Proper Incentives (Part 2)
Title: Proper Incentives (Part 2 of 2)
Author: jenlee1
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
Rating: R
Word count: ~ 15,000
Spoilers: Very vaguely, for FINA and EMPT
Summary: A reflection on useless regrets and impossible choices, and the price of an error in judgment.
Warnings: None that I'm aware of.
Disclaimer: I own nothing; written for fun, not profit.
A/N: Written for a fic prompt by ingridmatthews asking for Blackmailed!Watson, put in the unenviable position of having to renounce his relationship with Holmes to save them both. As such, be forewarned - this is somewhat AU, in that I've ignored Watson's marriage entirely and taken some significant liberties with canon events regarding the lead-up to FINA.
I woke to the unwelcome and all-too-familiar sensation of rope burns on my wrists, arms wrenched behind me at an angle unnatural enough to be acutely painful.
Caught, then. My fingers flexed and twisted of their own accord as the ugly details came filtering back, sliding in and out of focus like drops of water on a windowpane.
Moriarty’s man with his terrible smile. The dockyard at midnight - the smell of the river, the ache in my chest.
Holmes, trembling against me like a man bleeding inside; shocked and still and staring at nothing.
Considering the matter in retrospect, it pains me to admit that my first, fleeing impression regarding the predicament in which I now found myself was of something horribly like relief. The situation was a bad one, yes - nothing pleasant had ever yet come of an unexpected blow to the head, never mind waking bound and sore in a cold, filthy room - but after all the professor’s machinations and mind games, the shapeless spectre of what further horrors he might be planning had loomed far larger in my nightmares than any violence he could inflict upon my person in a place such as this.
Truth be told, this latest turn of events seemed oddly anticlimactic - crude, at the very least, and refreshingly straightforward. Whatever else he wished to do with me, it seemed for the space of a few precious moments that the worst had somehow been avoided after all; that the workings of fate had turned in my favor and I might be spared the shame and the terrible, crushing guilt of being forced to serve a madman’s twisted purposes in whatever way he might have hoped.
In this, as in so very many things in the space of such a short time, I was thoroughly mistaken.
My senses returned bit by bit as the pain in my head receded, and I turned my attention at last from the scattered musings of my conscience to the particulars of my surroundings. The room itself was damp and dimly lit; overly large for the purpose to which it had been put and so very wide and empty that I fancied I could hear the shuddering rasp of my own breath, echoing back at me from the shadows.
A warehouse, probably - long abandoned, left to the careless mercies of the weather and the rats. Quite possibly the very same building in whose rotting doorway I had taken shelter from the elements, if only because Moriarty might have found something cruelly ironic in employing my hastily selected refuge for another purpose entirely, though there were a half-dozen others just like it in the vicinity.
In any case, he had chosen well; it was in all respects as desolate and as final a place as I had ever seen. A room for interrogations, perhaps; or for darkly sinister warnings, delivered with kicks and blows and the glittering blade of a knife in practiced hands.
A room that brooked no argument, if ever I had seen one.
And there, at last - in the nearest corner of the wide space, observing me with eyes that gleamed snake-like in the glow of a single table lamp, stood the professor himself. He stepped forward when my gaze lit upon him, melting out of the darkness like a grinning, malevolent spirit taking solid form.
“And so we meet again, Doctor.” The hateful voice was everything I had remembered - smooth and self-assured, and coldly, devastatingly satisfied. “Rather the worse for wear on your side, but I suppose that’s to be expected - you’ve had a trying time of it, after all, if the hours you’ve been keeping are any indication. Not to mention the fact that wandering the streets for a day and a half in a fine autumn rainstorm is hardly conducive to a neat and professional appearance, even at the best of times.”
His eyes burned into mine, waiting with keen interest for my reaction, and I stared dully back.
“You’ve been watching me, then.”
The knowledge that my every movement had been observed and dutifully catalogued since our ill-fated encounter nearly a week ago was unexpected, to be sure, though I might have realized it sooner had I been less absorbed in the haze of my own useless agony. It should have been a decidedly unsettling revelation - there was something else, here, something I had missed; some trick of the light on his face, or a glimmer of something worse on the horizon that I had not yet managed to grasp, but it danced just out of reach along the outskirts of my vision.
And in any case - bound and shivering in an empty room, and well and truly beaten - I could not bring myself to care.
He was speaking again; nodding deferentially in my direction with all the false courtesy of an assassin before the strike, and I focused on the words with an effort.
“…must commend you on your attention to detail, after all. You have followed my instructions to the letter, and I daresay I couldn’t have made a better job of it myself.”
“Don’t congratulate me,” I whispered, hoarse from the rain and my own helpless fury. Not that. Anything but that. “Don’t you dare. It’s you who has done this - only you, and no one else.”
