything that could contain nuts."

John frowned.

"Suicide, then?"

"Not even that. She had a good job, a stable relationship, so had no reason to commit suicide."

John crossed his arms to his chest: he was obviously intrigued by the possibility that it was a murder, and by Sherlock's reasoning.

“Then, maybe someone has played with the legend of Macbeth's curse, caused the accidents, but went too far with them."

"No, no, it's all smoke in the eyes, to divert attention from the victim and the true motives of this murder. The accidents happened here could have involve anyone, but Miss Mayer's death is different, she has been specifically targeted by someone."

"And you think you can find out who the murderer is?"

There was no hint of derision in John's voice. Sherlock knew he had the appearance of a gawky, lean and slouching boy, a boy that sometimes behaved like a total nutter, and that his theories could seem preposterous. But this young John looked at him with clean curiosity and perhaps with a touch of admiration, just as the John of the future did during their first meeting at Barts.

"Yes."

"Can I help you?"

"Nothing would please me more," Sherlock replied, then realized the boldness of his statement and backpedaled a bit, thanking the darkness that hid his blush, “That is, if you like to."

John nodded.

"Sure. What can I do?"

"I should know something more about her daily life."

"I have her between my Facebook contacts."

"Can I see her page?"

"Yes, tomorrow morning."

"Why not now?"

"Because it’s almost two in the night."

The Sherlock of the future had always been disinterested in these subtleties and hadn’t hesitated to ask John to stand up all night to resolve a case, taking for granted that he would, but now he realized his mistake.

"Okay, tomorrow morning."

"Sherlock... hey, Sherlock."

Someone was shaking him by a shoulder.

Sherlock quickly blinked and left the Mind Palace, returning to reality.

"What's up?"

In front of him, John sighed with relief.

"Thanks God you answered me, I was going to call an ambulance."

"Why? I'm fine."

"Well... you're looking at my laptop since this morning and you didn’t answer me, not even when I asked if you wanted to go to the cafeteria. I went alone, came back and you were still in the same identical position, you looked like you were in another world."

"This morning? Why, what time is it?"

"It's almost six in the afternoon."

"Yes, you see," Sherlock stretched, "When I think, I completely isolate myself from the outer world and forget that time passes. You think it's weird, isn’t it?"

John sit down next to Sherlock's.

"It's not something you see every day, but I don’t like the word "weird", it has a negative meaning. I'd rather say it's interesting: I've never seen anyone to focus as you do."

"Really?"

"Yes, even though it's a bit worrisome."

"Why?"

"Because I suspect that if a fire broke out, you wouldn’t realize it."

"I don’t know, it never happened to me."

"And I hope it’ll never happen."

"But you may be right."

"Then there should always be someone close to you, to prevent something bad happening."

I'd be lost without my blogger , the Sherlock of the future had said, and now the young student nodded.

"There should be."

John cleared his throat, as if he was embarrassed, and pointed his finger against the computer screen.

"Did you find anything interesting?"

"I solved the case."

"Seriously? How did you do? Who is the murderer?"

"Miss Mayer talked about everything on her Facebook page, including the fact that recently a wealthy uncle had died and she was his heir. Miss Mayer wasn’t married and had no children, and after her death, the next uncle's closest heir is a cousin, Adam Mayer, who recently lost a lot of money in the stock market."

"And how did he poison her?"

"It was quite ingenious, I admit it."

Sherlock clicked on a photo taken inside the theater a week earlier: there were Miss Mayer with her boyfriend in the dressing room; Sherlock zoomed the picture and showed John the table behind them, on which were the make up of the woman.

"Miss Mayer's lip balm is open and is consumed for half of its length. I asked Susan and she told me that the make up, as well as the costumes, were kept in the dressing room of the theater. As you have also observed, there were no thefts, so there was no reason to take precautions, unfortunately.”

“Indeed.”

Sherlock showed him three more photos, “But these were taken by the forensics team inside the theater: the lip balm on the table is new, it’s still sealed."

