To Perceive is to Suffer. Part VIII

[wraithwitch]

It is some time the following night when he awakes, seemingly calm. He looks at Watson, or rather past him, with a vacant expression as if he has no knowledge of where he is and no curiosity about how he came to be there.

“How do you feel?”

He closes his eyes and mutters thickly, “Not well.”

The natural thing to say would be ‘do you know what you did?’ but that is obsolete, for of course Holmes knows what he did, because he is Holmes and he is always aware of such things. So the doctor looks at him instead, unable to bear that the man had tried to destroy himself.

He swallows, wets his lips with a tongue that feels leaden and still tastes of ash. “I know what you want me to say. Very well, I shall oblige you. I’m an idiot.”

But only, Watson has to suppose, if ‘idiot’ is short-hand for ‘calculating unspeakable bastard’. “This was a mistake?”

They both know it was not. “No. Not exactly prime fodder for one of your stories, is it?”

“Shut up.” It’s not what he wants to say. He’d patched up Holmes before, has stitched knife wounds and splinted fingers, wrapped broken ribs, has nursed him through nights of excess. But they’ve never been like this. This he doesn’t quite know how to cope with, as any reaction he could have - should have - is turned on its head and rendered incorrect.

He cannot feel joy, because he is still too terrified of what might have been lost. He cannot gather Holmes up in his arms and clasp him close because he is too angry. He cannot rail at the man because his anger will only serve to open psychological wounds that have scarcely ceased bleeding. He cannot demand ‘why?’ because he doesn’t feel strong enough for the answers he’ll receive. So he is left, silent, pained and bewildered by all that has happened when he ought to be thanking his stars he has his happy ending.

Holmes’ eyes although bruised and bloodshot are far too perceptive. “Still the incurable romantic.”

There is a price to be paid for knowing his friend so well, for being able to read the nuances in his voice, rasping and ragged though it may be. He can never find solace in ambiguity, never pretend that he hasn’t just been insulted when he has. “You’re in a vicious humour when your hurting.”

He waves a hand. “So leave.”

And this - this is first and foremost of the fears that gnaw at him. That Holmes will shut him out, and once the door is closed set about finishing the task he started. And that Watson, in a moment of anger and weakness he’ll have a lifetime to regret - might let him. “Go back to sleep,” he orders shortly.

A smile, snide and crooked. “And it will all be better in the morning.” He laughs at Watson’s stony expression; it’s so ridiculous that they both know exactly what he’s doing - pushing him away - and neither the doctor nor he seem willing to stop it. His poisoned amusement turns to dizziness and nausea; he shudders and rolls to his side, retching as bile burns the back of his throat. A basin is held by his cheek as he coughs something brackish into it. The scent of his own sickness turns his stomach again and he convulses up further mouthfuls of bile and charcoal, his head and heart pounding unpleasantly at his body’s distress. Insides raw and stomach more than empty he collapses back at last, shivering, his eyes closed tight against his own weakness.

There is movement and the edge of the mattress dips as it is sat upon. A cloth, damp and cool is lain on his forehead and then moved to trace the plains of his face, wiping the flecks of grey from his lips. He is acutely aware it is far more than he deserves. A hand runs through the snarls of his hair, and Holmes wonders if perversely, vomiting hadn’t been a blessing in disguise: in such a state he can’t say anything stupid and Watson can’t be truly angry with him.

He closes his eyes, meaning to sleep but it seems even sleep takes an effort he cannot muster. “I must be keeping you from your work.” To his ears his voice holds a strained note of meekness and he hopes it doesn’t sound self deprecating: false modesty is a far uglier sin than arrogance in his book.

“At this hour? Hardly.” He relents and answers with more sincerity: “Nothing that won’t keep.”

Tired lids crack open a sliver and he can’t help but notice how worn Watson looks, frayed and unravelling. “I believe I can sleep without a watchdog,” he says gently. He almost adds, ‘You look done in,’ but stops himself as it seems rather churlish to pass comment when the fault is his. “Surely Mrs Hudson will be wishing to inflict dinner upon you. Or is it breakfast? Some interruption thinly disguised as a repast...”

Holmes is giving him an excuse to bow out, trying to be tactful - something so out of character that Watson almost finds it repellent, as if his friend had started wearing rouge, or henna in his hair: it’s an affectation that doesn’t suit. (Although at least, he supposes, henna and paint would show theatrical flair.) At the back of his mind is a single cry of panic, petrified that although Holmes is returned to him he is so changed as to be dead in all but body and name. “You once said tact was for those not witty enough to be sarcastic.” Not strictly true, but it sounds like something Holmes would say.