He scoffed at that, proud and ramrod straight.
“Hardly. I merely posed you a dilemma to solve, in whatever fashion you saw fit. My terms influenced your decision, of course, but that’s neither here nor there. Truth be told, I believe you’ll find that culpability is all but irrelevant in the end.”
He was pleased, of all things; smug and certain, narrowing his eyes like a great sinister cat on the hearthrug. It struck a nerve, however pinched and worn and half-numbed with overuse, and I regret to say that my answer was more a plea for absolution than the impassioned defense it should have been.
“Tell me, then - what else could I have done? There was never any choice to make, and you know it full well.”
“Ah,” he said, “but that is the truly wonderful thing about being human, is it not?” He leaned forward as if sharing a secret, close enough to feel his breath against my ear. “No matter how repugnant the consequences, we always have a choice.”
It was a simple pronouncement, as baffling as it was nonsensical, but something in his manner unnerved me as nothing else had. I had expected something far uglier than riddles and insinuations; more threats, perhaps, or even a more direct and violent means of persuasion by one of his hulking henchmen. Anything at all except this - staring at the evil old man fairly glowing with satisfaction, hands clasped behind him like mousetraps as though something grim and terrible had already been accomplished.
He raised a hand - lazily, almost, as though calling for another glass of wine at dinner - and a pair of dark and shapeless figures stirred in the shadows behind him. “One way or another, you see,” he said softly, gaze still fixed firmly on my own, “I will have my way in the end. Those who seek to stand against me must learn that their folly carries a price.”
A price. All this, then, for a bit of senseless showmanship.
Perhaps it was the sudden shock of realization, or the infuriating absurdity of calling my friend a fool - even with the benefit of time and distance and endless contemplation on a long succession of sleepless nights, I cannot say for certain. What I do recall, however, is that something inside me gave way in the wake of his words and the floodgates opened at last. I snarled up at him through the sudden, irrational surge of anger rising like a wave behind my ribcage; flushed and light-headed, and fairly giddy with grief.
“Is this - this, what you wanted, after all? A bit of fun, and an outlet for your frustrations? I’ll tell you this, and gladly: Holmes will best you in the end, come what may, and I will play whatever part I must to see it through.”
He watched in silence, poised and polished as ever, as my voice dropped to a near whisper - strained and foreign, even to my own ears.
“So do your worst, Professor. Shoot me, if you like. Hand me over to your men for their amusement, bludgeon me to death and drop my body in the Thames. There is nothing more you can take from me that I’ve not already lost.”
He stared at me with eyes that glittered like bits of glass in the lamplight, and he laughed.
“I find your indignation oddly charming, Doctor, if you’ll excuse the sentiment. All these years with a man who tracks murderers and thieves from the comfort of his sitting room, and still so astoundingly naïve. Come now, and enlighten me - is that what you imagine my ultimate aim to be? A petty display of revenge against you and your dear one, I suppose... a meaningless, petulant act of spite.”
His voice dripped disdain, gathering vehemence with every word.
“Revenge is the last resort of those defeated who have nothing left to gain, and so I have no use at all for such trifles. I am precisely where I want to be - master of all that I command, which is a very great deal indeed - and your beloved Sherlock Holmes is nothing to me but a troublesome inconvenience.”
“He’ll see you hang.” The words tumbled out like water from a spigot, the ropes biting so sharply into my wrists that I felt half-blinded with the pain of it. “He’s far more than you or I could ever hope to be - the finest man I’ve ever known. Whatever sort of cruel, twisted genius you might fancy yourself, you know nothing at all of what he is.”
His mouth tightened almost imperceptibly, betraying a hint of anger for the first time in all our dealings, but his voice when he spoke was cool and smooth as polished steel.
“So certain of your assumptions, are you? I know a great many things, in fact, and I will tell you precisely what I am. I am nothing more and nothing less than what I have always claimed to be - a businessman, and a strategist of some little talent. And as such,” he continued, clearly losing patience with the conversation even as his men busied themselves in the shadows just outside the flickering circle of light, “regardless of how all of this might appear, I have no interest in killing you outright.”
No, I thought, and my mind refused to go further.
Not this. Not again.
For several long and terrible seconds, I could see nothing in the world beyond the two of us, staring at one another across the abyss with the rafters creaking overhead. He held my gaze with the same probing interest that had preceded his unthinkable demand in a richly upholstered carriage nearly a lifetime ago, and it was all I could do to keep still.
“You’re barking mad. Whatever else you wish of me, you cannot think that I would do it.”
