No Matter (a Doctor Who/Sherlock Holmes crossover) 6/?

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Title: No Matter
Author: sarah531
Rating: PG13
Fandom: Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes
AN: This is set after the Hiatus for Holmes and Watson (oh, and it’s the bookverse, despite my icon) and after Human Nature for the Doctor and Martha.
Summary: A detective, a doctor, a would-be doctor and a Doctor walk into a bar.

Previous chapters: One Two Three Four Five

For a second the Doctor didn’t move, but then he did.

“Get him to the TARDIS. Now.”

Martha moved to take Watson’s arm, but then he surprised her by sitting up and coughing weakly.

“Holmes. Martha. I’m all right.”

“You’re not,” the Doctor said.

“What do you mean, he’s not?” Holmes snapped, “Doctor! What have you done?”

The Doctor turned and walked away, and Holmes, Martha and Watson were forced to follow. Night was beginning to fall now and the streets were less crowded.

“Answer my question, Doctor!” Holmes shouted. But he kept walking and walking. Martha had never seen him act quite like this before. She suspected she was really seeing the human he had recently been.

“Doctor!” she shouted. “Doctor! Come back here and tell us what happened, you…coward!”

The Doctor stopped. The TARDIS lights shone in the background but he didn’t look much like the Doctor, not really. “I didn’t get all the nanogenes. Some of them jumped into the nearest person. I wasn’t careful enough, I’m never careful enough. You’re going to die, John Watson, very soon, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Martha stopped dead. Holmes kept going.

“You are wrong, Doctor, wrong or lying.”

“He’s not,” Martha said. “He’s not.”

“Get him to the TARDIS,” the Doctor said. “No-one ought to die on the street.” He turned from them and walked away and disappeared into his time machine. The humans were left out under the darkening sky, looking at each other. Apart from Holmes, who was looking at the floor.

“I think I would like to go home,” Watson said.

“You’re not going to die, Watson,” Holmes said, in a tone that Martha thought was bordering on inhuman.

“That may be true, but I would like to go back to Baker Street, and my own bed,” Watson said calmly. “Please, Holmes, look at me.”

There was a long silence and then Holmes started walking towards the TARDIS, just as the Doctor had done. It seemed to take an eternity.

“Holmes,” Watson called.

Without even looking back, Holmes closed the TARDIS door on them.

And then there were two.

“The Doctor will find a way,” said Martha, uncertainly.

“Let’s go, my dear.” Watson said.

*

Inside the TARDIS no-one spoke until the Doctor said, “Right. We’re here.”

Watson walked out of the door, Holmes followed him, and Martha said. “Doctor. Please. We have to do something.”

“I can’t do anything,” the Doctor said. “You’ve seen all this happen before, Martha Jones, quite recently in fact. I show up. I get to like people. I destroy them.”

“That’s not true,” Martha said, “and you know it’s not.”

“There’s a good, very not fictional man out there about to die because of me,” the Doctor said. After a very long pause, during which he fiddled with the TARDIS controls, he said, “We ought to go to him.”

“Yes,” said Martha, “we really should.”

*

It was cold inside 221b Baker Street. Martha climbed the stairs and the Doctor followed her.

“How, exactly, are the nanogenes killing him?” she whispered as they stopped outside a closed door.

“Same way they killed the others,” the Doctor said. “They just get inside a body and kill it. Close down the organs. Make it bleed. The only difference now is that it’s taking a longer time. Are you sure you want to go in there, Martha?”

“Yes,” Martha said, and opened the door.

Watson lay on the bed, and Holmes was sitting on the chair next to him. They had both clearly been waiting for the others, both were watching the door.

“So, Doctor,” Holmes said in the coldest voice Martha had ever heard, “tell me how my friend is going to die.”

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Tell me!”

“The nanogenes are shutting down his body. He’s got five minutes,” the Doctor said. He turned away, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Come on, Martha.”

Martha paused.

“Leave us, Miss Jones,” Holmes said.

So she did. She followed the Doctor outside and sat on the stairs.

*

Inside the room there was a long silence. Holmes sat on the chair, not moving, just looking at the floor.

“Holmes,” Watson said, “you’re going to have to say something eventually.”

“I’m thinking!” Holmes snapped. “I think, it’s what I do. And had I thought just a little more and just a little better, had I sense enough to not trust or listen to our visitor, whom I now believe to be Death himself, we wouldn’t be in this position! Let me think!”

Watson just watched his friend, and finally Holmes raised his head and said shakily. “I walked away from you. I did an awful thing. Tell me how you can lie there and still speak to me, when I walked away from a dying friend calling my name.”

Watson shook his head. “You know, I asked Martha Jones why she travelled with a man who I’m quite sure was insufferable. I understand her motives for staying are somewhat different from mine, but she told me that no matter how awful a person is, there will always be someone who likes them, and she is the Doctor’s person. I am your person, and you are a person, only human, and that’s why you walked away. You’re forgiven. You’re always forgiven.”

There was a pause.

“John,” Holmes said, his voice cracking, “I don’t have the words.”

“I understand, my friend.”

In the background a clock ticked.

“Five minutes, did he say?” Watson asked.

“Yes.”

“Five minutes,” he repeated. “Holmes, I must ask you, don’t blame the Doctor for this. It wasn’t his fault.”

Holmes nodded slowly.

“Or Martha. Don’t blame them. Don’t blame yourself.”

“I shall try.”

Watson leaned forward. “We’re fiction. Remember what he said? We’re fiction. To someone somewhere we are. Our lives aren’t quite our own. Take heart, my friend.”

“Fiction,” Holmes repeated sadly. “The writer has written it wrong.”

“Not entirely. Although I would sell my soul this minute for just ten more years, I have had a truly wonderful life, with my dear Mary and…Holmes?”

Holmes’ expression had suddenly changed. He stood up.

“I have it. No need for any soul-selling. Stay here, Watson, and if you die I’ll kill you.” He ran from the room.

*

The Doctor and Martha waited on the stairs, not talking, when suddenly the door behind them burst open. Holmes jumped right over them and raced down the stairs, and the Doctor instantly ran after him.

“Where are you going?” he yelled.

Martha hurried into the bedroom.

Holmes flung the front door open, ran the short distance to the TARDIS, went through the door and disappeared beneath the console for a few seconds. He stood up, and pushed past the Doctor on his way out.

“Holmes,” the Doctor said, “what are you doing? Listen to me-”

But he didn’t stop to listen, just ran back into the house. He went up the stairs and into the bedroom, shooed Martha away from the bed, and held up the TARDIS cell he’d grabbed.

“Ten years!” he yelled, and blew on it.