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John found the bottle in the dirt.
He was off-duty and taking a break behind one of the buildings on the edge of the base when he saw something metallic sticking out of the earth. He cautiously moved to take a closer look, but the metal was old and dull—something that had recently been unearthed, then, not something that was purposefully placed here. The part that was sticking up was round, like the bottom of a vase.
Curious, John started digging with his hands. You heard about that sort of thing sometimes, a person finding some priceless piece of pottery or metalwork. Not that he would get to keep it or anything, if it belonged in a museum, but it would be nice to find something like that.
It was a small metal bottle that nearly fit in the palm of his hand. There was too much tarnish to tell what it was made of, but there was an intricate design etched into its surface. John opened the stopper with some effort. Once open, the stopper hung from the rim of the bottle on a metal hinge. He expected to find dirt inside, but there was nothing. The interior gleamed like polished silver. It caught the light, and he could easily see to the bottom of the bottle if he shut one eye and peered in.
Huh. It must not be as old as he thought it was.
“The genie of the bottle awaits your wishes,” intoned a bored voice.
John jumped up. There was a man behind him. Tall and pale, and wearing a suit that looked like it came out of one of those ridiculously popular period shows.
“How— Who are you?”
The man rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’m the genie that you just summoned.”
John looked at the bottle in his hand. Then he frowned. “Yeah, pull the other one, mate. Now seriously, what are you doing here? Civilians should have an escort. Do you have papers? I can help you find where you’re supposed to be.”
“I’m a genie. You’re my master. It’s not that difficult to fathom.”
John laughed. “If you’re a genie, get back in the bottle.”
The man disappeared in front of his eyes. And the bottle in John’s hand had closed itself.
John took a good long look around him and then slowly put the bottle in his pocket.
-----
He waited until he was alone in his quarters that night before he pulled out the bottle again. It had been on his mind all day, in a maddening circle of thought that got him nowhere. He knew what he’d seen, but what he’d seen was impossible.
John braced himself and opened the bottle.
Immediately, the man was standing in front of him.
So he had a genie. Either that, or he was experiencing full visual and auditory hallucinations.
“You’re actually real.”
An eyebrow raised, but the genie said nothing. Apparently that statement didn’t warrant an actual response.
“Am I the only one who can see you?”
“Of course not; don’t be ridiculous.”
Right. Well, that wouldn’t cause any problems here, not at all.
“What’s your name?” John asked.
The genie gave him a contemptuous look. “You couldn’t possibly pronounce it in your tongue.”
“So what am I supposed to call you?”
“Most simply call me ‘genie’.” He fidgeted and glanced around John’s room like it had personally offended him. Obviously it was no palace, but still.
“I’d rather not,” John said. This whole thing was bizarre enough as it was. “Surely there must be something I can call you?”
“You may call me Sherlock, if you like. It suits me well enough.”
“All right then, Sherlock. I’m John.”
“Yes, yes. Can we get on with it?”
“With what?”
Sherlock gave John a look like he was particularly slow. “Wishes.”
John had already realised wishing went with genies, but he’d hardly given it the thought that it deserved. “Right now?”
“You must want something. Everyone wants something.”
“Yeah, but… How does it all work? I wish for something, and I get it, just like that?”
“Precisely. You make a wish and I’ll grant it,” Sherlock said. “Though I should tell you, the wording matters.”
“Great,” John said. There was always a catch in the stories, wasn’t there? You wish for one thing, and you end up getting something else. Usually something horrible. “So you can only grant a wish according to the wording, not the intent?”
“I can grant it either way. I simply choose not to.” A smirk spread across his lips.
“Why would you do that?”
“It’s the only way I can amuse myself. Consider this a warning to be especially careful what you wish for.”
John studied Sherlock for a moment. “Why warn me at all, then? Why not just wait for me to make a bad wish?”
“Oh, that’s what I used to do,” Sherlock said easily. “But I got bored with that. It’s much more challenging to subvert a wish if my master knows what game they’re playing.”