“Did I?” His manner has a mildness that speaks of true exhaustion. “I must have been correct then.” As a statement it holds no confidence in its own veracity at all. His gaze skulks like a guilty thing as if all he sees is a rebuke: the rooms he deserted, the man he abandoned, the past he cut adrift, the murder his hands committed.

Awkward quiet gathers like cobwebs in the corners of the room, drips and runs into pools of silence that threaten to stain the atmosphere like patches of rising damp. The clock atop the mantle seems to grow louder with every second it counts.

Holmes cannot meet his eye although he keeps trying, his mouth twitching as if he’s struggling to swallow words that are rank. “My condolences for your loss,” he mumbles at last.

For an empty and surreal moment Watson’s thoughts struggle for purchase. His world has been shattered and rebuilt in less than twenty four hours and he is out of practice with following Holmes’ sudden seeming non sequiturs. Of course the bleakest irony is it is hardly a grand leap of logic, it’s just that the doctor’s life has been tipped upside down and he has yet to recover his senses.

He blinks and then touches a hand to the black silk of his cravat, fixed with a simple jet and silver pin. His collar feels too tight. “Thank you.” The words are still thorns in his throat, even after a year and a half, but the thorns are smaller at least.

After a moment he realises that he expected Holmes to say more. The Holmes of old would have made further comment, surprising him either by a turn of sheer poetry or sheer inappropriate idiocy - for he had a flare for both. To offer the comment and then just leave it, orphaned... Holmes never spoke or acted without a specific goal in mind, it was one of the things that made him so brilliantly infuriatingly Holmes.

Why, in the middle of the night, returned from the dead but only half-way back to the land of the living, would he - apropos of nothing - mention his regret at Mary’s passing?

Watson’s mouth narrows as do his eyes in tired exasperation. “Whilst I appreciate the sincerity audible in your words, old boy, if you continue to try to pull such low shots I’ll be forced to throw you downstairs. The only reason you could have for broaching the subject at this moment is as a deflection,” he continued, “and a craven one at that. Mary never tolerated much of your nonsense when she was alive and I don’t believe the discarding of mortal coils would change her views any.” His words were leant an odd rhythm by the strain of leashing his temper.

Holmes throws back a corner of the blankets, revealing his clothes from the previous night, rumpled and smelling of sickness and the poppy-house; with all that had happened, Watson had only ever got as far as removing his shoes and socks. One pale and slightly grubby foot quests outwards.

“Where in heaven’s name do you think you’re going?”

“Elsewhere.”

“You’re in no state to...”

“For godsake let me up!” There is a wildness to the words that trespasses on panic, and Watson lets go of him immediately.

Holmes drags himself up, muscles too weak to be graceful, sliding his legs around until he is sitting precariously on the edge of the bed, a moment’s dizziness from falling out of it. He aims for nonchalance, as if he isn’t gathering his strength, isn’t calculating how and for how long he can stand without pitching right over. His composure is farcical, his old glacial indifference shattered and ragged to a layer of frost and a sorry one at that.

None the less, he makes it to the mantelpiece without stumbling and with a scruffy sort of dignity. There he stands, swaying ever so slightly, hunched forward, the crown of his head resting against the gilt frame of the mirror that hangs there. His eyes are barely open, as if he can’t bear to catch sight of even a sliver of himself in the silvered glass. He swallows. “I need to tell you what happened...”

He can’t keep the bite from his words. “I think it’s patently clear what happened old boy. You took enough opiates to down a horse and almost died. And, since it’s unlike you to make such an embarrassingly elementary mistake of, say, confusing half a bottle of laudanum with Paregoric, I have to conclude you did it on purpose.” He looks at Holmes’ expression but doesn’t relent. “Or were you referring to something else? Perhaps you wished to tell me why you were in London with the Yard but without me? No, let me guess. Colonel Moran. Although that opens up an unpleasant can of worms, doesn’t it? So perhaps what you really want to tell me is why you staged your own death and kept up the pretence for three years before returning home to kill yourself in earnest...”

“John.”