“My dear Doctor, you already have - and admirably. In the course of my work, I have had occasion to observe a wide and varied array of methods that can be used to wound an adversary when it becomes necessary to send a message, and this is something of a universal truth: the knife sinks infinitely deeper, when the hand that wields the blade is the one that he most trusts in all the world.”
The thin, tight-lipped smile that followed was far more ominous than any display of temper; another game piece, turned face-up on the table at precisely the right moment. And it was only then, with the first creeping tendrils of genuine fear snaking their way through my chest like shards of ice, that I saw the plot at last for what it was - elegant in its simplicity, and so very much worse than anything else he might have done.
To Holmes, as well as to myself. To both of us together.
“And so, all of this - ” He gestured expansively, indicating the building around us with a sweep of his hand, “ - as you’ve no doubt surmised by now, is something else entirely. An experiment, if you will, and I would venture to say that I am nearly as interested as you are in the outcome.” A pause, as if to drive home the point; and then, delicately: “Weaknesses are everything, you see. One cannot win the game without knowing which cards to play, and which to hold back for another time.”
I could only stare in silence, so paralyzed with horror that even the muted slosh of something heavy in the shadows and the acrid stench of paraffin scarcely registered, as he donned a scarf and hat from someplace nearby and buttoned his coat with exaggerated care.
“I have taken the liberty of informing your erstwhile colleague of our location, along with the particulars of our original arrangement. He is free to act as he sees fit.”
The safe, familiar rattle of tiny bits of wood in a tin; the flare of a match in the shadows.
Calm. For God’s sake, be calm.
“He would never think to leave me here, if that’s what you imagine.” My mouth was dry, eyes watering inexplicably, but I was nearly certain I believed it.
“No,” he agreed, oddly satisfied. “I don’t suppose that he would.”
I watched him turn for the door, every inch the cold and sinister creature that my friend had hunted for so many months. His gaze sought mine one final time, as if reading the coiled frustration in the set of my shoulders, and I held his soulless stare with all the conviction I could muster. Though I did not know it then, the professor and I would never again cross paths so directly and regardless of all the trouble that followed, I cannot truly claim to be sorry for it. His very presence in the room was a poison and I remember his parting words as vividly as any warning, etched upon the fabric of my mind.
“The clever detective in your stories is a man of flesh and blood, though I suspect that you forget it at times. He is no worker of miracles.” He paused in the doorway, allowing the thought to hang for a moment in the thickening air. “And like any man, he can be broken.”
I hoped that he might rot in the very pits of Hell, and said so. The cold, black eyes never wavered.
“I know very well what you think of me, Doctor, but consider this - you, and no other, have destroyed Sherlock Holmes far more completely than I could ever hope to. If he is willing to have you back, even now, then God knows he deserves you.”
The door swung shut behind him, latch clicking into place with an air of finality as chilling as it was inevitable, leaving me alone in the silence to ponder the unmistakable truth of his words.
~ * ~
My rescue - not surprisingly, perhaps - was an altogether humiliating affair.
It is a curious phenomenon, that the gravest of physical dangers can be reduced to a trifling inconvenience in comparison with the spectre of something far more devastating to the spirit, and so it has been for me on some very few occasions in my past. Most are hopelessly intertwined with the smell of blood-soaked sand and the chatter of gunfire, and all but buried under the weight of the intervening years - they linger in echoes and half-imagined glimpses when the evenings are too dark and too quiet, but time has blunted their edges into something softer.
And as such, it is perhaps small wonder that they cannot help but pale beside something as deceptively innocuous as a cold autumn night in 1891, in an empty warehouse by the river.
I would like more than anything else in the world to say I never doubted that Holmes would come for me; and indeed, I could scarcely have imagined otherwise. Whatever my mistakes, grievous though they were, they could not have been enough to alter the natural course of things to such an extent that I might now find myself alone with whatever dangers I had earned.
He would come. This much was clear - or should have been, had I possessed the wherewithal to consider the situation rationally. But I have never been blessed with my friend’s preternatural talent for separating such useless distractions from the necessary business of thinking, and I regret to say that I could no more put aside my anguish in search of a solution than sprout wings and fly away.
And in any case, shivering miserably by the docks in a prison of my own making, it was not the insidious rising glow of the flames that I feared.
Time passed in fits and starts, as it is wont to do when we find ourselves paralyzed in the grip of something deadly and inescapable, and so I cannot say how long I sat twisting my hands uselessly against the creeping numbness induced by the ropes, eyes shut to the eerie half-light of the fire. Long enough to be well and truly exhausted, I suppose, and perhaps beyond that it makes no difference.
Holmes came, in the end. Of course he did.
It was with a rush of relief as profound as it was shameful that I registered nimble fingers working at the knots, the grip of a familiar hand at my elbow and in another moment, my friend and I lay panting together in the fetid rainwater pooling outside on the cobblestones. Safe, whispered something thin and frantic in the back of my mind. Safe and warm and solid, here beside you and for a handful of precious, blissful seconds I steadfastly refused to think any further.