“Okay…” John said slowly. He’d have to put some thought into this, then. “How long do I have to make wishes?”
“There is no time limit. I’m here until I’ve served you. As for any other rules, which I can tell from your face that you’re about to ask: You can’t wish for more wishes. You can’t order me to do anything but grant wishes. You can order me back into the bottle, which I’m obligated to tell you, but unless you’re making a wish, I don’t have to do anything you say. Also, I can’t grant any wish that violates the order of the world.”
“What does that mean? Like you have to obey the laws of physics?”
Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I can create matter out of thin air; obviously I don’t have to obey the laws of physics.”
“So what do you mean?”
“There are no set parameters I can give you. Just make a wish and if I can’t grant it, I’ll tell you.”
John tried not to feel like Sherlock was making this deliberately difficult, even though he clearly was. “Can you at least give me an example?”
“Fine. One idiot wished to be the king of the world. I hope you can see why that isn’t feasible, because if I have to explain it—”
“I get it, I get it,” John said. “Your power doesn’t extend to rewriting the lives of seven billion people.”
Sherlock’s eyes widened. “There are seven billion of you now?” Then, “Who calculates the figures? How could it possibly be accurate?”
“It’s, uh… Well, the governments do censuses—” A thought occurred to John, and he narrowed his eyes at Sherlock. “How long have you been in that bottle?”
“Since 1918.”
John’s mouth opened slightly. “Well, things have changed a little since then. If you haven’t been out since World War I, you have some serious catching up to do. If we were at home, I’d show you the Internet. But things are more restricted here.”
For the first time, Sherlock looked interested in the conversation. “What’s the Internet?”
John paused. How to even explain the Internet? “Er, you’ve seen telephones and radios, right?”
“Yes. Advancements of the modern world.” He sounded like he was quoting someone.
“Well, things have become a lot more advanced since then. You can transmit information through wires or even the air; any sort of information, really—books, sounds, even movies, or communication between two people. And it displays on a, uh, a machine that you hold right in your hand. You can instantly look up the history of anything, or find out how anything works.”
Sherlock didn’t say anything, but John could tell that he was intrigued.
John suddenly heard footsteps pausing outside his door.
“Back in the bottle.”
-----
John didn’t have any time to himself again until the next evening. When he was back in his incredibly tiny quarters, he opened the bottle.
Sherlock’s expression flickered with annoyance upon seeing the same room again. “This is hardly better than being imprisoned.”
“It’s private, which is practically the lap of luxury on an Army base,” John countered, feeling a tad annoyed. His quarters were top notch.
“Another war, of course,” Sherlock said. “Someone is always at war. Where are we?”
“Afghanistan. Speaking of which, we’re in the middle of Afghanistan. On top of that, you are a supernatural being.”
“Yes?”
“So why do you look and sound like a posh git?”
“In my true form, I look like none of you. But I must assume some visage while on this plane. I was with my previous master for almost two decades, the longest I’ve ever spent with anyone. We had… an unusual relationship. He found me fascinating. Besides making his wishes, he never treated me as a servant or put me in the bottle. He proposed to give me free rein because it interested him to do so. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement; I got to experience the world unhindered, and he had the company of someone who wasn’t predictable to him. But to answer your question, my last master was from your country, and presented me as his brother. This was the last form I took, and I lived in it for a considerable time.”
“Didn’t anyone notice him gaining a brother out of thin air?”
“Given that he had no friends and no remaining family, no.” Sherlock threw himself down to sprawl in John’s desk chair, putting his feet up on the bed.
“Well, what happened?”
Sherlock gave him a blank look. “Happened?”
“Yeah, in the end.”
“He made his final wish, and I was resealed in the bottle. In the end, there was something he wanted more than my company.”
John must have looked aghast, but Sherlock laughed.
“Don’t trouble yourself being outraged on my behalf. That’s how it works, and I never expected otherwise. It was a nice sabbatical while it lasted, but this is how it always ends.”
