"Good morning, John," Mycroft said.

John could not think of a voice he wanted to hear less. His eyes were not even yet open and still the lights above burned against them through the shield of his eyelids, painted red with purple veins as he delayed their final peel. "Where am I?" he asked, listening to the familiar sounds of a hospital and feeling the particular pinch of a needle in his arm.

He could feel Mycroft smoothing out the wrinkles in his blankets-that or petting the cotton which seemed far less likely from the particular man. "The Ark Project," he said, the same bored tone he usually used when relating the obvious giving life to the simple words. "Welcome home."

"Where's Sherlock?"

Mycroft's tongue ticked against his teeth as he took a quick breath. "I owe you a debt of gratitude, John. You did very well to-"

"Enough." John swallowed, still not willing to open his eyes in case he needed to clamp them shut against the well of tears he already felt stinging at the corners. He didn't like the other man dancing around his questions. Not of this nature. "Where is he?"

There was a short pause then a sigh, neither of which filled John with hope. "He's helping the cause," Mycroft said.

"Is he alive?"

"Yes."

"Can I see him?"

"You will."

John tried not to let his optimism and short spring of joy overpower his better judgement. He was dealing with the British Government who had far more concern for the British people than for his brother. Alive wasn't a promise of anything. Coma patients were alive. Machines could act in place of vital organs since removed.

He opened his eyes. It was indeed a hospital room but far smaller than anything he'd expected. The walls were mostly windows looking out into the hallway and other surgical areas. All were empty. It seemed eerily quiet, really, even for a research center. No nurses. No doctors. John sat up slowly in his bed, eying the odd arrangement of ports drilled into his arms that were no longer hooked into drips. He knew better than to simply pull them out but their unnecessary presence disturbed him.

Mycroft pushed a wheelchair close to the bed, offering his hand for stability in an uncharacteristic show of concern. "Come with me, John," he said, and John took his offered hand to push himself up and out of the sturdy cot, leg protesting to the motion but not enough to stop John from seating himself in the chair with little more than a groan. And if the hand had been a surprise, the presence of him pushing the chair was flooring. John almost put the breaks on to protest his ableness but found the humbling gesture perhaps worth a small sting to his own pride.

The halls were deadly silent. John didn't like it at all. The Ark project was made to hold hundreds of Britain's best and brightest. Where the hell were they all?

"It was the jeep, in case you were wondering," Mycroft said as he pushed them down past white walls and tempered windows. "It was recognized as military grade and they ran the plates. I'd had the foresight of changing the registration to you and Sherlock should such an opportunity arise. That on top of the blood sample made for an ironclad identification. One John Hamish Watson found alive after all this time. I shouldn't need to relate to you how pleased I was to receive such news. I've been wanting to speak to you for some time now."

John shook his head, smirking slightly at the irony in their lifeline being nothing more than a lit fuse. "Of course you knew we wouldn't abandon the thing. You're Mycroft Holmes and you know everything."

"Not everything. I didn't know he'd survived."

John nodded slowly, his throat filling with the impossible to swallow lump of the unasked. He wanted to know what happened after he passed out. He wanted to know how long he'd been unconscious. He wanted to hear it all from Sherlock, though. He granted himself the peace from silence as he held his tongue and waited. More empty halls. More guestless rooms. It really shouldn't have been like this.

The last door they came to looked more to John like a metal vault than an entrance. It required a postcode and a retina scan and John sat quietly while Mycroft gained them priority access to the inside. The doors parted on less of a complex and more of a mausoleum, though. Perhaps 'morgue' was the most fitting word. Row after row of lockers lined the walls and aisles of the room with enough blinking lights and dials to impress any sci-fi set designer. Here he saw people for once, standing behind more glass walls, moving in a chorus of busy work like bees over comb with many jobs to do. There were doctor's there and technicians given the stations John could identify from his low seat in the chair.

"What is this?' John asked, but the question remained unanswered. Instead, Mycroft pushed him towards a locker that, unlike the others, extended into the walled off section where people walked around with purpose. There was a plaque above it, set beside heart-rate monitors and other gradients of health. Sherlock Holmes, it read, and John followed the lines of tubing behind the window that funneled blood and other fluids into and out of the body stored within.

John felt his face go red with rage. "You said-"

"He's sleeping, John. They all are." Mycroft turned his chair to face the rest of the room, the vastness of the lockers hard to comprehend as the aisles seemed to go on and on. "Artists, musicians, mathematicians, philosophers. At least two of everything right down to master tradesmen. They're sleeping, John. If there is one thing my brought has taught me it is that stagnation can drive the gifted to madness. Locking them away would stagnate their genius but giving them lives outside these protective walls would ensure the essence of humanity was forever maintained. Reality is perception and they all perceive themselves to be living in the world before this happened. In a world where it never will. They will experience life, learn and create. This is the heart of the Ark project, John. The preservation of the heart of the human race, not just their bodies."

John felt his chin go slack as he considered the many lives locked away in front of him. "So they're all dreaming?" he asked.

Mycroft tilted his head, his face only half agreeing with John's wording. "Mass hallucination would perhaps make as much sense. They're dreaming the same dream, as controlled by our network. Plenty of filler shadows to flesh out the world but there you have it."

"And Sherlock's...," John swallowed, licking his lips. "Sherlock's part of that dream?"

"Solving crimes with DI. Lestrade last I checked." Mycroft smiled faintly, though there was still a sadness behind his eyes that John trusted above all else. "He doesn't feel it, John," he said. "And we are making progress. I did speak to him at length before we checked him in. He asked only that you be allowed to sleep beside him. And that I give you this." Mycroft turned and pulled open the locker beside Sherlock's, digging through the empty container to produce a singular item: a teddy bear. "I don't need to tell you how obnoxious it was to try and obtain it."

John knew his eyes were red and that his face was a maroon pucker but it wasn't much worth the effort to try and hide the meaning it held for him. Sherlock had been aware when he was brought to the Ark. He'd talked and people had listened. He knew what was going on. And he was waiting. John took the bear from Mycroft and wiped his nose on the back of his hand as he smiled. He pressed his palm to the metal door below the solitary name plaque. "Where's my card, you tit?" he asked, laughing slightly as his own response.

Mycroft didn't pretend to understand and stood quietly back, the locker door still open to the compartment beside his brother. "He's alone in that world, John. I think it's time you joined him."

John nodded, bear clutched to his chest as he let his fingers trail down the cold metal door.

John dreamed of soldiers, of running, of chaos. He dreamed of a fire burning through his leg and awoke in a cold sweat. Confused. Disoriented. Looking for something else.

He walked with a limp they all agreed shouldn't be there. They. Tremors and trust issues, reading notes upside-down. What did 'they' know? Something wasn't right. He didn't belong here. This wasn't the way life was suppose to be.

And then, where he last expected it-

"Afghanistan or Iraq?"

-limp gone, tremor forgotten, he found a cure named Sherlock Holmes.

This has been a re-imagining of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I hope you enjoyed it.