"Maybe the old one was over."

"In one week?"

John thought about it, then nodded.

"You're right, it can’t be."

"Miss Mayer wrote on Facebook about the accident with the spotlight, so Adam snuck inside the theater, tampered the trapdoor and the electrical panel to cause two more accidents, to make everyone believe that it was the Macbeth's curse, or to to deflect suspects on some member of the company. Finally he dipped the lip balm in a paste of hazelnuts or peanuts: Miss Mayer had moistened her lips several times while she was reciting, and so she poisoned herself, her cousin waited in the backstage for Miss Mayer to die and then replaced the balm, taking away the proof of his crime."

John didn’t question his theory nor asked if he was sure, he simply said, "You must tell the police," and Sherlock wondered how he had succeeded in gaining John’s trust. It was a miracle.

"I've already done it, I sent an email to a detective. Not the one in charge of the investigation, another one, and I hope he’s less stupid than his colleague."

"You were amazing, I'm speechless. Is this what you want to do after the university, a detective?"

Sherlock wasn’t sure he should be a consulting detective, this time: in the future his work had attracted Moriarty's attention, and, to defeat him, he took the decision to lie to John about his death. He thought that this time he should have had a different job, and yet here he was, charmed again by a crime, a mystery that asked to be solved.

"I don’t think so," he said abruptly, and John was surprised.

"Why? You've been smarter than the police."

"I was just lucky."

John crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head, astonished.

"A spirit of observation like yours is not just luck, you shouldn’t waste it. And if you don’t want to be a detective, what do you want to do with your life?"

Sherlock shrugged.

"I don’t know, I'll find something."

It was a stupid answer, and John seemed to be disappointed.

Sherlock rose quickly from his chair to leave his room, but he felt dizzy; John stood up quickly and held him up, forgetting about the future.

"Right, you don’t eat anything since last night, so now you come down in the cafeteria with me to eat dinner, doctor's orders."

"You said you weren’t a doctor, yet."

"For you I am already."

Sherlock smiled and nodded.

They sat at a secluded table and John told him about his family and his apprenticeship at Barts.

It wasn’t like the best Chinese restaurant in town, but it came close to it.

The following morning, Adam Mayer's photo, taken from his home in handcuffs, was on all news and newspapers; John entered Sherlock's room with a copy of the Times, sat down on the bed next to him, and read the article aloud, while Sherlock tried not to be too pleased about it.

"The newspaper speaks of an anonymous source that helped the police to resolve the case, so I guess you didn’t tell anyone.”

“No.”

“It seems unfair to me, after all it's thanks to you that they’ve arrested the culprit."

"I don’t care about fame. My parents will know, because my brother must have told him."

"Didn’t you tell it even to your girlfriend? I mean... do you have a girlfriend?" John asked, and Sherlock's mind inevitably came back to a similar conversation he had heard in the future. Funny how some things never change.

"No, girlfriends aren’t my area."

A spark of interest brightened John's eyes.

"Then do you have a boyfriend? There wouldn’t be anything wrong with that."

"I know," Sherlock replied, but with a more calm voice than the one of his future alter ego. "But no, I don’t have a boyfriend."

"Good, you’re unattached, like me," said John, licking his lips.

This time, Sherlock didn’t say that he was married to his work, and not because he didn’t have a work yet, but because the future had shown him that John would become infinitely more important than any other thing in his life, work included.

He already was, even though they knew each other for a few days.

"Yes, I have no one.” Sherlock swallowed loudly, soldiered on and added “so far."

John's gaze softened.

"Choose me, choose me," Sherlock thought with all the strength he had, "please, this time choose me."

Without saying a word, John put an arm around Sherlock's waist, pulled the boy to himself and kissed him.

He chose him.

Lying naked on the bed, with the light breeze coming from the window caressing their sweaty bodies, Sherlock and John seemed incapable of taking their hands off each other.

Sherlock in particular was fascinated by John's shoulder, which still didn’t carry the scar of the bullet that had pierced through it, and John's hands were very interested in his hair.

