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When he was young, John had imagined that everyone lived like this.
He’d imagined that everyone knew that people/places/events came with layers below the surface, layers that everyone could see.
He never tried to hide his interest in the fairies in the garden, his delight at the animals he sometimes was, or his fear of the tentacled monsters living under his bed. Other children seemed to see the same things, or at least similar things, but different. That was okay, John could understand different.
His family had encouraged him, played along, although it quickly became clear that most of the time they couldn’t see precisely what he did either. And they couldn’t understand his ongoing confusion about when tomorrow would come, when it seemed to happen several times, several ways, all at once, before it finally became yesterday for everyone.
"What an imagination you have!" his mother had laughed, when he made her dish up an extra plate of lunch for the visiting friend she hadn't noticed, the one with the curly hair and the pirate hat. "Maybe one day you'll be a writer, and tell amazing stories!"
John frowned at her in confusion, but softened as her semi-transparent wings wrapped around him in a soft, feathery hug.
It was called imagination, then, these things that other people couldn't see. That was a relief; he'd been starting to wonder if there was something wrong with him.
***
As he grew, and the other children's invisible friends dropped away, as they stopped protesting the reality of the flights of fancy that could occupy a whole gang of children all day, John's imagination persisted.
Eventually, after an incident at school where John had punched a bully for hurting someone who—the others all claimed—wasn't there, his mother took him to see a psychiatrist.
He was a kindly seeming man with grey hair/grey fur/grey tentacled whiskers, who asked him about the things he sometimes saw. And in that moment, John had known, seen the other Johns stretching away into the distance who'd answered this question wrong, who were medicated/ostracised/locked away/shock treated/different, and he'd screwed up everything he knew across every place he could see and he’d lied and lied and lied.
"He seems a normal enough boy to me," the doctor had told his mother later when John was occupied playing with the toy stethoscope/skeleton puzzle/stuffed animals. "Very bright, very active imagination, but those often go together. From what I can see he's got a firm grip on what's real. He's probably mainly just bored."
John's mother had looked relieved, but not as relieved as John—this John—felt, watching the other Johns who were going a different way, to the pharmacy/hospital/laboratory/government school, and watching their sad/happy/colourless lives where nothing worked made him firm in his resolve.
He couldn't see his mother's wings anymore, not without reaching far enough to risk losing himself.
No one would understand. The other people and places he saw were going to have to stay John's secret forever.
***
Of course, it wasn't that simple.
Sometimes the things he saw were true, in some sense. Sometimes, they were true but not when John thought they were. He quickly learned to proof things, to check what the people around him interacted with and ignore anything else.
No one, it seemed, had wings. Or animal companions. Or visible tentacles. Or fangs and a separate 'blood products' queue in the school cafeteria. There were only two genders, apparently. And only one species of student.
John was male, here. Human. And he'd never been called by another name. It was difficult to keep track of what the things he saw meant, difficult to pretend he didn't know that the blonde girl with too much makeup was also a vampire, or the pale and sickly teacher was a werewolf. Difficult to remember that they weren't.
But sometimes it was that simple.
When John saw the lonely chubby boy with a basset hound sitting in class, where he might have stepped in front of a bus/hanged himself in his garage/slit his wrists the previous night, John had made himself watch carefully to make sure the teachers were still speaking to him. Double checked. Then he touched the boy's elbow gently and asked if he'd mind having lunch with John.
He didn't seem depressed. He wanted to be a doctor, to help people.
John wanted to help people, too, even if it made him uncomfortable, the idea of being too close to someone who was learning about things that were wrong with people. Someone who might decide that John—this John—also had what some of the other Johns—the ones who hadn’t lied well enough in the psychiatrist’s office all those years ago—what their doctors were calling schizophrenia and attempting to treat without success.
Watching the spectres of their lives swirl around him, John was sure of nothing except for that he didn't want that.
