Chapter Text
It’s Christmas!
The streets of London glistened with festive adornments, celebrating the most wonderful time of the year. In Marylebone, cheerful crowds drifted through warmly lit streets as heavy snow fell – freely, happily, as if there were nothing wrong in all the world. And yet, amidst the laughter of children weaving between market stalls and pantomime posters, a man in a deerstalker cap walked with quiet purpose, his hands clasped behind his back.
He was a legend in London, and increasingly, across the whole of the United Kingdom. One must be acquired to the art of stealth, he mused, bowing his head with studied elegance each time a passer-by draws near.
Sherlock Holmes had spent many long days – and perhaps longer nights – pursuing a series of peculiar and troubling disappearances. For weeks, Londoners had been vanishing without a trace, and even Holmes, ever confident in his reasoning, struggled to find a pattern. People going missing in London was not unusual in 1903 – but when Holmes had a hunch, it was rarely without merit.
Indeed, his most trusted companion, Dr. John Watson, had drawn up tables and notes to show the increase: the number of disappearances has risen sharply in comparison to 1902. For Watson, the case was deeply personal. His daughter – his only child, and the final living memory of his late wife, Mary – had joined the list of the missing.
Suitably troubled, Holmes departed 221b Baker Street for a new invention now dotting the streets: the telephone box. A marvel of science, it allowed communication across great distances. The general public remained wary of the contraption, unsure whether to embrace it or not. Holmes, by contrast, was fascinated – another puzzle, another wonder.
Queues for the telephone box are long and tiresome, but Holmes brushed past them with practiced indifference.
“Excuse me!” protested the man at the front. Holmes turned his head to look at the man.
The man gasped. “Oh – my apologies, Detective Holmes. Do continue.”
Holmes’s eyes narrowed. “It is Mr. Holmes, not ‘Detective,’” he replied with quiet sharpness. “I am not in the employ of any agency, nor do I make it my business to follow men too timid to propose marriage during the festive season.”
The man stared, astonished.
“No ring on your hand,” Holmes continued. “You appear to be in your thirties. Your attire is too formal for market wandering, and a drop of nervous perspiration betrays your inner state. Lastly, your left inner coat pocket has been disturbed – likely by the outline of a ring box. Obvious, really.” He turned back to the receiver. “It is elementary. Merry Christmas.”
The man withdrew in silence, muttering under his breath. Holmes, known to be tolerable only to those who don’t know him well, used his reputation like a cloak, shielding himself in plain sight.
From his coat, he retrieves a small slip of paper that he was gifted: “07700 900461 – ask for Mr. Who.” Odd. Almost theatrical. But intriguing.
He dialled the number.
It rang. Once. Twice. No answer. Holmes, for a moment, considers ending the call. And then–
A voice finally answered the phone.
Holmes cleared his throat to speak, calm and clear: “Is this Mr. Who? My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I believe you may be able to assist me.”
The TARDIS wheezed and groaned, materialising just down the street from the very phone box that Holmes had phoned from not long before. Not noticed by the people enjoying the festivities in London, the door opened, and the Doctor emerged from his ship. Heading directly from his short stint as a Roman consul, he had changed back into the appropriate Time Lord attire. Deciding to have a wardrobe revamp, he now donned a midnight blue frock coat, over the top of a blue shirt, and black waistcoat that matched the colour of his trousers and shoes. Closing the door behind him, the Doctor locked it, and put his hands into his trouser pockets, flicking his coat behind them.
He took great enjoyment walking through the Christmas decorated streets of Marylebone and watching the children play in the snow. He didn’t feel like he needed to be in a rush – he’s meeting Sherlock Holmes, for goodness sake. He’s probably already half cracked the case. Whilst he was musing, a little girl accidentally ran into him and fell over the Doctor’s foot. “Oomf!” was the noise he made, looking down at her as he made sure not to fall over. With a smile, the Doctor offered her his hand to help her to her feet, and she obliged with thanks, and he dusted down her arms of snow. “Having a lot of fun I see,” he smiled at her.
“I’m really sorry, Sir!” she said.