The older boy opened his mouth to say something, but then thought about it, and shook his head as if he was embarrassed by himself.

"What are you thinking about?" Sherlock wanted to know.

"It's stupid," John muttered.

"I want to know," Sherlock insisted, kissing his shoulder.

"Normally I'm not so sappy and romantic, I swear, but... since the first time I saw you, I had this feeling that we were destined to..."

"You’re right."

John laughed and a pleasant vibration spread throughout Sherlock's body.

"And I certainly didn’t think you were romantic."

Sherlock didn’t tell him that he had forced the hand to fate to meet him, hid his face against his chest and fell asleep.

From that day they became inseparable, though, because of John's lessons and training, they saw each other less often seen than Sherlock wanted.

One evening Sherlock made a surprise to John, and waited for him in front of the hospital. John greeted the other students and the doctors, and when he saw Sherlock on the sidewalk, his face lit up. However, before he could move to him, a nurse took John's arm and smiled.

"I ended my shift, too: do you want to come with me and have a drink together?"

Sherlock didn’t even have the time to feel jealous or hurt, because John got rid of the girl's grip and pointed to him.

"Only if my boyfriend comes with us."

The woman's smile turned into an embarrassed grimace and she moved away from John as if she had been burned.

"Oh... in this case I don’t want to bother you: you will certainly have better things to do."

"That's right."

John reached for Sherlock and kissed him soundly on his lips.

"Want to go?"

"Yes."

John took his hand and the two walked toward the campus, but Sherlock was strangely silent: he usually told John about all the scientific experiments he had in the lab.

"Don’t tell me you're jealous," John complained. "I barely know that nurse, she's just a colleague, nothing more."

Sherlock stopped and shook his head.

"It's not that."

"So what is it?"

"Are you sure?"

John frowned: he didn’t understand. "About what?"

"Us. If... uhm... you are with me now and in the future, you'll deny yourself different... alternatives."

The John of the future had married a woman in the end, and had a daughter.

There would be no Rosie with him.

Perhaps what John really wanted was a traditional family, and he was just a whim, something temporary. After all, John was the most popular guy in the university, he could have anyone.

John hugged him and his face became mortally serious.

"I chose you, Sherlock. Do you want to know why?"

"Please," Sherlock whispered, putting his hands on John’s chest.

"Because I love you, and when I'm with you I don’t see any other alternative."

"He chose me," Sherlock thought as their lips met.

"Oh, take a room, you two!" A passer-by who saw them kissing, shouted.

Sherlock blushed, but John gave the stranger a cocky smile.

"That's exactly what I want to do."

He took Sherlock’s hand again and ran toward the campus.

By the end of the year, however, Sherlock noticed that John had become restless and nervous, and one evening, coming back from the lessons, found him in his room, sitting on the bed.

"Sit down Sherlock, there's an important thing I want to talk about with you."

There was no need to say anything, in fact: Sherlock saw a letter from the Army on his bed: John wanted to enlist, he had applied to become a military doctor and the Army had admitted him.

John would become a soldier, as in the future Sherlock had already seen. Nothing changed, even if they met under completely different circumstances this time.

"You want to enlist! No, you must not, it's dangerous!" Sherlock shouted.

"Sherlock..."

"You could be killed! You don’t have to go!"

Meeting before would have been useless, if John was leaving for Afghanistan even this time, if everything was repeating again.

Softly, John took his face between his hands and forced Sherlock to look at him.

"It's dangerous, you're right, but inside me I feel I’m a soldier and I want to follow this road, because it's important to me, and I know you understand it."

Of course he understood, but that didn’t mean he would accept it.

"Everyone should pursue his dreams," John continued, "you too."

"I haven’t any dream."

"Do not lie to me," John replied, "you want to become a detective... or something like that."

"No."

"Yes. I saw how your eyes shone when you solved Miss Mayer's murder. They were beautiful and they made me fall in love with you."

Even in the future life that the Tesla's machine had shown him, John was immediately struck by Sherlock's ability to solve complicated mysteries.

