Title: Whatever Remains (3/3)
Characters: Holmes, Watson (but not as we know them)
Rating: K+ for some vague blood and violence, etc.
Word Count: 3848 (this bit)
Warnings: AU. Odd AU. Probably many cliches, including the old "eliminate the impossible" line.
Summary: Written for Challenge 010 at the LJ community watsons_woes, the challenge being to create and entire AU. I first created elements of this AU in my crossover novel (also on this site), However Improbable, back in November of 2009; if you've read it, then you no doubt will see where I'm going with this. For the rest...let's just say I didn't have time to do the two ideas I had that I really loved for this challenge, and so had to fall back on very familiar territory - in two universes. More than a crossover, but less than an entire AU. Written in a hurry because I've been writing on a Haiti charity fic and waited until the last second (almost literally) for this. Not really a part of However Improbable, but spun-off from it.

A/N: This third part isn't at all like I wanted it but it was down to the wire; I wrote until five minutes before the challenge deadline and then had to quit or be disqualified. Anyway, that's why this part especially is a bit disjointed. I fully intend to go back and flesh it out quite a bit, and possibly write some more oneshots, etc., in this universe if there's any interest. Meanwhile, thank you for reading!

Of all the explanations I had expected, the stuff that legends and fairy tales were made on did not even rank among them. I snorted and leaned down to pick up my teacup before the milky dregs dribbled out onto the rug. "Really, Holmes…"

"I do not lie, Doctor, especially to a man who can tell that I am based solely on the sensations I apparently exude."

That gained him an even longer snort, for he had attempted it only just moments ago. "You may try, but you are correct in that I can tell when you are hiding something. With that in mind, suppose you begin at the beginning?"

Holmes slanted an eyebrow my direction. "Are you quite certain you are willing to hear me out without disbelieving my story at its inception?"

"Holmes," I responded dryly, crossing my legs and leaning back in my chair, "You are conversing with a man who can heal a mortal injury by willpower alone."

"True." Amusement danced briefly in the austere eyes, before they darkened again to a more serious grey sheen.

"Besides that," I added with a smile, "I am the one in this partnership who has always been prone to romanticism and believing that there truly are more things in heaven and earth than we are fit to know of."

My friend chuckled briefly, and I did not have to see the minute slumping of his shoulders to know that he was relaxing his tense posture. "Ah, my dear Watson…whatever would I have done without you for the last two years?" said he with that subtle tinge of fondness he would never admit to openly.

I raised an eyebrow to match his. "Possibly starved to death in Montague Street, for one."

Holmes leaned forward, a mischievous glint in his eye. "Would it so surprise you to learn that my race is capable of going for many days, weeks under some circumstances, without food? Or sleep, for that matter," he added as an afterthought.

That would explain much, but all in its time; this would be hard enough to accept even in a logical sequence. "The beginning, Holmes?"

"Ah, yes." An ember snapped and fell into glowing coals, one of which rolled toward us. Holmes kicked it quickly back into the grate, and then turned his full attention to me. "Well, Doctor. I am not, as you would call me, human. I am Vulcan."

I blinked. "The Roman god of fire?"

I was startled when my friend laughed outright, in his oddly silent fashion. He trembled with merriment for a moment until the fit passed, and then grinned at me. "Nothing of the kind, my dear fellow," he answered, chuckling briefly even as he said it. "Though I have been told that other species would most likely find our planet's heat levels intolerable. My planet's name is Vulcan, Watson. And we are called Vulcans, or Vulcanians.

"Your…planet?" I asked incredulously.

"Indeed," he replied, his eyes sparkling, though I could sense a wave of nostalgic sadness. "I am accustomed to a desert climate, Doctor, one reason I find these rains and fogs of yours to be quite distasteful."

"But," I protested, "there is no planet named Vulcan in our solar system!"

Again, that sad, mysterious smile. "Correct, Doctor. It is in a neighboring solar system; but let us not discuss the science of matters which I cannot, at the moment, prove. You are able to perceive that I am indeed telling the truth, are you not?"

"Or at least that you believe it is the truth," I replied with some reservation.

"Fair enough." My friend straightened in his chair, and steepled his fingers in a more relaxed gesture. "As I said, Watson, I am from a desert planet known as Vulcan. We are centuries ahead of your own in technology, with advancements I cannot reveal to you nor would you comprehend if I could. You must trust me when I say that what you know to be your world is only one of many with which we are acquainted. You do not discount the possibility that life may exist outside your own earth?"