And here, there are a great many things I could say on the subject of our escape. I could describe, for instance, the searing heat of the flames along my trouser-leg as Holmes propelled me toward the ground, or the great crash of a singed and blackened rafter beam collapsing under its own weight. I could say that the cool wind outside rushed over us both like fine crystal shattering in the air and all of these things would be true, but they are not the point. It would be easy - so damnably and unforgivably easy - to present the entire ugly matter as nothing more than a set piece for a bit of action and intrigue, dissolving into yet another grand, rollicking adventure as smoothly and easily as rock salt into water.
But no. If this account is to have any purpose at all, then I must find it in between the sweeping strokes of a tantalizing and dishonest work of fiction in all the little things that mattered, which were these: the tentative scrape of a stubbled jaw against my own as he bent to listen to my breathing; the fingers in my hair, too light and too careful and gone before I could form the words to question why; and - more than anything else, perhaps - the piercing silence, hanging cracked and brittle as frosted glass in the fog.
It was wrong, all of it, and the slow, niggling sense of alarm was what drove me up on one elbow at last, blinking into the dark to find the reason. It has long been a foundation of my existence that my friend has reasons for everything he does, but it is perhaps a further testament to my foolishness that even then, half-lying in the rain at his side in the aftermath of the worst mistake I have ever made, it never once occurred to me to think any different.
“Holmes.”
He let out a breath at the sound of my voice, low and rasping like the latch on a rusted gate, and something twisted in my chest. Don’t, it seemed to say. It was there in the set of his shoulders, the careful distance between his hand and the rain-soaked ruin of my overcoat. Don’t do this - don’t whisper, don’t touch me. Don’t.
His voice, when he spoke, was nearly normal.
“You needn’t say it, you know.” He coughed, once, into his sleeve. “Whatever it is that you’re thinking.”
His gaze was fixed unwaveringly on some point in the middle distance, and the words were measured and even. Rehearsed, almost, as though he had passed a day and night nearly as harrowing as my own; wrestling with the sodden weight of wrongs suffered and decisions made until there was nothing left but this.
“You know very well what I’m thinking.” The insinuation hurt more than I had expected. “I’ve ruined a great many things - nearly everything, perhaps, and I know it, but not that. Never that. You always know.”
Tell me, I thought. Please. Pluck it out and piece it together, and forgive me for it all.
“Ah,” he said heavily, still as calm and mechanical as ever I’d accused him of being. “But that’s the great irony of the thing, isn’t it? There are times when I’d simply rather not, if it’s all the same to you.” The barest hint of reproach colored his tone, and I supposed that I deserved it. Until he turned to face me at last, and I forgot for an instant to suppose anything at all.
It might be imagined that the revelation of the professor’s sinister hand in what must have heretofore seemed an entirely private affair could only serve to mitigate whatever heartache I had caused. I had acted under the worst sort of duress, after all - in defense of everything he and I held dear - and a full accounting of the details would bear out the truth of my intentions. It is equally true, however, that there are times when the cruelty of the deception may render its necessity all but irrelevant.
In short: there is little in the way of colder comfort than a perfectly reasonable explanation, for all that I had only begun to realize it.
My friend looked, at first glance, like a man in the grip of a terrible fever. He was haggard and worn, as though he had aged ten years since last I had seen him - disheveled and sweating and horribly, frighteningly pale, far beyond the physical toll that a sleepless night or a brush with peril might have exacted on one so accustomed as he to odd hours and dangerous errands.
And his eyes - dear God, his eyes. Of all the wretched visions that plague my mind in the cold, grey hour just before dawn that every troubled ex-soldier knows too well, this is the one that lingers when the ghosts of wounded men and rifle fire have died away.
That, I believe, was when I understood at last what I had done.
I cannot find it in my heart to regret it, in spite of all that followed; I think of what might have happened, and I can no more wish for the alternative outcome than I have ever been capable of standing idly by when his very life is threatened, but I understood. Whether it is better or worse to have plunged in the dagger myself is a question I shall never be able to answer, but I know this with a cold, bitter sort of certainty that throbs like a toothache whenever I think on it: that even now, I would do anything he asked - give any quarter, pay any price - if only I could forget the way he looked at me.
Alas, such favors are not ours for the asking.
He stood as I watched, a bit slowly and painfully; swiped soot-stained palms against his trousers and held his breath like a terrible secret, staring off again into the fog.