“But after all that time—”
“Always, John,” Sherlock cut him off.
“So if that was in England, how did your bottle end up all the way out here?”
“I have no idea. It could have been carried by chance through someone else’s hands, or placed here on his instructions, or a combination of the two. At any rate, I imagine he got rid of it fairly quickly after his last wish. He wouldn’t have kept the bottle because of sentiment, and he couldn’t have given it to anyone else to use. It only works if it’s found—never given. Once someone has found it and possesses it as their own, either through purchase or thievery, I will be summoned when the stopper is opened. He found the bottle in a market in Greece.” Sherlock paused, thoughtful. “Mm. I do wonder what he’s up to now.”
“Well, he’s dead, surely.”
“Oh no, his first wish was for immortality. He asked for the correct kind as well—eternal youth instead of eternal life. He even managed to work in an escape clause in case he wanted to die one day. Very impressive. Very clever.” Sherlock actually did sound impressed, almost fond. “The wish rolled right off his tongue—in Greek—within the first minute of seeing me, logically sound and with no grammatical or semantic loopholes. He was possibly the only master of mine who wasn’t an idiot.”
“Thanks,” John muttered.
Sherlock gave him a derisive smile. “To be fair, I won’t know for certain that you’re an idiot until you’ve made your first wish.”
-----
It was becoming something of a habit, letting Sherlock out at night when he was alone. But tonight, Sherlock was in a foul mood. He demanded to go somewhere besides John’s room. John demanded that Sherlock change out of his dress suit from one hundred years ago. John might, might, be able to get away with showing Sherlock around the base, or at least around the medical centre (the advancements in which he thought Sherlock would be interested in seeing) if Sherlock would put on a uniform. Sherlock flatly refused.
John suspected it was because he was bound and determined not to do something John asked unless it was in the form of a wish.
“I’ll step out into the hallway on my own,” Sherlock threatened, pacing back and forth. “You can’t stop me unless you put me in the bottle.” He had already sensed that John was letting Sherlock out because he felt guilty and was generally uncomfortable with the whole ‘master’ thing.
“And you’ll be stopped in two seconds flat. At which point I’ll pretend not to know you, and you’ll be hauled off so they can try to figure out who the hell you are.”
“They won’t be able to.” Sherlock said it with the superior air of someone who had never dealt with a pissed off Army officer.
“Believe me, that will make it worse.” John paused. “What’s to keep you from just taking off on your own, full stop?”
“I can only get so far away from the bottle,” Sherlock seethed. “And before you ask, I’m physically incapable of picking it up.” For the first time, Sherlock pulled up his sleeve, revealing a cuff of metal around his wrist. The inscriptions on it matched the design on the outside of the bottle.
“Well, I’m still not letting you outside this room.”
Sherlock huffed and sat on top of the desk. John glared up at him from his own position on the bed.
“We appear to be at a stalemate, then,” Sherlock said.
“We don’t have to be.”
“You won’t make a wish, but neither do you present me with anything interesting. A change in surroundings and a chance to discover something new are the only things that make being here less tedious. At least in the bottle, I can think as I wish without interruption.”
“You want me to just leave you in there, then?”
Sherlock crossed his arms, looking sulky.
“What happens if I don’t make any wishes?”
“You’re still my master until you die.”
John rubbed a hand over his face. “Look, this isn’t easy. Especially since you’ve already admitted you’re going to do everything you can to not give me what I want anyway. I’m not even sure what I’d want to wish for.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s not that difficult!”
“Well, what would you wish for?” John snapped.
“My freedom, obviously.”
“Oh. Right.”
An uncomfortable tension filled the room.
“But you never get to make wishes,” John said.
“Correct. I can only attain autonomy if one of my masters gives it to me.”
“With one of their wishes.”
“Yes.” An arch look flashed across Sherlock’s face. “You can imagine how often that happens.”
“How many masters have you had?”
