catslash_rp | (no subject)

"...yes," says Strat, "I am beginning to see that."

He makes his way to Strat's table and sits, because if he doesn't, he will be driven down under the weight of too many memories instead.

Just because they're returning doesn't mean they make sense.

"Whatever's troubling you, is it something I can help with?"

Saxon.

How could Saxon possibly have happened, with Mycroft at the helm?

He'll ask when he goes home. Ask if Mycroft knows the name. Well worth incurring Sherlock's potential sulking upon learning John has contacted his brother to find out.

"I don't know," he manages.

In which case...

...he waits.

There's no denying the truth of the new (old) memories. He could never explain why, there may not be words for why, but they are indisputable. He can't even retreat into the dubious comfort of the thought that he may have quite suddenly gone mad.

"Saxon was not Moriarty," he says, eventually.

"I take that to mean you have met someone who is. Sorry to hear it."

"We survived."

Narrowly. (He can still hear Moriarty's voice in his ear, unnecessarily caressing as he dictated what John was to say to Sherlock.

Measured against the memory of Saxon and the drums, it is rather less unsettling.)

"Good. I'm glad."

He didn't, but he doesn't think he needs to say that.

"I was rather pleased myself."

For Sherlock's sake more than his own at the time - he reconciled himself with the possibility of his own death some time ago, in Afghanistan - but pleased nonetheless.

"I don't understand what has happened," he blurts out, frustrated.

"Now that," says Strat, "I quite possibly can help with."

"Can you?"

If anyone can, of course, Sherlock can.

Whatever version of Sherlock it might be.

"Tell me what the trouble is and we'll see."

He thinks this over, trying to find the most concise and coherent way to put it.

It takes some time, but he doesn't rush himself. He knows Sherlock prefers an accurate answer to a hasty one.

"I seem to have been in two places at once," he says finally. "As does my entire world."

"Really."

He nods slowly.

"What did I say before? 2008? Ish?"

"More or less Great Britain, probably 2008 (http://mm-catslash.livejournal.com/872.html?thread=7784#t7784)," he quotes.

"It's 2010," he says. "Saxon never happened. I'm not dead. But as soon as I walked in here, I remembered all of it. How is that possible?"

"Magic," he suggests. "Time travel. Alternate realities."

"No magic in my world," John dismisses. "Sherlock would have found out by now." And mentioned it.

Probably.

"I'll grant you that. Two related theories remaining, and we know damn well one of them obtains."

"I don't think I've done any time travelling lately."

Surely he would have noticed.

Leaving aside the fact that technically he just did...

"What if you were not the one who travelled?"

John's expression turns a bit wry.

"I suppose there are about six billion other possible candidates," he concedes.

"Indeed there are. And since no two theorists seem to agree on how the universes handle that sort of thing..." He shrugs.