In the end he decided that studying medicine with Mike was a good way to expand his knowledge of here alongside someone who could help him proof what he studied, to work out how to pass for normal. And it was a way to explain his visions and give warnings to people without ending up in an institution.
As it turned out, he and Mike were both glad to have made a friend.
***
Halfway through training at Barts, Mike suggested that John’s intense attention to structure (a side effect of having to constantly keep track of what in his environment was real) might make him well suited to the army, and instantly a whole string of possibilities light up in John’s mind. He—this John—liked what he saw—so did a thousand other Johns, even ones who’d never wanted to be a doctor—and he signed up the next day.
Training was utterly brilliant.
It was harder once he was deployed. Soldiers he stitched up/lost/never saw appeared again the next day, alive and well/wounded/dead/had never joined up, and as much as there were still plenty of rituals of the day to help John keep control, the unpredictability of active duty meant he had to be constantly proofing everything around him, always on the alert to the here and now.
But he was doing good, as well. Casualties that had failed his proofs sometimes turned out to have died weeks ago, but sometimes they were heading to the scene of the attack the next day. John—this John—could flag soldiers with minor medical issues to withhold them an extra day, or clear others a few days early when he would have rather kept them on, changing the nature of the disaster. The units under John's care had the lowest casualty rates in Afghanistan.
On the day/day after/day before he was shot, he turned to face the sniper, knowing that his unit had/hadn't/would/had to turn back if he was hit, preventing them from running into an IED/ambush/insurgent trap/routine mission.
When the bullet hit/missed/clipped/tore straight through his shoulder/spine/leg/head/wing/ink-sack/shoulder it had/hadn't/would/might have saved lives he was/wasn't/couldn't be but still felt responsible for, might have cost more lives/less lives/different lives, could have delayed/extended the conflict in a way no one else could have done, and John—all of John—lay on the sand/grass/dirt/clouds barely injured/bleeding/already dead, and drifted across places and people and worlds, and he’d lost his leg to an IED/no his tail/no he’d stayed on serving on base/no he was captured and tortured/he was lifted into the truck/ran keeping low for cover/limped with his arm over his orderly's shoulder, and people yelled and screamed and shouted contradictory orders across each other and nothing made any sense at all.
The medical staff blamed the fever for his rambling, but all John—this John—knew was that the solidity of here seemed to have completely vanished, and he wasn’t certain if he would ever find it again.
***
He limped through London among the visions of strangeness, unmoored, cut loose from reality, as zombies tore the city to pieces/giant tentacled monsters erupted from beneath the pavement/pirates invaded from outer space/the military dictatorship maintained uneasy order: a grey man with a grey cane amid a world blurred to a grey with no sense or meaning, unable to tell if anything at all was real, wondering if it was time to confess and look at medication, wondering if it was time to start looking down the barrel of his own gun.
"What happened?" asked a man he once knew, apparently, although John had hardly recognised him with the weight the basset hound he’d always had/hadn't had beside him had put on.
"I got shot," said John, wondering if it was true, if that was the story he told last time, if he was even here or if he was still being shot at/was in with his psychologist/was still at home/had always been dreaming everything, all along.
"That's not the John Watson I know," said the man.
"Yeah, I'm not the John Watson..."
He stopped himself, remembering, wondering, was John—this John—right handed? Left? Who was he? He switched his coffee cup from hand to hand/spilt it over himself/took a sip/clenched his fist and stayed silent.
He trailed after Mike as he went to a place, to meet a person, a person who said, "Afghanistan or Iraq?"—and the words had rung with the voice of a choir, a million billion different versions of this man/woman/child/detective/priest/criminal/violinist/flatmate/husband/friend/bandmate/soulmate in a million billion different hospitals/schools/coffee shops/gardens/slave auctions/moon bases, all asking that same question—and for just a fraction of a moment, John stood stock still, overwhelmed by the vast harmonic resonance.
It was a question. He was supposed to answer. Right.
