Title: Storm Chasing

Rating: T for possible language, violence and mature themes

Summary: When Holmes becomes depressed and nostalgic, his fantastic powers of deduction begin to slip. In order to prevent the Great Detective from becoming a liability, and to restore his happiness, Doctor John Watson is returned to life. The question is: Will he be any happier than Holmes in a new century and a new life?

Extra notes: Well, I said I was going to do it, but I didn't expect it to happen so fast. Here's the first chapter, and I currently have the next two completed. Watson doesn't make his appearance until chapter four, but that's not to say nothing interesting will happen before then. With any luck, chapters will be posted weekly(or, perhaps two a week if my muse starts choking me). Enjoy! And as always, remember to review!

Chapter 1: The Storm Gathers

"Lestrade, do you fence?"

It was an innocent question about a sport that had died out almost seventy-five years before his reanimation, yet it began a series of events that would rattle the small world they had built for themselves. At the time Lestrade shrugged and confessed that she didn't know the first thing about swordplay, which seemed to delight Holmes more than if she'd admitted to being a three-time world champion.

His insistence that she learn set in motion a bit of a strange cycle. Every two weeks or so she would drag herself home from work, curl up on the couch to catch one of those dubious shows that were aimed at the female populace, and right at the best part the projector would be flicked off and a foil(how Holmes even found them was beyond her) would land on her stomach. Turned out ol' Sherlock thought he was too good for knocking on doors, especially if you were one of the rare few he valued as a friend.

Or maybe she was just special.

Whatever it was, she had become Holmes' fencing partner. He taught her the proper stances, and the right terms. Lestrade, always the apt pupil, picked up the sport quick enough. Eventually their little spars spread beyond the New Scotland Yard gymnasium; Baker Street became open ground for attacks, as were the halls of NSY if they happened to have rolled up paper available.

It was in Baker Street(wasn't it always Baker Street?) that the incident occurred. About two months before his first "rebirthday", they were having a mock war in the sitting room. It had started as a lesson for Wiggins and Deidre, who had shown some interest in fencing (sword fighting was still an appealing concept), but eventually it had turned into an all-or-nothing match sans rules. The usual insults were cried, and to Watson's dismay several packs of neatly stacked case notes were thrown as distractions.

Eventually, using an explosive array of thrusts and feints, to both their surprise Holmes's foil flew across the room, nearly decapitating Tennyson in the process. There was a long period of silence, until Deidre started cheering—always the feminist—and Holmes sat up from where he'd fallen over the sofa, accepting the defeat as gracefully as he could. "I say, Watson. You're getting better all the time!" He said vaguely, eyes glazed over in nostalgia.

"Watson? Are you goin' funny, Mister 'Olmes? Watson's over 'ere!" Deidre pointed out.

Holmes lapsed into a period of unstable silence, punctuated by Lestrade's panting and the noises coming from Tennyson's chair. He glanced around, with his skin turning a sickly shade of gray. "Of course. Excuse me." He brushed through the mess, leaving in his wake the confused group.

Lestrade glanced at Watson, but his attention seemed trained on Holmes's bedroom door, which had been closed and locked with a heavy thud. "Eh… maybe you guys should head home…" She said tentatively, tossing aside her foil and looking at the Irregulars. For kids they were a decent bunch, but the fact remained that they didn't know how to deal with Holmes on a good day, let alone when he was in what Watson called a "Black mood".

The three teens headed towards the door. Wiggins hesitated just outside and turned to look at Lestrade and Watson. Though they tried to keep their expressions light, it obviously didn't work well, for their young friends looked more troubled than before. "Is… Well, I mean… He is okay, right? Mister Holmes, I mean."

"When is Holmes ever not all right?" Lestrade snapped, rolling her eyes at the typical worried babbling. Holmes was probably the most level-headed person she had ever met. Sometimes it was absolutely infuriating, seeing that he didn't seem able to connect with the rest of the world on an emotional level. If a guy could wake up two hundred years in the future saying "At your service", something in their wiring wasn't working, right? It wasn't like Lestrade had ever actually asked him how he liked the new century, but he was so… so zedding closed up, and she was still kind of intimidated by him(not that she was spreading that around), with the whole 're-animated world famous detective' thing.

Could it be… he wasn't as much of a machine as everyone thought?

"…let you know if something is wrong. Have a good afternoon, then!"

Lestrade came back to herself as Watson finally shut the door gently. They met gazes for a long moment, and she grinned tentatively. "There's not… really something wrong, right?" She asked hopefully. The compudroid was the best one to ask; he lived with Holmes, whereas Lestrade sometimes went weeks without seeing them at all, unless Holmes called her at some insane hour of the night asking about the origin of techno music.

Watson looked downcast for a few seconds, apparently drawing his thoughts into order. "He's been acting strangely. Temperamental, morose… he won't tell me a thing, though!" He looked at Lestrade worriedly. "He spends his time curled up in his chair reading those old journals."

Journals?

Oh… those journals…

"Should we… er… talk to him?"

Watson sighed, a strange noise for a robot to make. "I've tried. Perhaps you will have better success." A look flicked across his face too quickly for Lestrade to grasp, but it was close enough to sadness to compel her to pat Watson on the metal shoulder. "I do apologize, Inspector. I just feel like I'm living with a…a…"

"Robot?" She offered in a poor attempt at humor. His lips twitched upward for an instant.

"Sometimes." He confessed.

She glanced up the seventeen steps that led to their separate rooms. "I'll try to find out…"

The compudroid shuffled his feet slightly. "I'm afraid I wasn't absolutely candid, Inspector. I believe I already know what's plaguing Holmes."