Now he knew the truth of the thing at last, for better or worse, and it ought to have been a relief. But my mind was caught up in dizzying circles, frozen stupidly on the hitching of his chest as something clicked into place at last, and all I could think to ask was where he meant to go. As if this, of all things, were any of my concern; as if the answer made any difference at all, with bile burning the back of my throat and the slow, creeping haziness at the edges of my vision that had nothing to do with the smoke.
Where was there to go, after all? Anywhere but here, likely as not - anywhere but the dockyards just past midnight, smelling fish and filth and coal dust and avoiding each other’s eyes.
He sighed.
“Home, such as it is.” He blinked at me, squinting tiredly against the half-hearted glow of a nearby streetlamp as if it were obvious, and I tried very hard to believe him. “We are finished here, are we not? There are things to be done, of course; lines to be drawn, plans to be made, but tonight - ” A muffled exhalation, rasping over something in his throat. “I am finished with all of it.”
There was a ringing, terrible finality in his tone that clutched at my chest like a band of ice - don’t, please don’t - and I levered myself upright with an effort.
“Please,” I said and stopped. There was nothing more to say.
I thought it entirely possible that there would never again be anything to say, that we might yet limp away untouched to drink brandies by the fireside and forget to ring for breakfast and never speak of this again, but it was too late - Holmes had seized upon the plea for what it was and proceeded to peel away the layers as methodically and mercilessly as ever.
“What do you want of me, Watson? I hold no grudge against you. You did what you felt was necessary, under the circumstances - I have always known you to keep a level head regardless of the danger, and I have no doubt that your actions were eminently reasonable.” He shrugged, a trifle stiffly. “No man can expect more of you than that.”
He was not angry. That he spoke the truth was immediately evident - doubly so to one as attuned to his every mood and expression as I have always been - and it was this, more than anything else about his demeanor, that chilled me to the very core. Anger fades with time; it can be overcome with love and patience, and yields readily in the face of true remorse. It burns itself out in a white-hot flare of pain and frustration or smolders away into nothingness, clearing the path for whatever comes after. Holmes had been angry with me before - I would venture to say furious, on a few memorable occasions - and I with him, and I did not fear his temper.
But this - the heavy exhalation, worn and ragged like an open wound; the cold, weary resignation in his voice - was something else entirely.
“What he threatened - ” The words caught in my throat and stuck there, impossibly heavy. “You cannot imagine what I felt.”
“On the contrary, I daresay I can. I am in full possession of the facts, you see, for the first time since all this began and my imagination is quite as vivid as it has ever been.” His gaze hardened, sharpened to something narrow and crystalline as he continued. “I have been played for a coward and a fool - for my own benefit, naturally - by the only man in all of London I know to be neither. Your reasoning was sound, as we have established. Your motives were pure. But as I ask you, Watson, as a gentleman - must I endure your explanations, as well?”
Enough, the silence breathed. Enough, now - let it lie. I could not.
“You didn’t see him, Holmes,” I whispered helplessly. “You didn’t hear him. He would have done it.”
He twitched at that, dismissed the implications with a careless flick of his hand. His nightmares were different, perhaps, and I ought to have known it - he saw burnt flesh and empty graves, and men with cold, probing eyes in the shadows.
Enough.
My friend fears very little, as it happens. His days are spent balanced at the edge of a cliff; measured in breathless chases and needle marks, always a hairsbreadth from disaster. But this is a difference between us and always has been. I had drawn a breath and taken the plunge, and it had shaken him as no near miss had ever done.
He stepped closer, then. Near enough to touch my shoulder, though of course he did no such thing. Near enough to press his mouth to mine.
You needn’t say it. I know, I’ve always known.
Don’t.
His voice was like sulphur and gunmetal. Like broken glass, crunched beneath careless boots.
“How can you suppose, even for a moment, that anything I have - my reputation, my liberty, my very life, is worth more to me than you are? The former is nothing without the latter, I promise you.”
And there is the crux of the matter, and always has been for us both. What can I offer, in my own defense?
I watched my friend step back - away from the smoldering ruin behind us, away from the quicksilver burn of his breath on my lips - and could not think what there was to say. I’m sorry, after all, seemed bitterly inadequate.
I said it anyway.
“Of that, I have no doubt.” He sniffed, mask shifting and sliding back into place. “Apologies are child’s play; all that matters is the truth. And, if I may say so, I have always been rather adept at drawing my own conclusions.”
I stared at him, aghast.
“Holmes, for God’s sake - whatever else you may believe, whatever censure I deserve, you cannot think for a moment that I meant to hurt you so badly.”
“No, indeed. Until quite recently, I would not have believed you capable of it.” He made me a graceful little bow that stung like the point of the needle before everything goes dark. “As ever, Watson, it seems that I have underestimated your limits.”