There is a world of anguish in that one word, but it’s the use of his Christian name more than anything else that shuts Watson up. He rubs a hand across his forehead. Despite his anger, he does not think this is the sort of discussion to be had with a friend and invalid who has no business standing let alone speaking on such a matter so damaging to the nervous constitution of those involved. “You don’t have to tell me anything.” But, he realises as he says it, it is the only way Holmes can have this conversation.

A spectre of his usual self in every way, the very act of standing one that wears him out, yet standing he is, holding on to the mantelpiece for support, trousers un-braced and shirt miss-buttoned, eyes like beads of polished jet at the bottom of two deep and grimy wells...

Should the conversation not got to plan (and there would be a plan, and an outcome he was angling for because after all this is Holmes) he could shield himself behind his frailty. Awfully tired old boy, my mind must be wandering, think I’ll go back to bed - safe in the knowledge that it could all be filed under the convenient fiction of ‘inadvisable moments of delirium’.

“You don’t understand you must listen - you must listen to me,” his voice is fractured. “You don’t know what I did, I...”

In that moment he finds the calm he has been seeking. “I know exactly what you did.”

His eyes rise beneath half-mast lids, a mixture of equal hope and fear shaded by dark lashes. “Do you?”

Watson sighs, it seems he’s done little else since he was called to the Ratcliffe. Sighs of worry, sighs of impotent fury, sighs of it’s -all-gone-to-the-devil-but-perhaps-it-will-get-better-because-it-has-to-please-god-it-has-to. This particular sigh is of resignation and unhappiness. It all comes back to Moriarty. “You took your revolver,” he says softly. “You never take your revolver. And the note about the imaginary English woman needing a doctor - that had your mark all over it. The Professor would have been more blunt.”

The lashes lower to mask his eyes, his face a study of pained self-loathing. “I shot him,” he says, the words dragged out because he is no coward and they need to be voiced.

Watson nods, his expression betraying no surprise because he feels none. Holmes is looking at him, and he realizes that words are required, because to keep silent will keep Holmes locked within this dark and soul-destroying place he has banished himself to. As a doctor - and friend - he wishes to heal the man. But he doesn’t know the right words to staunch the guilt bleeding from this mortal self-inflicted wound in Holmes’ spirit. “I think you forget who you’re talking to...”

“How could I possibly…”

“It’s been three years,” he snaps and there’s a brittleness he wishes he could banish from his voice. He understands - truly he does - and perhaps that’s the worst of it, because it means he cannot hate the man despite the pain he has caused. It’s as if Holmes was a doctor who had set a broken bone in haste; Watson is glad still to have a functioning limb, but it is unsightly and brings flashes of pain and slight rancour each time the weather changes. “I think you forget,” he repeats. “I saw worse in Maiwand.”

So that is what it comes down to. Holmes had never dreamt he’d receive accolades for his actions, he wasn’t so base. But he had soothed himself with the dream of quiet acceptance. A knowing look from the vox populi, tinged with sorrow that said ‘I understand old boy. I would have done the same’ or if nothing else, ‘there’s no shame in doing what had to be done’ - an old soldier’s reassurance.

Yet this is what he’s been given: no look at all - Watson couldn’t even level his gaze and instead had directed it at the grate - just words which barely seemed to touch on Holmes, encompassing the rest of humanity instead. I’ve seen worse. It was a backhanded statement, as if damning with faint praise - you might well be an unspeakable bastard, it isn’t my place to say, but you’re not the most unspeakable bastard I’ve ever laid eyes on.

“Do you think I only ever healed? Do you believe I never shot and killed anyone?”

The salve does not stick. “You were a soldier and that was a war...”

“This was a war!” Watson bites back, anger rising. “This was a war, with you on the front line against the very worst element of society, with myself and the Yard as inadequate reinforcements!” He is breathing hard, years of loss banked high and now providing fuel for his ire. “You are not a god Holmes, nor infallible although God knows you pretend to be because that is what we all need of you. You were the only one capable of finding Moriarty, of standing up to him at all and so it was you we sent against him - a one man crusade because we lacked the resources to fight him ourselves.” If he had hoped that truth might form the thread to stitch the wound closed he was disappointed.

“I failed.”

For a moment Watson fumes, because there are so many retorts to that. Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, being very high on the list. Because to any other man, all that occurred would not have been a failure. A victory tendered through high personal cost to be sure, but not a failure, not with the gang broken, the lieutenants captured and the general dead.