"I said it was dangerous, and here you are."

Sherlock, so focused on not repeating the same mistakes he had seen in the other life, so frightened at the idea of losing John again, was fighting blindly against everything, even against what was right and what they really were.

The Sherlock and the John he had seen in the future were a consulting detective and a soldier: Sherlock had been impressed by John's promptness and lack of hesitation (he had killed a man for him, even though they had just met!) and John had an endless admiration for his cleverness.

Only mistakes should be avoided, but denying what they really were wouldn’t brought them anything good.

John had chosen Sherlock, accepting him for what he was: a weird boy, and full of idiosyncrasies, who didn’t care about social rules.

Perhaps now Sherlock had to choose John for what he was: a soldier who was eager to reach the battlefield.

"All right. If you feel this is what you wanna be, okay, I'm with you."

John kissed him on his forehead.

"Thank you. I know that it's not easy for you, and you probably don’t understand the reasons behind my decision, but thank you for being at my side."

"Always," Sherlock murmured, hugging him, "Promise me only one thing, that whatever happens, you will always come back to me."

"I promise."

Years passed, Sherlock graduated in chemistry and biology, met Ms. Hudson and helped her to get rid of her husband, and later Lestrade, although this time the detective of Scotland Yard didn’t save his life from a cocaine overdose the first time they met.

Meanwhile, there were John's missions abroad, too short leaves, always painful separations.

Finally, a twenty-seven years old Sherlock received the news that John had been injured during a mission. The wound to the shoulder was serious, but he survived and would go home.

He respected the promise and came back to him.

And when John got off the plane, Sherlock was there for him.

"I'm scared, Sherlock," John confessed one day, as they walked to Regent's Park. "I don’t know what to do with my life now that I’m not a soldier anymore."

In his eyes, the sadness for the loss of his battlefield was clear.

Sherlock took his hand, ready to show him an even more interesting one.

"But I know. I found a nice little place where to stay. It will be all right, trust me."

John trusted him, and with Sherlock he faced Jeff Hope, the acrobats from the chinese circus, and many other dangers.

Finally, while they were at Barts lab, Molly introduced them to Jim, the IT, alias James Moriarty.

The Sherlock of the future had been totally obsessed with the consulting criminal, to the point of sacrificing everything else to prove he was better and more clever than him.

But now Jim Moriarty was a little thing in comparison to relationship that Sherlock had built with John: nothing was more important than his blogger, his man, his life partner.

Moriarty should still be defeated, of course, because he was totally crazy and far too dangerous to be on the loose, but this time things would have gone differently.

It was windy and cold on the roof of Barts. Maybe it would snow before evening.

John opened the door and found him immediately, sitting on the cold concrete, smoking a cigarette; he looked at him and frowned, because Sherlock had stopped smoking long ago, and John didn’t know why he had resumed that bad habit now.

Of course John couldn’t know what had happened on that roof in another future, or what would happen again, in a few months ago.

But this time he would know.

John sat next to him and put a hand in his curly hair.

"Hey, something is wrong? Why did you want to meet here?"

Sherlock put the cigarette out and looked into John’s eyes.

"Remember when you enlisted in the Army and I wanted to stop you?"

"Yes, sure."

"In a few months I will probably have to do something as dangerous as that."

John became extremely alert and hugged him.

"It's Moriarty, isn’t it?"

"Yes."

John clenched his lips and exhaled from his nose, tense and worried: after the pool exploit, Moriarty was back in the shadows, but John had no illusions that the criminal had decided to leave them alone.

"All right. But you have to know that I will not let you do anything, unless I'm involved, too."

"Sure: that's why we are here."

"Speak, I listen."

Sherlock explained his plan to the slightest details, a plan that this time involved John, in fact, it was mainly based on him.

He was calm and he was sure that everything would be okay, because this time he hadn’t lied to him, and the chain of events that had brought the John and the Sherlock of the future to get drift had been broken.

This time, Sherlock had chosen him as well.