timestamp: midnight.

[worldsonly]

Midnight. As clocks tick over to 12:00, the screen starts off blindingly white, with shapes and colors fading into solidity, until it's clear that the camera is set within what looks like the entrance hall to some bizarre combination of a massive Jacobean mansion and a hospital laboratory. Rather than banisters, the huge marble staircase is flanked by autopsy tables, their brushed steel surfaces sharply reflecting the clinical fluorescent lighting where they aren't already covered with microscopes and petri dishes and discarded pipettes. The second floor sweeps wide into three visible corridors: a center one, and one each to the left and right, though the left-hand hall is completely dark and crossed off with frayed and fading yellow crime scene tape. The walls at the top of the stairwell are lined with bursting file cabinets and overflowing bookshelves, interspersed with huge detailed topography maps and blown-up photographs of gruesome crime scenes in lurid color. Incongruous to the sterile conditions, however, the tiles of the bottom floor are littered with cigarette stubs and, in some places, hypodermic syringes covered in dust and cracked glass patterns like spiderwebs, with their plungers pressed all the way down.

Sherlock is at the bottom of the staircase, inky curls tumbling over his furrowed brow, his eyelids lowered in concentration as he scrapes out something from his violin that rises and falls sharply, then bursts into shrill allegretto, the notes unearthly and mocking. After a few minutes of this performance, the movement is over, and Sherlock's eyes snap open to the rising sound of footsteps just off-screen.

As alien and disquieting as his gaze has often been called, it can only now be described as inhuman: rather than any pale shade of silver-blue-green, his irises are cast in gold, and they glow with a sick yellow light. He — it — lowers the violin and bows low at the waist, then turns to face the stairs with a crooked and cold smile. "Welcome."

The camera snaps whip-like up and to the right, where at the top of the stairs stands another Sherlock, framed by the entryway of the central corridor. His eyes are their normal mercurial glasz, narrowed in focus and darting about the area as he makes a hundred different deductions from everything — wherever his gaze lands, a cloud of white text bursts forth, backwards from the camera so only he can read it. If he's startled by the appearance of a mirror image of himself, he makes no overt indication of it, only the tightening in his jaw betraying him in a way only someone intimately familiar with his expressions might observe. "Dreaming," he pronounces, then rolls his eyes as though terribly inconvenienced. "Oh, you've got to be kidding. Midnight channel, isn't it?"

The Shadow doesn't answer, but the slow blink of its golden eyes is clearly confirmation enough. It and Sherlock stare one other down, each searching for fissures in the other, until Sherlock breaks the contact and shrugs in a calculated display of casual apathy.

"Well?" he says dismissively, crossing his arms and shrugging, a long statue of black fabric casting pale shadows against the white marble. "How does this song and dance go again? You expose my deep emotional turmoil, I wail and gnash my teeth and deny it, then there's a big rescue party and we all go home better adjusted for the trouble?" He lets out a laugh positively inflated with derision, then sweeps one hand out palm-up in the universal gesture indicating his Shadow has the floor. "Let's be having you."

The Shadow chuckles deeply. "Oh, Sherlock," it says, "don't pretend you aren't a little thrilled about all the attention."

"Do you know what? As it so happens, I don't actually care," Sherlock replies, looking utterly disinterested in the entire situation.

The Shadow turns to smile at the camera — if the twisted, pitying spread of its lips across its face could be called a smile. "It's not really important whether he believes that," it says, lowering its voice conspiritorially. "I've worked very hard to convince myself that I'm a self-sustaining island, after all. Prick me, I do not bleed!" It shows teeth now, lips curling away from them into a smug grimace, and leans in as if imparting a delicate secret to the audience. "What's important, however, is that it's not really all that true. Rings a bit hollow, you know."

Sherlock (Mister Punchline, the man who'll outlive God trying to have the last word) scoffs with disbelief as if he cannot physically restrain himself from it, and the Shadow whirls around to pounce upon the opening that gives it, grinning as it snarls, "Why don't we look at the evidence, Sherlock?"

It faces the audience again, arms wide, twirling the bow of the violin like a conductor's baton. "Only there's so much, how will I have time to go through it all? What about my constant need for validation, hmm?" It begins to pace, making sure to always look at the camera, its spine straight, arms crossed behind it, head reared back in an exact likeness of Sherlock at his most irascible. "I'm sure someone's picked up on it. Anyone? Yes?"

