The Universe's Mixer

John's mouth was dry. As he awoke, he felt as if he'd like a drink of water, and his shoulders and back were stiff. He found these facts slightly peculiar. What followed was even stranger: he realized that he ought to hurt a lot more. The spot where he'd been bitten felt completely normal, and even the dull ache of his muscles had gone. He was cold. There was a blanket, half-flung across him and half-folded beneath as a sort of bed.

Odd. Watson groaned and tried to sit up.

The floor was concrete and bare. The walls looked like some sort of armory - they were covered in weapons he recognized from first-hand experience, and others that had come straight out of a medieval studies textbook. A punching bag hung in a corner. A washer and dryer sat in another.

It was all vaguely familiar, but also completely foreign. Where was he?

And, more importantly, how had he gotten there? Had he dreamed the previous night? Where were his clothes?

The City Park.

They probably weren't related. A giant wolf goes missing from the zoo and a man is spotted running naked through the park. If it'd been Sunnydale, they would have definitely been related. Except it would have been some magic curse. This? Because there were so many kinds of vampires, she had to assume the same was true of werewolves. Magic wasn't completely out of the question, however.

Either way, she was packing a tranquilizer gun. The stake would go hidden in her sleeve. The sword, which was her favorite slaying weapon for The City, would have to stay at home. Beheading was for killing and Buffy had a pretty strict no-kill werewolf policy.

It didn't occur to Buffy until she was already an hour into patrol that she could have asked Willow to help her research.

Huh. She'd been Scooby Gang-less for a long time.

Patrolling wasn't terribly exciting. There was a lot of uneventful walking involved. Eventually the five-foot-two blonde started to get bored. She thought about getting a day job as a security guard but decided against the polyester uniforms. At least she wasn't so bored that she talking to herself out loud. But right now would have been an excellent time for a stray, hungry vampire to come charging her way.

"Heerree wolfy, wolfy, wolfy. I'm small, practically defenseless, and look awfully tasty..."

Amy had a forty minute wait in the ER before one of the clinic doctors was able to see her. During that time she called the Doctor, who she was pretty sure did not mend broken arms.

"Do you ever answer your messages?" she started with an annoyed lecture, trying to balance a gossip magazine in her lap, turning pages with her good arm, while holding the injured arm in the air. She felt a bit sheepish. "I broke my arm and I'm not sure if socialized medicine has caught on here or not. If you don't mind bringing money or some psychic paper with health insurance on it? Maybe? Yeah? You know, if you're not too busy ignoring my messages?"

She hung up.

After waiting she was led into a small examination room. Then there was another fifteen minute wait for the nurse. Another twenty minute wait for the doctor after that. Because she was bit by a strange animal, there were shots. The needles were quite large, but Amy did her best to look away and ignore them. Then more waiting. Then x-rays. Waiting. Then the cast.

As the day progressed, Amy started to feel irritated. And itchy. Sitting down or concentrating became harder. Everything smelled. Even the blood from her shirt -- very thick, metallic and tangy.

"Can dog bites cause migraines? Would rabies cause a migraine? Could I have someone not wearing perfume putting the cast on, thanks? You're giving me a headache," Amy snapped at the nurse. The nurse decided it was as good excuse as any to leave her in someone else's care and left. Amy sighed. She opened up the door from the examine room and peeked down the hall.

The Amazon had been doing good deeds left and right, but the City always seemed to be filled with bad guys. The Batman never stopped. There was this thief, that mugger, some jackass who thought beating some woman was a good idea. She was understanding more and more why Bruce Wayne had wanted to leave the job, or more why it had taken his life completely over. It was even more difficult when she would have preferred just shooting the offenders, ridding the world of the bad guys, but Alfred was rather adamant that killing the criminals was simply not acceptable.

Zoe wasn't an overly violent woman, but she'd felt the need for a release that didn't involve hitting something with some part of her body. The Mare's leg and other firearms were actually looking good, and while she would have preferred at times to live a quiet life she was beginning to suspect with how easily she at times donned the Batsuit. It helped that the people she talked to on a semi-regular basis knew that she was taking to the night as the Bat; she may need to see if Jesse wanted another meal sometime.

Jesse was not invited, nor would he ever be without her finding out he'd like such things, to her current activity. The weapon would be considered an antique, even though it was certainly nice and smooth - brand new - as she held it, turning it over in her hands. She listened somewhat to the safety lecture, if it could be called such, while she quickly broke down the Beretta 90two only to reassemble it. She looked up at the man who'd just been lecturing her about not getting her hand caught in the slide; he seemed a little uncomfortable with how quickly she'd "mastered" the gun, at least its mechanical parts.