There were John/Jane/Joan/Johann Watsons who'd been deployed in Afghanistan. And Iraq. And to the Lunar Colonies. And some who'd never been to war at all. But he/she/he-omega/he-alpha/he—this he—was... yes, Afghanistan. That was right.
Somehow John was sure of it.
"We don't know a thing about each other," John protested, as though there was anything he could truly know in the vast spinning multiverse. "I don't know where we're meeting, I don't even know your name!"
The man—Sherlock Holmes—fired off facts about John's life like it was obvious, like John—this John—was a single man in a single body in a single universe, leaving John stunned, frozen in awe. Here.
For a moment, John wondered if this man was like him, if he'd harnessed his curse and learned to make use of it, but no... he was too certain, about everything.
John was never certain about anything.
***
Except, apparently, this.
"That," said John, sitting in a cab, entirely himself, the ghostly shadows of other people and places receded into the background until they were barely visible at all, "was amazing."
"D'you think so?" asked Sherlock, almost shyly.
"Of course it was." John frowned at him. Did he not know that? "It was extraordinary. It was quite extraordinary."
"That's not what people normally say."
"What do people normally say?" asked John apprehensively.
He probably shouldn't have; he'd discovered a long time ago that asking a counterfactual question was almost guaranteed to send him into a tailspin, simultaneously exploring every possible outcome without regard to reality—but he wanted to know this man. Wanted to understand how he dealt with his strange talent, how other people dealt with him spouting things that surely no one could know, without ending up locked away like John had always feared.
"'Piss off!'" answered Sherlock with a wry grin, and John laughed along with him, held fast against the flood of unreality like a ship at anchor.
Apparently there was no John Watson anywhere, who would ever say that to Sherlock Holmes.
***
"Did I get anything wrong?" asked Sherlock.
John took the question seriously, like he did anyone looking to proof the reality around them. He confirmed what he could, Sherlock's rapid-fire deductions of a few minutes earlier having made the answers sharp and ready in his mind.
"And Harry's..." said John, then paused, running through the options in his mind, but yes, he was sure, actually sure of this, because sometimes Harry was his brother but for John—this John—her name was... "short for Harriet. What am I actually doing here?"
Then the policewoman called Sherlock freak.
The word made John sick, split his consciousness in a thousand directions at once, making his stomach roil/his fangs elongate/his wings spread/the hair down his spine bristle/the demons inside his chest ready to burst out and protect and consume, because if anyone was a freak here, it was John, and anyone who could call someone as brilliant as Sherlock that so casually was a danger to him—to this John—as well.
John leaned harder on his cane, cut adrift again, until Sherlock brought him back. He looked at the policewoman's knees and reality snapped back into place: no wings/demons/roaring dinosaur/fangs/black uniform with red armbands. Just a woman, with a lover, afraid of someone she didn't understand.
He—this John—was here. Where Sherlock was.
Sherlock's words pinned everything down, brought it into focus.
And as he watched Sherlock work around the dead woman's body, sharp eyes picking up little signs and seeing a reality so precise and clear and certain, John had never felt so grounded here in his life.
***
“I’m pretty sure you could search this flat all day, you wouldn’t find anything you could call recreational,” John told the invasion of police officers staunchly.
“John, you probably want to shut up now,” said Sherlock.
“Yeah, but come on….” John paused, shocked at the look in Sherlock’s eyes. “No.”
“What?” demanded Sherlock.
“You?” When was the last time John had been genuinely shocked? When was the last time he’d felt certain enough of anything that he could be wrong about it?
He didn’t hear Sherlock’s response, because the sickness had already hit him, disconnecting him, and he drifted half aware through the thousand conflicting conversations around him, drifting through worlds where Sherlock was high/homeless/turning tricks for drug money/locked in involuntary rehab/drinking the blood of addicts for a fix/zoned out and clutching his ears trying to medicate the noise away/dead of an overdose in an alley, and he barely noticed anything happening around him until the moment that Sherlock got in a cab and left.