The Doctor ruffled her hair. “No worries. You better be going! You don’t want your mum and dad seeing you with a strange man.” And, with a radiant, beaming grin, she turned to head in the opposite direction. The Doctor, doing the same, failed to notice her quietly slipping something into the bottom pocket of his coat. Although left smiling himself by her innocent joy, the Doctor decided to hurry himself up to 221b Baker Street, realising that Holmes needed him for a reason.
Arriving at the door, the Doctor knocked. Slightly nervous, as he wasn’t even sure Holmes actually existed, he adjusted his cuffs and slicked his fingers through his hair to make it a little more spikey. As he was doing this, Dr. John Watson opened the door, and looked at him strangely. A surprised Doctor smiled awkwardly. “Ah, hello! Merry Christmas.” Watson didn’t care for the festive greetings. “I’m the Doctor. Mr. Holmes telephoned me asking for my help. I thought I’d come right on over,” he explained. Watson, now aware of who he was, stood aside, and silently pointed upstairs. The Doctor looked slightly offended by his lack of communication, but walked up the stairs as silently as Watson directed him.
He arrived, and knocked on the door. Holmes did not answer, but the Doctor was instead greeted by an older lady. “Hi there, I’m looking for Mr. Holmes.”
“Ah! You must be Mr. Who,” she said. “He won’t be long.” She turned her head, and shouted, “Sherlock!”
Holmes came to the door. “Ah, Mr. Who, a pleasure at last to meet you. I dare say you are familiar with me.”
The Doctor smiled lightly. “Just call me the Doctor. And yeah, I’m very aware of who you are. Lovely to meet you.” Holmes stepped aside, and the Time Lord entered the famous quarters of Sherlock Holmes. He looks around, impressed at the decoration. “You’ve got a lovely place here, Mr. Holmes. Big fan,” he said, walking around the room with great casualness.
“Please, Doctor,” he said with a faint smile, “do call me Sherlock. I find it rather tedious when colleagues insist on ‘Holmes.’ It’s quite the arduous task to hear it repeated so often.”
“Well it’s a pleasure to meet you, Sherlock,” he said with a great smile, shaking his hand with the detective he cannot believe actually existed. “Gotta say though, this is a bit of a surprise.”
Holmes sat down in his chair, gesturing for the Doctor to sit opposite him as he lit his pipe. “How so?”
The Doctor took his seat. “Well, I just didn’t expect to get a telephone call from you. Didn’t think you’d be very aware of me.”
Inhaling thoughtfully from his pipe, Holmes chuckled softly. “No, I must confess I was not acquainted with you at all. However, I was given this.” He extended the slip of paper bearing the phone number of the TARDIS. The Doctor’s eyes widened in surprise. “A woman – who claimed to be your ‘Boss’ – passed it to me quite suddenly.” Now, the Doctor’s eyes moved from reading the paper to look up at Holmes with a furrowed brow. “I apologise if you did not consent to this, however, a quite extraordinary case has left me rather… baffled, if you will.”
“Go on,” he said, keeping his brow firmly furrowed and eyes fixated on Holmes.
Taking his pipe from his mouth and placing it down onto his table, Holmes took to the fireplace in the living room, the wall behind which functions as a makeshift drawing board for his incredible thoughts. “One will be aware that it is not exactly uncommon for people to go missing in a city as fantastical as London,” he began, with the Doctor listening intently. “And yet, far more have disappeared this year than last. It followed, then, that this increase must indicate some connection, though none appears evident.”
The Doctor rose to his feet and joined Holmes at the fireplace, examining all the information on his wall. “Mostly children,” he said, as Holmes hummed in acknowledgement. “Funny that. 1903. Interesting year. First powered flight, first Tour de France, first telephone box in London,” the Doctor rambled, baffling Holmes. “Humankind is advancing at a rate like it never has before. But that’s the problem in a society advancing in science faster than morality.”
“For goodness sake, Doctor, spit it out!” Holmes intervened, in great interest and annoyance at the same time.