"However many rounds I can have, thank you." Zoe seemed unphased, picking up the protective gear. The range beckoned.

John Watson was lost in his own hospital. He blamed the problem on his tendency to camp in the clinic; it wasn't that he disliked Dr. Tam, but John didn't share space well. He hadn't been to his desk in over a week, but there was paperwork to do and he couldn't hog an examining room when he had a corner to himself in the administrative wing. Dr. Watson strode down the stark white halls in search of the placard with his name on it, and in spite of his coat and ID, he probably looked like a visitor instead of a member of the staff.

Damn it. Maybe he'd gone right past.

John turned and retraced his steps, looking more closely at the doors this time around. He dismissed each stranger's name in turn until he reached one that he recognized: Dr. Lecter. Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Jennifer hadn't been kidding. There was a Hannibal Lecter in the City. John considered walking away, but he didn't. Perhaps he'd been living with Sherlock for too long, but curiosity would not allow him to keep going. Watson lifted his hand and knocked.

It wasn’t just John’s disapproval Sherlock had to contend with. If it had merely been disapproval, Sherlock wouldn’t have sent John out on a lengthy number of complicated errands claiming they were essential to solving the mystery of The City; go to the police department, go to City Hall, check out the hospital and see if he had a job waiting for him.

They were all crap errands, really. Sherlock didn’t yet care about the result. He needed time to go the library again. None of the Aurthur Conan Doyle stories were available but it hadn’t taken him long to stumble over the library’s massive collection of DVDs. While John shied away from the recent BBC miniseries Sherlock went right to it. And paled.

He also collected-- alright, the technical term may have been lifted-- a number of other DVD collections; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the new series of Doctor Who. He would have taken more but Sherlock hadn’t met many others yet.

So when Sherlock finally returned to the flat he was hunkered down on the arm chair, watching the television with a listless expression. A high school aged Buffy was on the screen talking in her characteristically quippy dialogue to her little friends. Sherlock wanted to claw his eyeballs out with his fingers and pressed the fast forward button on the remote. The stack of DVDs was right next to him. Sherlock was on top. He’d meant to watch his own first but hadn’t brought himself to do so; Sherlock and John’s doppelgangers stared at him from the cover.

Was this the big secret? ( The City watched too much telly? )

It had taken Watson a little while, but he'd finally found an opportunity to get out to the hospital. The trip was part of a day long round of errands and he'd saved it for last - mostly because Jennifer had suggested that there might be some sort of job set up for him, and if that was the case, a quick drop-in might turn into several hours of waiting about. He'd dressed for the occasion, but not dressed-up; he'd worn nicer slacks and a button-up instead of one of his pullovers. His wallet, complete with identification, was tucked into his pocket.

Once he'd reached the place, Watson went in the front doors and found his way to the desk.

"May I help you?" The woman on duty asked.

"Yes, please - I'm Dr. John Watson," John replied. "I'm new? To the City. This might sound a little mad, but it was suggested that I might have a job waiting? I thought it would be worth the time to check."

"Have a seat," the woman said. She was wearing a little plastic nametag that introduced her as 'Janice.' "I'll check with HR to see if any paperwork has come through."

"Right." John took a step backwards. "Thanks."

The indicated seats were arranged in a 'U' shape around a coffee table. They were plastic and wholly uncomfortable, as was the way of a hospital. John chose one and random and leaned forward to grab a magazine.

(Takes place shortly after this.)

After the Doctor left, Buffy helped herself to the Magic Box’s first aid kit, which was exactly where she remembered it. There wasn’t much she could do besides cover it with a basic dressing. What do you put on a burn caused by an energy beam from an alien robot? With her arm down carefully to conceal the damage, she hobbled towards home. She did not, however, conceal the small curved cut above her left brow.

On the way she sent John a text: you busy?

Buffy could count the number of times she’d faced a villain that had given her similar (temporary) battle wounds. The Master, Adam, Faith, Glory-- maybe a few others. That was about it. It was a pretty short list.

( Had she known that only moments earlier John had been strapped to an insane machine that nearly killed him, the slayer would have left him alone. )

It had not been a good few weeks for the Doctor. It was exceptionally rare that something managed to get one over on him; it happened, but infrequently enough that the occurrence was a surprise every time. He was worried - about Pond and Rory trapped on a strange planet (just imagine the trouble Pond could get herself into), about Lyra and Fred and Sherlock Holmes, trapped as he was in this strange place, about the designs behind the abductions. Things like this didn’t just happen. They took effort and knowledge and planning.

So? He’d paced about like a madman. The Doctor didn’t sit still easily, and exploring the City made him feel productive. Perhaps he could find where his crafty Urban Overlord had hidden the TARDIS. Perhaps he’d meet someone with some answers - or at least someone interesting.