“Hundreds. I didn’t waste memory on the details.”
John boggled at how old Sherlock must be, how much history he must have seen. Then he thought again. How much could he really know, when he was in and out only long enough to grant wishes for people? His last master sounded like the exception, not the rule.
What a horrible existence.
“I’ll do it,” John said.
Sherlock snorted.
“No, I will.”
“Well?” he demanded.
“I didn’t mean right now,” John said. “I’ll make my first two wishes and then use my last one to set you free.”
John could tell from the blank stare he received that Sherlock didn’t believe him.
But the piercing look that settled over Sherlock’s features next was hardly better. “Perhaps you’ve given me something interesting after all.”
John suddenly felt like a bug under a microscope. “So I’m your entertainment now.”
“There are worse things to be.”
-----
John brought books to his room the next evening. He took Sherlock’s bottle out of his pocket and opened it, then thrust the books into Sherlock’s hands.
“Maybe you’ll find something interesting in there. Sorry that it’s mostly medical reference texts, but I couldn’t get my hands on much else I thought you’d be interested in. At the very least, you can get an idea of how far science has come.”
Sherlock didn’t say anything, but immediately took the books and sat down at the desk.
John lay on his bed, seriously turning the whole wish thing over in his head. What did he want?
Not to be immortal, not like Sherlock’s last master. A long life would be a good wish, but what did that really mean when it came to it? He could wish to live to one hundred, but that didn’t mean he’d be healthy. He could wish not to have health problems for as long as he lived, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be killed in a car accident. Was it worth using a wish in any of those ways if it didn’t guarantee him anything?
He could wish for love. But he wouldn’t want to wish for someone to love him; that would be wrong, and it’s not like he had anyone he secretly loved anyway. He could wish to find love, or to know for certain that someone was the right one when he met her. But that assumed that there was a right one. Maybe he should wish to know the name of someone who was a good match for him. Though she might not be the only one with her name. John could see where this had the potential to get complicated.
Maybe he should wish for something simple, like money. Which was probably the least original wish in the world. Anyway, if he wished for ‘money’, Sherlock would probably present him with a fiver and be done with it. He could wish for a specific amount, but then he’d have to explain a bag full of money appearing. He could wish to win the lottery if he bought a ticket. But John didn’t need countless wealth; he just wanted enough to be secure and comfortable.
Then there was the other wish he was considering. If he could have anything he wanted, he still wanted to be able to help people.
Suddenly Sherlock turned around. “I can practically hear you thinking.”
“And?”
“What you said yesterday—despite the fact that I doubt you’ll follow through on it, no one’s ever even offered to do that for me. So in the interest of enticing you to keep your promise, if you tell me what you want to wish for, I’ll tell you how to say it. There’s a greater chance of your freeing me if you’re pleased with me.”
John sat up. “All right,” he said slowly. He wasn’t sure what to think, as this seemed to be the complete opposite of Sherlock’s earlier statements about granting wishes in unintended ways. Though John supposed the worst thing that could happen was that he had to use his second wish to undo the first.
“So what do you want?” Sherlock asked.
“I want to be able to heal people. Not like the laying on of hands or anything, because I know that would get suspicious quickly. And I’ve worked too hard to be a doctor to want to stop doing that. I want—I don’t know—I want to know that anyone I operate on will make it, even if they should be a lost cause. Whether that means that they don’t bleed out as quickly, or that their systems don’t fail until I can fix them, I don’t know, but that’s what I want.”
“Mm,” Sherlock mused. He was silent for a moment. “You should say, ‘I wish that my surgical skills would never fail to save my patient’s life.’”
John turned that sentence over in his head. It seemed sound enough, and was better phrased than anything he had come up with.
Right then. He took a deep breath and said, “I wish that my surgical skills would never fail to save my patient’s life.”
Sherlock snapped his fingers. “Wish granted.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Sherlock looked at him a second longer before turning back to the books.