Sherlock Holmes, as he has made patently clear time and time again over the years is not other men, and indeed often seemed to take a perverse pleasure in reiterating the fact through word and deed as if he needed to shake himself free of the prosaic on a daily basis lest it smother him. If shooting Moriarty was a failure, then it was one that had been inevitable from the start: the sacrificing of a lone and powerful chess piece to put the King of Criminals in checkmate.

“You didn’t fail,” he retorts, unable to elaborate from the tangle of words and anger in his head.

The dark eyes close and his head turns down and to the side as if the sentiment is a knife thrust he is too weary to deflect.

Watson is running out of time. The wound has been festering and bleeding for so long that it has leached almost all strength and substance from the force of nature that was once Sherlock Holmes. If he does not treat it and bind it closed then Holmes will die, if not in body than in soul. Providence however is on his side; the great detective cares for London, and London in its own way cares very much for him. Storm-blue eyes in a pale grubby face, ragged hair, a shaking hand and a folded scrap of paper. “Sir Benjamin Marlowe, George Ellis, James Langton, Anne Mayhew and daughter, Henry Swift, Dr Tobias Fairchilde, Charlotte Royce, the Griffiths brothers, Alice Mackintosh... Dr John Watson.”

The breath hisses softly from between his lips as some of the fight and tension goes out of him. He looks, Watson considers, not like a man at peace but like one in agony who’s been given morphia.

“You know who those people are.”

“Yes.”

“And you know their significance, why they should be grouped together.”

Holmes’ listless lack of denial is conformation in itself.

“Who are those people, Holmes?” the doctor needles gently. “What is the meaning behind the names?”

He is silent for so long that Watson wonders if he will answer at all; he suppresses the urge to shift in his seat or to stand and poke the fire. His strained patience is at last rewarded.

“Those are the names of individuals who had fallen afoul of Moriarty and for one reason or another had been singled out, their identity passed on to Moran or Stokes or that wretched little poisoner Varney so that they might meet their end.”

“But they are all still alive.” It was balanced precariously between question and statement; obviously he was still breathing, but he had learnt long ago never to generalize from the particular.

“Correct.”

“And what is the reason for their survival?”

A swift glance, filled with pleading and tinged with animosity, like a child picked out by a tutor to translate a passage in Latin for which they are ill-prepared. “You know perfectly well,” he whispers.

“Say it,” Watson commands firmly.

Holmes closes his eyes tight, brows knitted together in an outward sign of his inner turmoil, as guilt and acceptance trade blows in a vicious battle for dominance. His hands tighten on the mantelpiece, knuckles showing white, his breath straining in his chest, every muscle taut to breaking.

“Say it.”

He flinches as if struck, his eyelids springing open. But the imperative seems to be the spur he required, because his mouth opens and words emerge, dragged hoarsely from his lips. “They... they are alive because I broke the Professor’s gang... and shot Moriarty.”

“And with all you know and all you have ever observed, if you had not done as you did, would those ten be alive today?”

It would be argued by any clerk of law that it is impossible to know the future and that any reply given to the question would be pure supposition, quite invalid as evidence. However, Sherlock Holmes has for many years made it his business and livelihood to know the future before it happened by the simple application of deductive reasoning: here is X, therefore Y must follow. After all, even a child knows that if a ball is rolled down a slide unhindered then it will reach the bottom - some things in this world are inevitable.

“No,” Holmes admits, the word barely a whisper. “They would not.”

He nods, wishing he could claim ‘case closed!’, stamp and seal it all, bind the whole mess with string and lock it away in a bureau draw never to be touched again. But he cannot, because at last Holmes is talking and there are other questions he needs answered. “Where have you been?”

“Hell,” he replies simply.

He’s uncertain whether this is just banter or a true metaphor for a subject he’s unwilling to elaborate upon. “Really. What’s it like?”

He turns vague, which is a little like weasling but with more dignity. “Not very nice,” comes the clipped reply. “You wouldn’t like it. Makes Eastbourne look reasonable.”

Watson leans forward a little in his chair. “That’s it? I’m left with a note, footprints and bloodstains on the side of a sodding mountain. You’re dead for three years and all I get in explanation is ‘it was worse than Eastbourne’?”

“I’ve told you where I’ve been.”

Something in the weariness of the words confuses Watson. “No you haven’t.”

“I...” He scowls, focusing and refocusing on a patch of air to the right of the candle stick by his hand. He remembers telling Watson, telling... His expression falters. He told his tale to dreams and figments and a hatstand that was likely Constable Clark.