Alone, staring at the GPS map marking the location of the pink phone, suddenly everything snapped into place again, and he knew what Sherlock was doing. Could see where he was headed.
He followed the map—real—and he saw the poison pill in Sherlock’s hand—real, lethal—and he saw the future spreading out—saw himself miss, the ricochet off the breaking glass sending the wild bullet through Sherlock's temple—he adjusted until it felt right and pulled the trigger—saw himself hit, on target, real, this one was real —and he waited outside the police tape until Sherlock—real, so very real—met his eyes and asked if he was all right.
Of course he was.
“You were going to take the damned pill, weren’t you?” he asked Sherlock. “It was the wrong one, you know. Or they both were. You would have died.”
“Mmmm, perhaps,” said Sherlock giving him a narrow look. “But I knew you’d turn up.”
***
John's giggles at Sherlock's vastly inaccurate predictions faded off as he realised that the other man had stopped to stare at him across the cheap linoleum tabletop, holding his own fortune cookie carefully in two hands.
"What does this one say?" Sherlock asked, and cracked the cookie in the centre without opening it.
Possibilities spilled into John's mind. You will find a thing. It may be important./Your smile will tell you what makes you feel good./The greatest risk is not taking one./Love can last a lifetime, if you want it to.
"I don't know," managed John over the clamour of a hundred Sherlocks reading out their fortunes in his head. Not real. Not here. "You're the one who claimed to be able to predict them."
"And now it's your turn," returned Sherlock.
"'Person who argues with idiot is taken for fool,'" John invented wildly.
Sherlock gave him a patient look. "Now try not making it up," he said. He slid the paper out but kept it hidden in his palm as he crunched on the cookie.
John stared at him, fear and confusion battling for dominance in his chest, possibilities…. No. He wasn't losing himself in the spread of possibilities. A pair of great dark wings opened on Sherlock’s back and then resettled themselves in place. Not real. John—this John—knew that without having to check. He was here. With Sherlock.
"Are they wings?” asked Sherlock curiously. “Behind me? I know you see things that aren't there. The way your eyes move, the way you freeze up at a leading question. The way you shake your head a little as you dismiss them, the way you avoid looking into some apparently empty spaces. Sometimes you're not sure what's real, though. At first I thought it was high-functioning schizophrenia, but that's not quite it, is it?"
John clenched his jaw. No one else had ever seen anything at all. He should have known that with all Sherlock could see, he wouldn't miss this for long.
"I'm the least qualified person to make that diagnosis," he admitted quietly, honestly. He—this John—had shot a man to save this one’s life. That had been real. "Yes, they're wings."
He considered leaving it there, but under Sherlock's intense gaze... well. Sherlock was about as good as it got for an independent opinion, and it wasn't dangerous. Not to this John. Not here. He could feel that much.
"I think some of the things I see are real,” admitted John. “At least… somewhere. A long way away. Or perhaps somewhere close. But... it's too easy to lose my grip on what’s real where I am." He thought for a moment, winnowing through the realities, looking for the ones closest to here. "This fortune no good," he said finally. "Try another."
Sherlock glanced down at the paper in his hands, and then looked at John seriously.
"You have a drop of honey-soy sauce on your sleeve, and there's a grain of rice caught on your shoulder," he said, pointing. "Residual smell of gunpowder on your fingers, a bulge at the back waist of your trousers where there’s a gun that would swab positive to being fired since it was last cleaned. If someone sprayed me with luminol, I'd light up like a Christmas tree from the blood spatter. We're eating Chinese together to celebrate, because I was about to die in an unnecessary attempt to prove I was clever and you saved me. I am real. And you… are not schizophrenic."
He spread the fortune cookie paper on the table between them.
"Oh, John.” When Sherlock grinned his whole face lit up with it, and his wings quivered behind him. "We're going to have so much fun."
"Yes," said John, smiling back at Sherlock without looking down. He didn't need to. "I know."