"Validation?" Sherlock says, one eyebrow dancing up with scorn. "Don't be absurd. I don't care what anyone —"

"But I don't mean from anyone," the Shadow cuts in, a razor edge to its smile, "only the nonbelievers. Oh, the woman was so right about me —" and suddenly Sherlock draws back and hisses, "Don't —" and the Shadow ignores him, its voice getting louder, "my unwavering belief in my own higher power! And what's better than making an example out of some hapless idiot daring to doubt my intelligence! The second anyone expresses disbelief, I'm there with all my brilliance to put them to shame! I will literally walk eyes-open into a guaranteed death if someone says I can't, jump through any kind of hoop I can find just to show off. I just can't help it."

It shakes its head, chuckling ruefully. "I can't stand the thought of someone not thinking I'm exactly as good as I say. I don't care who hates me — who reviles me! I don't care about their derision, their repulsion, so long as it comes with the concession that I am superior. If everyone knows I'm better and more clever than they, what does it matter that no one likes me? They're going to hate me anyway, so I might as well get something for myself out of it. Until, of course," it adds slyly, "someone finally didn't. Then I remembered how good it felt to be truly appreciated."

Immediately Sherlock rockets forward, snarling, "Don't you dare talk about —" and the Shadow turns on him again, and rather than a violin bow there is suddenly a pistol in its hand, a worn and familiar British Army Browning pointed at Sherlock's face.

"Brilliant," it jeers, voice pitched higher in a mocking of John's voice, and Sherlock freezes, his expression mask-like. "That's brilliant, you're fantastic, it's wonderful how you see things, Sherlock, really," then it drops the mimic and says, "God, and wasn't that just mind-blowing, that someone so ordinary would be the only one to get it." It smirks, taking in the tense lines of Sherlock's shoulders, his barely-restrained snarl. "Look at you, you're pathetic. You can't hide the liar's tells you don't know you have, and you are broadcasting them all now."

The Shadow stalks up the stairs, the gun never wavering, held in front of it like a comfortable extension of itself. Only when it reaches the top does it lower the gun and begin circling Sherlock, grinning like he is an exceptionally good crime scene, and Sherlock doesn't move, staring flatly ahead and resolutely ignoring it.

"I went and picked myself up a heart with him, didn't I, and never bothered to think of what it might cost me. Oh, and it's cost me, hasn't it? I can't pretend I'm above it all anymore, can't say I'm an untouchable independent island, can't say I don't bleed. No, put him in a sniper's sights and I'm as good as lost," it hisses in Sherlock's ear, and for all he's been standing still as stone before, now Sherlock flinches, his eyes flicking down. "A lot of good it's done, boxing yourself up and burying your emotions in the garden like a child! Thought it would make me better than human, thought locking up my flaws would make them disappear, and all it's done is make me weaker."

"Are you finished?" Sherlock snaps, practically vibrating with tamped-down fury. "Only I'm bored of this, you see. Pop psychology was never my thing."

The Shadow looks, for a brief moment, almost disappointed. "Surely you know that doesn't work on me, Sherlock? You've fooled yourself before, but in this place, I am in charge, and you cannot fool me."

The words are barely out of its mouth when suddenly Sherlock turns on his heel, his fist flying out to catch the Shadow sharply under the ribs, but the move was clearly not unexpected because the Shadow retaliates instantly. They grapple together, the two of them, exchanging a flurry of blows, coming closer and closer to the stairs, until one of them — it's impossible to even tell which — slips on his heel and brings them both tumbling down.

At the foot of the stairs, Sherlock scrambles to his feet, winded and dizzy-looking, and he breathes out "John," like a reflex, but the Shadow is too fast. It darts forward and, with a hideous crack, pistol-whips Sherlock viciously across the temple. Sherlock crumples to the floor.

"Well, now that I've presented my evidence, we'll have to perform an autopsy to confirm my findings," says the Shadow after spending a moment to straighten its suit, looking distastefully down at Sherlock breathing shallowly and bleeding on the marble. "It's a shame Molly isn't here to do it, but fortunately, I'm perfectly capable of it myself."