John didn’t feel any different. He thought he would, somehow.
“How do I know it worked?”
Sherlock shrugged, his back to John. “You won’t until no one dies on you, I suppose.”
-----
Over the next week, John continued to let Sherlock out in the evenings, and continued to bring him whatever factual reading material he could find. Sherlock, for his part, hadn’t been disagreeable in the slightest. He no longer complained about being stuck in John’s room or tried to goad John into making wishes. John wasn’t sure how much of that was because Sherlock was now pleasantly distracted with the books and how much was because he wanted John to free him. At any rate, something had shifted the night John said he would wish Sherlock free.
John was also surprised at how quickly he’d become used to having Sherlock there. Realistically, these were the few hours a day he got to spend alone, and having someone in his space out of the blue should have been annoying. But it was almost nice. There seemed to be a sort of camaraderie between them. As long as he ignored the fact that Sherlock was a virtual prisoner, that is.
John knew he needed to get around to making his second wish. He had ruled out any version of wishing for finding love, just based on the potential complications and personal implications. Money would be nice, but he was sure he would always be able to get a job doing something. More importantly, all the money in the world couldn’t buy health.
“I’ve thought about my second wish,” John said.
Sherlock looked up.
“I’d like a long life and no debilitating health conditions.”
“‘Long’ is relative,” Sherlock said. “And what exactly do you mean by debilitating conditions?”
“No developing cancer or heart disease, or any major health problem, really. And one hundred years is about the top end of things.”
Sherlock shook his head. “You can’t wish for something with a conjunction. It’s like multiple wishes; for instance, you couldn’t make a wish for gold and a mansion. You’d have to wish for a mansion filled with gold.” He smirked. “Though if I were granting that wish, I’d still have a lot of leeway on ‘filled’.”
John paused and considered. He decided that health was more important. He’d seen people suffer for years with poor quality of life. “What happens if I wish for perfect health? How would I die? I don’t want to live forever.”
“That’s quite a popular wish, you know.”
“No.”
Even though the idea itself was tempting, it was too unnatural to sit right with him. He wanted a real life, not a life that he would have to hide. He would never be able to have stability.
Sherlock shrugged. “If you like, wish for perfect health until your one hundredth birthday. Then something natural will happen to you and that will be that.”
“All right.” John paused, then said, “I wish for perfect health until my one hundredth birthday.”
Sherlock snapped his fingers. “Wish granted.”
“Right,” John said again. “Well.” Two wishes down, one to go. Now would be the time to free Sherlock.
And then Sherlock would leave. John knew it wasn’t fair to Sherlock to keep him here just because John suddenly didn’t want to be alone. In fact, it was horrible. But John couldn’t help the way his stomach dropped at the idea of Sherlock vanishing.
“Er, what actually happens when I free you? Are you just… here, but free? Or do you go somewhere else…?”
“I don’t actually know,” Sherlock admitted. “There’s every chance I’ll be pulled back to my own dimension.”
“Sorry, what?”
“You asked me once why I look like this. My true form is smoke and fire, and my kind travel dimensions unseen by humanity. Not all of us are bound, you know. This is simply what happens when we are.”
John nodded. “And you want to go back to your own dimension.”
“I want to be free. It’s simply possible that I would be pulled back to my dimension. If the doorways haven’t closed, I would be able to come back, but much could have changed from the old days. There was nothing particular then that kept us from walking here, except disinterest and danger. Most of my kind weren’t interested, and there was always the danger of being bound. Though from what I’ve gathered of this world, there seem to be few who believe in us anymore, let alone know how to bind us.”
John read between the lines, his eyes narrowing as he studied Sherlock. “That’s what happened to you, isn’t it? You were caught because you were here and you were curious.”
Sherlock returned his gaze flatly. “A curiosity I’ve paid for many times over.”