He’d give the City one bit of credit: it had provided him with a suitable wardrobe. Tweed, ties, proper comfortable shoes for running about, and even a whole shelf of headgear. Now he could choose among fedoras, bowlers, a Stetson, three different takes on the fez, and what could only have been a Phillip Treacy original. It was in zebra print and had little ears on the sides.

The Doctor chose a broad-brimmed tartan fedora. ( It felt jaunty. It felt dashing and heroic, like Indiana Jones mixed with the Scottish Highlands. )

Something was wrong. The voices of the people outside Sheapard's were gone. So were the sounds of anything else. No people, animals, carriages. None of the usual bustling activity Cairo played home to.

Amelia opened her eyes to find herself in a strange, dimly lit room. Only moments before, she'd been on the terrace enjoying a cup of tea, and now she was in what appeared to be a hotel room, though it was almost too friendly to be a hotel. It had all the evidence of being some sort of apartment. She looked around quickly, relieved to discover she was alone. That was unlikely to last long, so she knew she had to hurry.

No doubt this was the work of that genius of crime, the Master Criminal. He must have drugged her tea! Only Sethos would be so bold as to kidnap her in broad daylight. She wondered how he managed to bring her here. There really was no accounting for his cunning, and after his recent confessions toward a certain regard he held for Amelia, it was not inconceivable that he would try again. Emerson had interrupted them the last time.

Her day started with a ringing alarm clock. Buffy picked up the old fashioned clock and stared listlessly for over twenty minutes before deciding to turn it off. Even then, she did not immediately rise from her bed.

She showered. Dressed. Weapons were serviced and cleaned and then put away. The house was tidied. There were exactly two dishes to be done in the sink.

And then she had the rest of the day. There were no trips to the Magic Box. No Big Bads to investigate. Patrols were normally saved for sundown. That meant there were several hours left to fill. So Buffy took heavy steps and spent much of that time breaking the imagined bones of a high end, professional grade punching bag.

At least the asylum had mixed things up. ( (What a terrible thought.) )

Sherlock had a gun pointed at a coat packed with explosives about to do something very clever when he heard a soft click! Just a noise. Not a bang. Not a scream. Nothing. Just a small noise and then he was in The City.

No pool. Just a City. American, he thought at first. So he started to walk a straight line. Point A to Point B, attempting to deduce his location. But the steets refused to make sense. Twice he passed his own street address of 221B Baker Street. He didn’t go in, of course. That would be mad.

The scale of it all was what impressed him. And the moving streets. What would it take to pull something like that off? So Sherlock continued investigating. He caught glimpses of brochures from The City; bus routes with maps that didn’t connect, a newspaper, an advertisement for The City Hospital.

Sherlock wasn’t mad. He looked down at the impossible bus route map which already failed to match up with the street corner he was already on, mumbling to himself, “When you’ve eliminated the impossible...”

Not mad and not dead.

“...Then no matter how improbable, it must be the truth.”

Sherlock knew what this place wasn’t. But he hadn’t quite settled on what it was.

( There was someone else. )

John had never much gone in for television - oh, he watched it. During his brief period of unemployment, he’d watched quite a lot. Daytime talk, game shows, dramas and comedies and whatever else was being broadcast when he was home. ( He hadn’t enjoyed it, not really, but it was a pastime until something better came along. )

With a forced stay in a mental institution by way of introduction, it was little wonder that Watson was still jumpy about being in the City. Not just disgruntled, not just angry or nostalgic for home - genuinely jumpy, as if trouble could lurch around the corner at any time. Sure, he was wearing proper clothes. His own, in fact, as the city had perfectly replicated a striped shirt and one of his favorite sweaters. He had on real shoes, and he was free to wander.

None of it made him feel more comfortable.

He was in the open, seated in the park with a coffee and the newspaper. If he were stuck in a strange place, he wanted to know something about it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in print - just a few articles about weekend events and a cover spread about a big gala opening at the local science museum. Frustrated, John crumpled the pages into a giant ball and dropped it unceremoniously at his feet.

He sipped his coffee and frowned.

Buffy tried to return to her regular schedule; eat, sleep, patrol. It was one unenthusiastic motion for her now, as if she were rehearsing who she was supposed to be. She hadn’t seen John, the man who tried to help her back in the hospital, since leaving that place with all its terrible associations. She thought about him often, if only because she was worried and weighted by guilt. What if he was still there? What if she had left him behind? She’d promised she wouldn’t.

So when she saw him on the park bench ahead it was the first real smile that had crossed her face in ages. Before she realized what she was doing, Buffy jogged toward him, just thankful to see someone she recognized.

“John!”