The Doctor turned around and walked around the living room again. “All I’m saying, Sherlock, is – who kidnaps children?” Holmes raised his eyebrow slightly. “Okay, let me try again. I bumped into a little girl on the way here, and she was the most charming little soul in the world. So innocent, so pure, and so happy.” The emotionally unintelligent Holmes still didn’t catch on, so the Time Lord continued with a sigh, and decided to be less emotional and more logical in his explanation. “It’s 1903, Sherlock. There’s absolutely no benefit to be gained from kidnapping children. Can’t believe that’s a sentence I’m saying, but there’s so many child labour laws now, that they’re not going to be taken for work, let’s just say.”
“Quite so,” Holmes replied. By now, Watson had arrived in the room, and was in the kitchen with the lady who answered the door for the Doctor. Watson looked with a slight bit of hostility at the Doctor, who was slightly offended.
“What’s up with him?” he asked, bluntly.
Holmes lowered his voice. “That man is Dr. Watson. His daughter is among the missing—the last living memory of his late wife. He has been withdrawn since it happened a few weeks ago. I am no one for emotional support, so he tends to turn to Mrs. Hudson, who owns this place.”
Nodding, the Doctor understood Watson’s standpoint. “And I take it he’s not exactly very happy with you because you’ve not cracked the case yet?” Holmes leaned to look at the Doctor, who had joined him at the fireplace again, but was still looking at the drawing board. “Oh come on. He hasn’t said a word since I got here, looked at me like he’d just lost his job, and didn’t acknowledge you at all.” Holmes moved to interject, but the Doctor put his finger up. “And you aren’t letting him help you, even though he really wants to, because you think he’ll be too emotional because it’s personal.” The Doctor finally turned to look back at Holmes with a slightly cocky smirk, rejecting and shunning Holmes’ emotionlessness.
“I say Doctor, your skills of deduction are astounding,” Holmes commended. “Might I ask, truly, who are you?”
“It really doesn’t matter,” the Doctor said, turning and heading back to his seat.
Holmes continued, his tone softening. “Perhaps you are like me – isolated”.
The Doctor stopped still. It’s been a while since Diana and David Redgrave had left travelling with him. His brief time as a Roman consul was a distraction, a way to escape the weight of loneliness – but he knew Holmes was right. Holmes regarded the Doctor’s sudden pause as assent. “Your calm, almost clinical approach to this matter baffles me. But I believe we may have more in common than you realise.”
The Doctor remained standing still in contemplation. Ever since his regeneration, he’s only known travelling with the Redgraves. Their departure – and everybody else seemingly having someone – had him feeling slightly isolated, perhaps a reason as to how he understood almost immediately that the disappearances maybe aren’t entirely malicious in intent. Moving toward the window, he gazed down at the snow-dusted streets of London. His reflection caught his eye: new and fresh after his long pursuit to find the Master, who had kidnapped the Redgraves, but tired and alone.
But there it was – the clue.
The reflection in the glass was not solely his own. A little girl appeared beside him – the exact same one he had bumped into earlier that day in Marylebone. Initially too sombre to notice, his eyes finally met hers. She smiled, that same radiant, beaming grin. Stunned, he spun around, but there was no one there. Turning back to the window, the girl had vanished.
Holmes noticed the disturbed Doctor’s actions. “Something the matter?” he asked with a hint of concern for his new friend.
“I swear I – no, surely not,” the Doctor murmured, looking down at the floor in contemplation. “I saw somebody else’s reflection in the window, the same girl I had seen before I got here.”
“Impossible,” Holmes scoffed. “There is not another soul in this place outside of the five of us.”
“Six,” is the Doctor’s response. Holmes turned to look at him, puzzled, as he still looked at the floor. “The six of us.”
Holmes’s keen eyes caught sight of the disturbed seam along the Doctor’s coat pocket. Clearing his throat, he gestured for the Doctor to take a closer look. The Doctor reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, folded piece of paper. Unfolding it carefully, they both peered at the cryptic message inscribed in delicate, looping handwriting.
“Find me where time stands still – and glass hides the lost.”
A heavy silence fell between them, the weight of the clue settling in. Holmes’s eyes sparkled with renewed determination. “This... is where our true investigation begins.”