“But you’d do it again, wouldn’t you?” John asked. “You want to be here.” He wasn’t sure which one of them he was trying to convince. “I’ll do it, right now, if you want me to,” he continued. “But if you wanted to stay a little bit longer, I’ll free you later. You know I don’t have anything else to wish for. And if you’d wear a uniform, I could actually take you out, show you things. You might not ever get to come back.”
John knew he sounded ridiculous. The only thing he didn’t know was whether he sounded like someone going back on a promise, or like someone grasping at straws. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
Sherlock’s face was unreadable. Then he said, “I would at least like to finish this book, I suppose,” and turned back to the desk.
-----
John mentally set the date of three days. In three days, he would free Sherlock, and then if Sherlock disappeared forever, well, he’d still be gone, but at least John had had three more days with him.
However, his plans went to hell the next morning. He was called out to accompany a routine patrol that ended up in the middle of an ambush. John had already saved three men while the fight raged around him, staying behind cover as best he could. He was sure his new surgical skills were working because that last kid should have been dead by rights.
John picked up his kit and started to move toward another man down, this one bleeding heavily from an abdominal wound. He was almost there when a sharp pain shot through his shoulder, knocking him to the ground at the impact. The pain momentarily disoriented him, before he had the presence of mind to press his right hand to his shoulder. Not that it did much good against the hole the bullet tore in him. He was down and losing too much blood, and there was no one else near his position.
John laughed to himself bleakly. Neither one of his wishes would get him out of this. He couldn’t perform surgery on himself, and perfect health hadn’t kept him from getting shot.
Almost of its own will, his hand moved from his shoulder to his pocket for Sherlock’s bottle. His fingers fumbled with the stopper, slippery with blood.
The bottle opened, and Sherlock was standing beside him. Upon seeing John, he quickly knelt. An expression of shock (and dismay?) crossed his features before he looked between the wound in John’s shoulder and the bottle in John’s hand. Then his face became a resigned mask.
And John suddenly remembered that this meant he had to make a choice. Truthfully, his mind had blanked out everything except that he had a get out of jail free card in his pocket. Only when Sherlock was in front of him did the implications of using that card slam into him. John could either save his own life or give Sherlock a free life. Why hadn’t he just made his last wish yesterday? He never would have had to make this decision; he could have just died knowing he’d already done the right thing.
He could set Sherlock free at the cost of his own life, or he could live and condemn Sherlock to a life of slavery.
I want to live.
How could I live with myself?
John could feel the blood loss starting to drag him under. Sherlock was still kneeling beside him. John had the surprisingly lucid thought that this must be a hell of a firefight if no one noticed the strange bloke in a suit.
“Oh, just do it!” Sherlock snapped. “It’s not like I really thought you would, anyway.”
Sherlock expected John to choose himself. Really, why would he expect anything else? John closed his eyes and gripped the bottle.
“I wish for your freedom.”
Then he passed out.
-----
.
.
.
The first thing John heard upon awakening was the slow beep of hospital machinery. The second was a voice.
“You,” Sherlock pronounced, “are an idiot.”
John turned his head. Sherlock was sitting in a chair by his bed, dressed in different clothing, and with a mobile in one hand.
“Which you should be extremely thankful for,” John rasped, taking in his surroundings. “I’m alive.”
“Your grasp of the obvious is astounding.”
“Why am I alive?”
“Apparently it wasn’t a fatal wound, just nearly so.” Sherlock turned his head to focus on John. “You’ve been invalided out, and you’ve been unconscious for over a week. They say your shoulder will be permanently damaged, but I assure you, you’ll make a full recovery. It was the least I could do.” Then he glanced back at his mobile.
Where did he even get a mobile?
John mentally translated the last part of what Sherlock had said, which was no small task given how out of it he felt. “So you still have magic.”
“Not enough to have saved your life, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just the ordinary, everyday sort.”
John frowned at the vagueness of that statement.
Sherlock sighed. “It’s difficult to explain. My power is at its highest in my own dimension. Here, I’m severely limited. The only way to access that higher power is to create a magical link through the dimensions. Unfortunately, that link also binds.”