And there it might have stopped, I suppose; a creaky gramophone recording run down to the last quavering note but for one final detail that my memory still retains. The heavy, intangible weight of another’s eyes; a flicker of movement away to the left and the grey-cloaked impression of a solitary figure, melting into the fog.
Moriarty.
It ought not to have had the effect that it did - small wonder, after all, that he preferred to observe firsthand the outcome of his most recent wager - but something taut and aching slithered along my spine, and my feet lurched forward of their own accord amidst the noise of a distant, pulsing roar that blurred the edges of my fury into something useless and indistinct.
There was no chance of catching him, of course. He would have made certain and in any case, I managed perhaps ten stuttering paces in pursuit before stumbling hard against the crumbling brick and plaster of a nearby storehouse, sliding down the wall on legs that trembled too much to support my weight.
In days past, I would likely as not have found myself watching helplessly as my friend flung himself headlong after the fiend without so much as a backward glance. Tonight, there was nothing; only the faintest rustle of footfalls on an empty street, and then silence. I waited foolishly for the warm, familiar touch of a hand on my shoulder - something, anything - but none was forthcoming.
And in fact, I opened my eyes to find myself quite alone, with only the wind and rain to break the stillness of a chilly autumn night.
Holmes had vanished into the darkness as swiftly and suddenly as he had arrived - and why not? The ugly deed was done, the villain long gone, and no other reason to linger over the sordid mess I had made of things.
Well done, Doctor, whispered the smooth, hateful voice from someplace deep inside. A fine performance all around.
If I were entirely honest, I could scarcely bring myself to disagree.
~ * ~
There are few places in the world as cold and desolate as the empty space left behind in the wake of a devastating loss, and never before in my life had I been so keenly aware of it.
I wondered, at first, whether it might not be the better course to simply leave well enough alone. London’s dark streets and winding alleyways have ever been a haven for those who wish to lie unseen and undisturbed for the space of a few precious hours, and there were any number of rooms to let where a man might recover his strength and his wits for longer still before rousing himself at last for the trials ahead.
A day, perhaps two. Time enough for the shock of what I had done to soften into something gentler and more reasonable, for the world to right itself again and go on as before. That Holmes had no wish to see me at the moment was abundantly clear; it seemed a safe and altogether unavoidable conclusion that there was little to be gained by dogging his footsteps that very night in hopes of a different answer.
It might have been a wiser decision, as I say, but no place in this account have I ever claimed to be wise - only impulsive and foolhardy and very much in love, and may Providence offer whatever judgment it sees fit for this trifecta of sins against good sense. In any case, regardless of aching bodies and exhausted minds, there has never been devised any torture so exquisite as the agony of simply waiting, balanced on a razor’s edge between two disparate courses with no means of affecting the ultimate outcome. For good or ill, the die had been cast - all that remained were the consequences, and even the very worst that could happen seemed far preferable to the grim, terrifying uncertainty of not knowing what lay ahead.
It was the end of everything, perhaps - the one unthinkable transgression that neither love nor reason could forgive, and we could not go on as if nothing had happened. But I would not - could not - accept the truth of the matter until he told me so in our sitting room, warm and dry and eminently reasonable, and so I abandoned the perfectly sensible idea of cutting my losses for the night in favor of trudging blindly through the rain in the direction of Baker Street and whatever bitter reality awaited me there.
Come what may, I have always preferred to know.
~ * ~
As to what I expected to find upon my arrival, I cannot say for certain.
An empty room and a cold fire grate, perhaps, as I had only half believed Holmes’ assertion that he had no destination in mind but the sanctuary of his own armchair when he vanished into the night. Or, failing that, there still remained the ever-present possibility of finding him sprawled across the settee in a tangle of sweaty clothing and shivering limbs, gasping for breath and staring at nothing with his left arm bare and bleeding in the moonlight. Too many revelations and too much pain, sharp and stinging in the aftermath of something so cruelly unexpected, and God knows it wouldn’t have been the first time.
Worse yet - given the circumstances, there was precious little I could offer in the way of solace.
And so, it was with a thin, peculiar rush of relief that I nudged aside the sitting room door at last to find my friend precisely where he should have been, if anything about that wretched night could have been called ordinary: framed in profile against the muted glow of a nearby streetlamp filtering in through the window, tracing absent patterns on the glass.
If he was startled at my entrance, no trace of it showed in his demeanor.
“An uncommonly tempestuous night, even by London’s standards,” he remarked without looking at me, eyes turned carefully to the street below. “I ought to have brought your hat, of course, but I’m afraid it slipped my mind entirely.”
His tone was conversational and altogether lacking in irony, as though there were nothing untoward in having left me to my own devices in the swirling fog following our most recent brush with danger.
I drew a cautious breath, and let it out again.