I dryly indicated the green-splotched linen around his arm. "It would be foolish to do so."

"Quite. My people, Watson, are…extremely private in nature, both personally and as a whole." Holmes's grey eyes contracted, darkened with some repressed emotion I could not easily grasp hold of in my empathic comprehension. "Which is why we have never attempted to contact other worlds despite being able to do so with our technology. My people believe in no contact with outworlders."

"Why then are you here?" I asked quietly.

A pained look creased his face for a moment. "I was in the Science and Exploration division of our…you would most likely call it a governmental organization. I was attempting an experiment with – well, I should not give you overmuch information," he amended suddenly, "nor would you probably be interested. In short, my ship – space vessel, Watson – was pulled off its course by a gravitational anomaly. When I regained control of the vessel, it was damaged beyond warp capability. Oddly enough, your Terra was the only inhabitable planet within range of my limited engine capabilities."

Terra meaning Earth, I could deduce that much for myself; the majority of the rest of his story was entirely incomprehensible.

"I could not land it anywhere on the planet, as the technology it contained could be quite dangerous; I therefore set the self-destruct mechanism in your upper atmosphere and beamed myself down to the planet just before destruction," Holmes continued his strange tale with a self-deprecatory smile. "I landed in what I discovered later was your Sussex. I must say, Doctor," he added, his voice softening just a fraction, "that your country is quite beautiful; I have never seen the like, the greenery and the abundance of life."

"I am quite lost regarding your terminology, but there will be time for that in future," I interrupted when he paused, "but answer this: Why did you choose England in which to live?"

"Your rich cultural history, for one," Holmes answered. "For another, my people are peace-loving but fierce warriors, Doctor; quite introverted, stoic, you might say staid – in short, your culture was the closest to my own. I should not prefer to live in what your American people are calling the "Wild Wild West," and you are the most technologically advanced country alongside your colonial cousin. Given the choice, I much prefer Britain."

"You speak English flawlessly," I observed. "How long have you lived among us?"

"Only a year before I met you," he answered readily. "One of my race's peculiarities is the ability to assimilate knowledge at a much more rapid rate than a human. We…have our methods of learning an incredible amount of information in a short amount of time."

"Your methods?" I asked suspiciously, for he was obviously hedging around some hidden factor.

"I cannot explain them fully to you, Doctor; not yet, at any rate," he informed me with unaccustomed firmness. "It is poor enough luck that you have discovered my secret, though it was most likely only a matter of time. Mycroft will have to be told, you understand."

"Who?"

"My contact in your government." Holmes grinned somewhat impudently at me. "His surname being Holmes, we agreed that I should take on the role of younger brother to him; that would explain the immense intelligence. In return for my life being spared – for they were fully prepared to do away with me, as you can imagine – I have agreed to serve my country whenever she calls, with my gifts and knowledge. An amicable agreement."

"Posing as this man's brother? Does no one suspect your charade?"

"Pshaw, my dear fellow," Holmes waved a languid hand to accentuate the words, "both I and this man are the most reticent of mortals. No one would ever be more than slightly surprised to find that we had unspoken relatives to speak of. I grant you, we do not look much alike even after my surgical alterations were done, but there have been instances in history of familial resemblances being totally in absence."

I sat silent for a moment, digesting this information, and then looked up at my friend, who was sitting patiently, waiting for me.

"I have a few questions, Holmes."

"I rather thought you might. Ask what you will, Doctor, I shall hide nothing from you."

"Your superior strength and intelligence, I have already observed for myself," I mused aloud. "What other gifts does your race possess, if you can tell me of them?"

Holmes hesitated a moment, and then with a resigned gesture spoke. "For one thing, we are touch-telepaths."

"Meaning…?"

"We can read a man's thoughts if there is skin-to-skin contact," he replied.

"Ah, then that is how you knew you were hurting me," I observed.

"Quite so. Vulcans also possess a much higher pain tolerance than humans, and retain the ability to heal themselves due to a mental trance-like state in which the body's healing functions are accentuated and accelerated." Holmes indicated his arm. "Were I to fall into a healing trance now, then in three hours this would be no more than a painful memory."

"Deucedly handy."

"Indeed." My friend's eyes glinted with amusement at my calm assimilation of the facts being laid out. "Vulcans are known for their mental abilities. There are many things I can do with my mind that would shock you; but I think it better that we not go into those now. Too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing, my dear fellow."