“So you only have access to your full powers in this world if you’re not free.”
Sherlock nodded. “I was pulled back to my dimension at first, but I found a way to enter this world again without too much difficulty. There’s still quite a large dimensional rift at Stonehenge.”
“What happened to your bottle?”
“It disintegrated with your wish, of course.” He held up his hand, showing his wrist. “As did my binding. Now, as soon as you’re stable enough to be moved, I’ve arranged transport to London.” He must have seen the question on John’s face, because he kept talking. “You remember my ‘brother’? True to form, he’s managed to insinuate himself into a seat of power. London is vastly different than I remember it, but it was almost absurdly easy to find him. He’s becoming predictable in his old age, figuratively speaking.” Sherlock snickered. “You should have seen his face. Upon learning about my freedom, he was half convinced I’d come to exact some horrible revenge on him for using his third wish and consequently trapping me back in the bottle. I assured him that nothing was further from the truth, and after that he was most accommodating. He’s shown me the Internet—” Sherlock held up the phone “—and brought me up to speed on the generalities of the last hundred years, though I’m still discovering the particulars.”
John digested all of that. Which, again, was impeded by the drugs. “So you’ve already been to England and you could go wherever… and you came back here?”
Sherlock raised a brow. “Would you prefer that I hadn’t?”
“No. No, I’m just surprised. I figured that, er, you wouldn’t want to. I didn’t free you when I said I would. Not because I wanted the third wish, but because I was being selfish.”
“Yes.” Sherlock didn’t argue with him, which made John feel just a little bit terrible. He had been that transparent, then.
Then Sherlock said, “Your offer to show me things was genuine, even if your motivations were selfish. But it was hardly the worst thing a master could do.” He paused. “At any rate, you freed me at what you thought would be the cost of your own life, so I’m hardly going to hold your previous actions against you.”
John cleared his throat. “Look, er, you’re not here just because you feel grateful to me or anything, are you?”
“Now that my time is my own, I would hardly plan on staying because of a mere sense of obligation,” Sherlock said. “I’m pleased that our acquaintance can continue. I would have been dissatisfied if you had died, even though I never would have forgotten what you did. Given the alternatives, things seem to have worked out in the most acceptable manner possible.”
John smiled, feeling relieved. Sherlock being free and Sherlock being here was more than acceptable. Not to mention John himself being alive. “I’d have to agree with that. Well, aside from the getting shot bit.”
“Oh, you’ll be back on your feet in no time.” Sherlock waved a hand dismissively, like recovering from life-threatening injuries was a piece of cake. Based on the way John felt now, ‘everyday magic’ didn’t go very far when it came to the speed of recovery. Sherlock might have guaranteed that John would heal, but it wasn’t going to be a fast process by any means.
“I have to warn you, Mycroft will insist on meeting you. You won’t be able to avoid it.”
“Mycroft?” John echoed.
“My ‘brother.’ He’s oh-so-delighted and intrigued that I made a friend, what with my ‘charming personality,’ as he put it. If he’s insufferable to you, make sure you lord it over him that you freed me and he didn’t.”
“Why did you even go back to see him? It doesn’t sound as if you even like him. He kept you with him for years, even seemed fond of you from what you said, and then just discarded you when he finally needed something.”
“As I always knew he would,” Sherlock said plainly. “He never gave me illusions otherwise. Despite our different circumstances, we saw the world in very similar ways. I’m not human, and he might as well not be.” Sherlock gave a minuscule shrug. “We understand each other. The rest is irrelevant.”
“Well, I hope you do more than ‘understand’ me,” John muttered.
“I don’t understand you at all. Though I fully intend to.” Sherlock glanced back at his mobile, like the conversation was over. There was a short silence before he looked up again. “John. What you did—it was… thank you.”
“Er, you’re welcome.” John paused. “Any idea what you want to do now?”
“None whatsoever.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “Besides exactly as I wish.”