“This is still my home.” A muscle in his jaw twitched at that, though I made no move to step forward. “I should say, perhaps, that it was my home two days ago and I would very much like it to remain so.”
The door fell shut behind me with a muffled click that echoed like a gunshot in the silence as I took in his appearance at last: soot-stained and disheveled and unnaturally stiff, cuffs and collar cast aside to reveal the strange, pale delicacy of his skin in all the wrong places.
“Have you ever watched the raindrops, Watson? Sat still and silent and truly observed them, for any length of time? Chasing one another down the glass in a never-ending stream, and then over the edge below into nothing.” One long finger trailed reverently across the windowpane, as if mesmerized. “How easy, how elegant - to simply disappear.”
There was something dark and unaccountably wistful in his expression and I believe, in that moment, that he already knew - was already planning the eventual, inevitable denouement looming ahead in the distance.
And perhaps, after all, it was the only way. Perhaps he felt driven to it, as I had.
The words, and the weary rasp behind them, prickled the hairs at the back of my neck until the distance between us was more than I could bear. He turned away as I drew nearer, one hand reaching out to hover, uncertain, just above the smooth line of his shoulder.
“Come away from there, Holmes.” My voice was little more than a whisper, too loud in the wake of what had come before. “Come away, and let’s be done. Leave all this for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” he echoed tonelessly. “Right you are, of course. A shift in the wind and a few hours sleep, and the rest of us are none the wiser for it.” He dragged a hand through his hair, frayed and exhausted and twenty years older for the space of a single exhalation, even as his gaze flicked reluctantly in my direction at last. “You ought to heed your own advice, Doctor. I daresay you’ve had a worse time of it than I have.”
The lines etched around his eyes belied the half-hearted assertion, and I leaned closer to brush an arm across his back, fingers trailing lightly over the fabric of his waistcoat as though he were made of glass.
“Come to bed,” I murmured. He shivered, leaning miserably toward the window to press his forehead against it, turning his head as if to block out the words. “Lie down with me and close your eyes, and let me rest beside you. However you wish to punish me, whatever else you need, I’ll gladly grant you - only allow me this.”
“I would allow you anything,” he whispered, nearly pleading. “Anything at all, whatever you ask - and that is why I cannot. Please, Watson, I beg you - I cannot speak to you tonight.”
“Then we’ll say no more about it.”
My fingers closed around his wrist, drawing him inexorably away from the window and into the forgiving shadows of the hall. He made no move to resist, too spent for useless arguments even as I fumbled with the buttons of his shirt at the edge of the bed, stroking his back, his flanks, his thighs; tracing a path down his throat with my lips. He choked out a breath against my jaw as I pulled him down for a kiss, pressed up against him and begged him to take me.
And take me he did - rough and grasping and half-blinded with the exquisite agony of his body against mine, as if anything I had to give could undo what was done.
I whispered over and over against the warm skin of his neck that I loved him, worn and hollow like confessing something shameful, until he covered my mouth with his own as though it pained him to hear. And in truth, perhaps it did; of all the things I could have sworn, all the promises I could have made, this was the one that stung most of all - jagged and dangerous and painfully true, and what difference did it make in the end?
These are the things that I recall with a piercing, merciless clarity that never fails to burn. I remember his body shuddering against mine with all the gut-wrenching fervor of a man dying by inches, and I remember his breath burning over my collar; ragged and harsh, worse than any stinging accusation he might have flung at me.
See what you’ve done. A whispered plea for reassurance; the smooth, sliding pressure of skin over skin in the shadows. Twisting and reaching and begging forgiveness, and this is all there is.
Holmes, in the end, folded around me like a drowning man beneath the surface, breathless and defiant with his pulse hammering under my fingertips. He smelled of rain and wood smoke and cold sweat, and his hands trembled where he touched me.
And afterward - well. It does no good to linger over could-haves and might-have-beens, and it would be nothing more or less than the truth to say that I have struggled without success to strike the entire encounter from my memory. But it is one of life’s most tantalizing cruelties that hopes and wishes are oftentimes more difficult to banish than the ugliest of nightmares, and I will only say this about that final and terrible night - when it was over, we lay tangled together in the dark with perspiration drying on our skin, each breathing in time with the other and I allowed myself to believe, for those last, blurred moments of wakefulness, that the awful thing would work itself out in the end.
~ * ~
As it happened, the last of my illusions were shattered some few hours before sunrise.
I cannot say what it was that woke me - an incautious rustle of clothing, perhaps, or the abrupt and conspicuous absence of a warm body pressed against mine - but I blinked awake in the flickering glow of a dying fire to find Holmes up and dressed with a familiar threadbare traveling bag open at the foot of the bed, sorting methodically through his wardrobe with all the deliberate care of a man who has no intention of coming back.