"Agreed," I affirmed with some reluctance, for I found myself compelled and fascinated in turns by this remarkable story and more remarkable individual. "To return to the facts then; are you saying that you are…stranded here?" I asked, recalling his tale.

The man – or was he considered such? – his eyes softened perceptibly, and he looked away from me, into the fire that crackled before us, the only sound in the room for a long, still moment.

Then he looked back at me, with the weight of the world in those eyes. "I am, Watson, quite effectively marooned for as long as I shall live; your people will not see the sort of technology which might be my salvation for another two centuries."

The sadness which I could tell he was suppressing fairly roiled off his composed exteriour, and I laid a hesitant hand on his arm. He did not pull away. "Could your people not come after you?" I asked.

He offered me a thin smile. "It would not be logical to risk detection by your Earth, to come in search of a Science vessel that most likely would have been destroyed by a gravitational anomaly," said he with a tinge of bitterness. "No, Doctor, I shall be written off – have been, no doubt – as simply another scientist who lost his life in his scientific pursuits. A noble way to be remembered, and with insufficient cause to warrant a search for me. No, Doctor, I will remain on your world until I die – which in your Earth years, will probably not be for another one hundred sixty of such."

I stared at my friend, watching as his eyes betrayed the emotions he professed not to feel to any extent; the loneliness and pain at being so far from home and knowing he would never return was creating a physical pain within him, I could feel it.

"My dear Holmes," I whispered at last, barely heard above a snapping coal in the fire, "I – I am so sorry."

He looked up at me strangely, his eyes searching my features for something. Whatever it might have been, I believe he found it, for he relaxed under my hand and the side of his lips twitched. "Thank you, Watson," he answered simply, and with that I knew the matter was closed, for now.

"It is not intolerable," said he after a moment, when I had withdrawn back to my chair. "I find your human culture quite fascinating, and am quite content to spend my time studying it."

"Which is why you are so insufferably bored when you have no case," I supplied, understanding illuminating this and a hundred other details that had intrigued and puzzled me.

"Precisely. My identity will also explain those other little points that have so troubled you, Doctor," he added in a fit of mischief. "My apparent lack of knowledge about most things you consider simple everyday life, my tendency to skip meals and/or sleep, my fondness for the logical progressions of German music."

I grinned, remembering the list of my friend's limits I had compiled two years ago in a stint of boredom; those and many other details were much explained by what this man had just told me. Incredible as it seemed, I nevertheless knew it to be true; he could not lie to me, and there was no other logical explanation. It was also gratifying to know that I was not the only person in the world who held strange secrets that he could tell to no one.

When I voiced this, Holmes fairly radiated contentment, and when he spoke it was in the most tension-free tone I had heard in a long time from my morose companion. "My dear Watson, it is indeed a pleasing thing to have someone – an empath, no less! – to whom I can entrust my secret," said he warmly. "I find my new existence much easier to bear in your company than I did alone for those long, dreary months after my induction into British society."

"What are the chances, do you suppose, of two such...unique, I should say, individuals finding each other in London?" I wondered aloud.

"I believe in every universe there exist some constants, Doctor, which remain the same throughout time and space – certain threads that bind certain people, events, ideals, together; and that they cannot be broken by Fate or anything else," my friend replied, looking so positively mysterious that I wondered if I would ever fully understand all of what he spoke of; could my more finite mind even comprehend his world and what he knew? "Perhaps you and I are two of those constants, Watson. Perhaps."

Final author's notes: Well, if you hadn't guessed it, this was a Star Trek AU. I love both universes equally, and so I fell back on that familiar territory for this belated entry. In Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, Spock informs us that an ancestor of his said the famous "eliminate the impossible" line. While I don't really believe Holmes was a Vulcan in disguise, that was the inspiration for this. I'm sure it's been done before, but if it has then I haven't seen it anywhere. :) As far as I know, empath!Watson is totally my invention for my NaNo novel, recurring here with a bit more ability than he had in HI. He's not a Betazoid, but rather a complete, true empath as seen in the TOS episode of the same name (watch it on IMDB if you haven't, it's awesome).

Feel free to comment with questions or point out stuff I didn't cover, because I meant to do a lot more with this and ran out of time. :/ Thanks for wading through my odd geekiness. *hugs*