"Really?"

"It seems easy to deduce. Depression, irritability, clinging to his old possessions, a desire to be alone…" Watson shrugged. "Holmes is homesick."

Beth looked up the stairs hesitantly. The most homesick she'd ever felt was her first week at university. But then her parents had come to visit and she felt better, knowing her family was still there. She couldn't connect with Holmes… everyone he knew was dead. They had been for two centuries. Most of them didn't even have graves to visit anymore. She remembered hearing about the cemetery in which Mycroft Holmes and the rest of the family were interred. It was under a restaurant now.

What was she supposed to say? "Aw, Holmes. It's only everyone you know and love!"?

Pfft. Right.

At least Watson(the original model) wasn't lost in some suburban jungle. His body was resting next to his wife's in a massive cemetery in North England. In fact the place had, in the last few years, become popular for the well preserved bodies left behind following an early twentieth-century flood. It seemed the area was bizarrely well-endowed for protecting human bodies from the routine processes of decomposition.

The spark of an idea had hit her midway through the thought, but she shook it out of her head for the time being, instead smiling as encouragingly as she could. "I'll try to talk to him." She assured Watson, taking the steps two at a time.

She knocked on the door of his room, only then realizing that she had never actually seen where he slept. Whenever Holmes needed something from there, he grabbed it himself. "Er… Holmes?" She asked, feeling a bit like an idiot, standing there and talking to the antique wood.

There was an audible sigh on the other side. "I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but would you kindly be off?"

"Watson and I are just worried. No need to be rude." Lestrade could hear him pacing back and forth in there.

"Don't call him Watson!" She jumped at his unexpectedly violent tone.

Taking a breath, she bit her lip and knocked again, louder this time. "I'm not playing shrink through a wood door, Holmes. Open up or it's going down." Alright, that probably wasn't the best thing to say to an emotionally compromised detective who knew twelve different ways to kick her sorry self to the curb. Still, the fact that she could hear footsteps approaching the door was promising.

The utterly annoyed face that glowered out at her when it opened? Not so much.

She put on a good show of nonchalance, pushing past him into the room, ignoring the loud huff of breath released from his nose. He's like a bull or something. Probably gonna kick up his feet as a warning too. Lestrade thought, and she smiled a bit as she looked around.

This was, without a doubt, the most disorganized place she'd ever seen. It seemed all the things Watson didn't think would fit in the sitting room had been relocated in here. She could see three communicators Grayson thought NSY had lost in pieces on the floor, and there were dozens of text books flung around. It smelled powerfully of the strong tobacco Holmes managed to get shipped to him, despite the strict regulations behind its usage (if he wasn't so zedding useful, she'd have had to arrest him just for that). Lestrade stooped and plucked a digital watch off the floor. "You packrat," She accused lightly. "I thought you broke this thing months ago—the day after you got it!"

Holmes brushed past her despondently, grabbing it as he went. "I was trying to see how it worked, but the blasted device was nothing but wretched wires and plastic." He growled. It was starting to feel like she was trapped between a dog that hadn't eaten in a week and a steak—or an agitated Holmes and his quiet-time. "Now that you have at last invaded the only area I can truly call my own, may I politely remind you to close the door when you leave?" The detective huffed into his arms, leaning against the headboard of his bed with a peevish expression.

"Y'know, Holmes, hiding things isn't healthy." Lestrade pointed out. She stood where she was, suddenly feeling slightly awkward about the way things were unfolding. "I had no idea you were so…" What was a nice word for miserable? "…Unhappy here. You probably should have said something." She shuffled a bit, though there didn't see to be much unoccupied space.

Holmes sighed jadedly and ran a hand over his eyes. She knew that was his 'I'm surrounded by Neanderthals' signal. "What would come of my lamenting every evening about the things I miss about my own time in history?" He suddenly shot onto his feet, clenching a fist. "Nothing would be achieved; even if I said I find it impossible to sleep in this infernal noise," He gestured around them, "or how absolutely nerve wracking I find these new vehicles, or how completely insulting it is to have a machine attempt to replace…" He sighed and sank onto the bed again, looking dejectedly at the floor.

Lestrade pursed her lips and sat softly on the edge of the bed. She extended a hand tentatively and laid it gently on his shoulder. "You… miss him, don't you?" She murmured. "A lot more than you admitted."

Holmes looked up with an air of almost heartbreaking misery. For a terrifying moment Lestrade thought he might start to cry, but he seemed to miraculously pull himself together at the last second, nodding instead. "More than you can ever imagine." He choked, standing without warning and crossing the room. He paused at the door and turned to look at her, eyes wild with rare emotion. "Don't tell him…" He gestured vaguely to the staircase. "He tries so very hard. I wouldn't want to upset him." Holmes turned away again. "Come along, Lestrade, I believe the chief Inspector had a murder he wanted us to look into?"

Beth blinked in utter confusion. The guy couldn't be human. Normal people didn't jump from being half in tears to hunting down murderers. Of course, that was assuming Sherlock Holmes had a normal bone anywhere on his body. "I'll be just a minute. I have to call something in…" She waved him on and soon enough his voice resonated from the sitting room, where Watson was apparently setting out a tray of ginger snaps. Lestrade swiftly punched the right digits into her communicator.

A few tense moments passed before her lips creased into a devious smile. "Hi, Doc? I was wondering if I could call in another favor…"

A depressed detective was a liability, and a liability could get them all killed. Besides, she needed a Christmas gift for him.