Faced at long last with the hard, unshakeable evidence of everything I had feared from the very beginning, I could not find it within myself to be surprised. The inevitable rush of panicked protest - not that, please; not here, not now - burned itself out as quickly as it came, leaving only a sense of bone-dry weariness in its wake.
So this is the answer, then.
I sat and blinked, half-tangled in the blankets, and forced my throat to work.
“You’re leaving me.”
“An astute observation.” His eyes never left his hands, wholly absorbed in the exacting matter of fitting shirtsleeves against one another on the coverlet. “I am leaving, yes. Leaving you, as you put it, is something of a necessary coincidence.”
“I don’t understand. Moriarty - ”
“Is almost certainly plotting his next move, even as we speak. It is my considered opinion - much as it pains me to admit it - that there are times when a discreet and expeditious withdrawal may be the only viable course of action.” Several neatly folded sets of trousers joined their counterparts on the footboard, landing with a muffled thump that jarred the air from my lungs. “Remaining in London would be foolhardy in the extreme.”
It was a perfectly sensible explanation. At another time - in another life, perhaps - I might have allowed the assertion to pass unchallenged for the half-truth that it was, with both of us the better for it; as it was, struggling up from sleep and abruptly quite cold in the filtering grey of twilight, it was more than I could manage. I sat and stared as the soft, creeping hush of acceptance hovered at the periphery of my awareness and steadfastly refused to take hold.
“No,” I said flatly, blood rushing in my ears. “You don’t believe that, and you never have.”
He shrugged, conceding the point as though it made no difference.
“Perhaps I have other reasons, then. Regardless, he’s tipped his hand; he’ll see us both ruined or die in the attempt, and whatever else you might suppose about my motives, I won’t sit back and watch it happen. ”
The words emerged without affect; clean and simple, a faultless statement of fact. I watched his hands move slow and calm and certain over the fastenings of the bag, emotionless as the sprawl of clockwork diagrams spread over the desk in his study, and for the first and last time in my life I envied him for it.
My own voice, regrettably, was anything but.
“So this is the wiser course, is it?” The tremor brought a rush of heat to my cheeks, but I pressed on regardless. “He was outmatched the day he set his sights on you, and I told him so without reserve. And as for the rest - what can he do, that he hasn’t tried already? There is nothing in his arsenal save mind games and empty threats, and you’ve nothing more to lose.”
At that, finally, the elegant fingers twitched and stilled. He looked pointedly at me and smiled, as resigned and weary and unaccountably bitter as I had ever seen him.
“But I do, you see.” His gaze returned to the bag half-open on the bed, turning away to resume his task. “Much as I might wish it were otherwise. So stay here, Watson. Mind the rooms and see to your practice, and you shall be free of all this trouble.”
“And what of you?”
A loaded question if ever there was one, and perhaps it was unfair of me to ask. For a time there was nothing but the sound of snaps and latches clicking shut, and I thought as he hefted the bag like a barricade between us that he wasn’t going to answer.
He sighed.
“I promise you this - I will come home. Not tomorrow; not in a week or a month, or perhaps for longer still, but someday. Someday, John, when the world has begun to make sense again, I will come home and we’ll put this behind us.”
Someday. He was a man of his word in this as in all things, little though I knew it at the time.
“Is that what you want? He’s a monster, and both of us know it - ruthless and cold, and by your own admission he wishes you dead.” I swallowed hard, mouth so dry I could hardly form the words. “Ask me for anything - anything else in the world, whatever you like - but I cannot stand aside.”
“Perhaps not.” A pause, as he straightened. “All the same, my dear, if you’ll forgive me - ” His gaze lingered on my face as though I might vanish away at any moment, eyes alight with an odd, exhausted strain of sadness that blurred the edges between his words. “I had very much hoped that you would.”
~ * ~
Much has been written already of all that came after - of sleepless nights and foreign cities, and the roaring rush of water that cleared the slate at last - and I cannot bear to repeat it again.
What would it serve, in any case?
My faithful readers in the Strand have heard all they need to know of the matter; the rest is for the two of us alone.
Of human nature in its broadest sense, and in particular of the Great Detective and his doctor, I have only this to say: that careless hurts and beautiful lies cannot be undone for any price, and more’s the pity. They may, however, settle softly and quietly into the cracks and crevices of too many other things remembered - a sheer and plunging chasm of spray-washed rock, perhaps, someplace far away - and that this, in the end, is the best that we have any right to hope for.
That the Earth revolves on its axis, and all our sins lie still. That with time and distance, they can begin to rub away.
So it was, then, that my love fled the city for parts unknown at the first light of morning.
And as for myself - God help me, I left everything I had in London to follow.