She almost shouted Dr. Watson! But doing so would have felt out of place-- even for The City. She still wasn’t sure how much of the Sherlock dreams she had were drug induced and how much of it was real. John looked far too modern-- and thin-- to be the television versions of the famous doctor she’d caught glimpses of.

Buffy was also thankful that on this particular patrolling mission she only carried a wood stake concealed in the sleeve of her jacket. ( A sword or an axe would have been hard to explain. )

Jennifer was annoyed.

Early this morning, they had gotten her up and out of bed. They had told her that today she was going to go home. There had been a huge amount of relief in this, because she didn't want to be in this place any more. Since the alarms had started going off, she'd been very bothered about a few things. She had decided that she no longer liked it inside the asylum. She didn't care how comfortable they made her or how many times a day they let her color.

They hadn't given her morning meds.

Of course, she'd thought that they were just going to make her sign a few papers and then she'd be on her way. Out the door. Let free into the world where she could figure out what was going on and try to fix whatever had suddenly gone wrong with her to end her up in a place like this to begin with. Because, she was pretty sure they didn't lock you up in places such as these if you didn't really need to be there. There had to be a reason. Had to be.

She hadn't seen Spock again, which sort of made her wonder if he was avoiding her. That would be a really unhappy thing to find out. She really liked him. Jennifer hoped that she found him on the other side of the doors, out in the city someplace, doing something he would normally do. Though, she couldn't really say what elves did on normal days.

Then they didn't give her mid-morning meds. Or noon meds.

Her head was starting to clear. She kind of wished they'd given her the medications because sitting around and waiting was really boring. At least when she was doped to the gills she could have fun just looking at her fingers. Here she was now, sliding slowly toward awareness and they had left her in a room with a few other chairs and no windows. Occasionally they walked in with clipboards with papers that she needed to sign, and once a doctor came in to see how she was feeling. But they said something about discharge exams, and Jennifer really didn't want anything to do with discharge exams.

"Come ON!" She said to nobody in particular. "Just let me go! You said I could go!"

Sunshine. The park. Maybe she'd find that guy who could explode the pigeons, and make him do that for a while. She needed to get her frustration out somehow. That seemed like a really good way to do it.

In spite of his best efforts, Watson had not been able to find Buffy. He'd been back to the janitor's closet with water and a muffin, but she hadn't been up in the ceiling. He'd checked. Not well - he hadn't gone crawling about - but he'd peeked up into the space above the tiles and hadn't seen any signs of her. She'd either come down, or she'd crawled off to a place where she couldn't hear him calling her name.

From there, he'd been at a loss. He'd wandered a little, but she hadn't been in the room with the televisions, nor had he spotted her down at the cafeteria. Perhaps they'd found her? She might be up in her room, drugged and unable to move. Or she might've gotten free.

Watson preferred the latter. He'd just decided to go with that theory, as unlikely as it may have been, when a nurse spotted him coming around the corner. "Where are you headed, dear?" The nurse was an older woman, nearing sixty and gray. John didn't much care for being coddled, but he decided not to argue. "I'd like to see the courtyard. Some fresh air, yeah?"

"You're headed the wrong way," the woman said. "Let me show you."

And so John had followed the nurse down into the open area reserved for patients. John briefly smiled his thanks and wandered off to get a look around. He hadn't been the only one with the idea - a few other people were enjoying the fresh air, too. With a reluctant sigh, John moved over to a bench and sat down next to a woman.

He was ready to be out of there.

Buffy Summers spent the majority of her time at Arkham Asylum in a catatonic state. Each day a pair of orderlies would bring her out into the commons, seating her at a table. The young woman spent hours in her chair completely motionless, frozen with her face arranged in a troubled expression. She looked so concerned, so deep in thought until, usually another patient with a sense of humor, took her arms and posed her ridiculously-- positions Buffy could hold the entire day until she was put back in her cell for the night.

Most days Buffy was silent. There were rare occasions, however, when the slayer would say some meaningless phrase, repeated over the course of the day. Phrases like, My skin should crack and peel, or, Don't give me songs. Sometimes she merely repeated what was said to her.

Every two hours, a nurse would attend to the slayer, taking a needle to her arm and injecting her with an unknown substance. Except today.

Today, Buffy was left alone in the commons for four hours. After missing two doses of the drug cocktail she was regularly given, her eyes fluttered open as if waking for the first time. She placed a hand on her head suffering from throbbing pain and intense light sensitivity. For the first time since Buffy had been placed in the asylum she was able to process her surroundings, of the people next to her. She looked down at the white linen clothing she wore, unable to recall when she'd been dressed.

"Where am I?" Only after she asked did the slayer power through her migraine to see if someone nearby could answer her question.