“You haven’t told me anything.” A familiar predicament, he almost adds, but stops himself in time. Goading Holmes too far will make him unbearable, and right now the detective is looking for just such an excuse.

When he next speaks his voice runs on a level, words pushed out as if he is in a hurry to be rid of them. “Moran was at Reichenbach, I left and he followed. I’d meant to go to Florence but Austria was more congenial it transpired. I went to Vienna and then down to Istanbul and through Turkey always heading East, never stopping, I crossed a cotenant without pausing to tie my shoelaces. He almost caught me in Kathmandu, and I was finally quit of him at Nyalam where the winter proved a staunch ally, closing his path and wiping my trail clean. When I was able to travel again I headed Westwards. Persia. Egypt - I could never seem to get warm, no matter where I...”

“Why did you come back?” He has often been accused of being a glutton for punishment in having a long-standing association with Holmes. It is only in asking that question that he fears it might be true. He wants the answer to be ‘I missed you’ or ‘I needed you’ or some other such piece of sentiment; but he knows it will not be.

Holmes knows it too, his eyes close briefly. “Mycroft wired me to say Moran was at large in London.”

“Mycroft knew you were alive?” He is amazed his voice sounds so calm. “You told him?”

“I told him nothing!” Holmes snaps. “He worked it out without any aid from me.”

The doctor nods, grateful to be spared that little indignity in a sea of agony. “So you returned. You dealt with Moran and then you went to a hop-house to kill yourself?”

There is no reply, because it is perfectly accurate.

“Why?” Some of his serenity has slipped like a badly formed mask. “Why couldn’t you just come back here? For god’s sake Holmes, as if murder and gross deception wasn’t enough you must add suicide to your list of crimes.” He sees the man open his mouth but cuts across him. “And please don’t spout some rubbish about wishing to protect me as if I was an innocent in need of shielding from your actions,” he says bitterly. “It demeans us both.”

“I don’t find myself particularly demeaned,” he retorts.

Watson has always been amused by such quips in the past. They raised in him a feeling of fond exasperation, occasionally tinged with an irascibility strong enough to wish to lash out as one would to a sibling who is being particularly obnoxious. But this time he finds fondness lagging far behind the growing desire to shake the man until he was insensible and then shake him some more. “You’re being purposefully facile.”

“Certainly not.” He speaks too quickly, exposing his own lie.

Watson’s countenance has taken on a stony cast. “If you’re being serious you obviously feel there is nothing more to discuss,” he challenges. “It’s all settled then, and everything can go back to how it was before you died?”

He smiles, a sickly shadow of his usual easy charm, too bright, too brittle. “You might not believe that and I might not believe that - but it’s a glorious hypocrisy to indulge in none the less. Don’t you think?”

It’s as Watson steps forward to punch him that he realises that is exactly what Holmes wants. The detective has had years of practice getting under his skin, learning what boundaries may be skipped across with abandon and which are a step too far. What concerns Watson, is why he is being shut out and left to rage pointlessly in the cold. Why would Holmes rather be struck than embraced? He clenches his fist a little tighter and lowers it. “Is this how it is to be? You’ll continually nettle me until I lose my temper and then you’ll be able to leave in self-righteous misery?”

“Dear boy why would I leave this is my room.” His words are a swift monotone.

Watson recognises that mode of speech, Holmes always employed it at his most belligerent. I cannot believe for three years this is what I prayed for... Too late he realises he has spoken aloud.

“I never meant to come back!” it is a hollow whisper delivered with the force of a shout and the words crash upon the doctor like a run-away carriage, smashing past to leave him dazed and bleeding where he fell.

Holmes looks away because god help him he doesn’t have the nerve for this. Not now - not again. His words are nearly expressionless, running along a single fault-line of stress. “I never meant to come back to you. I’d failed - ruined all I was supposed to be - sunk down to Moriarty’s level, proved myself no better than he in moral character and far poorer in intellect. What should have been the glory of my career was the worst defeat I have ever suffered - self inflicted no less, because I was not good enough.” Those words are spat out from between clenched teeth. “I had no right to come back, to continue as if nothing had happened. I returned to London only to deal with Moran. But then when I saw you...”

“The bookseller,” Watson interjects numbly.

“The bookseller. It was selfish, I know. I couldn’t stop myself from seeing you one last time. Satisfying myself you were fine without me.”

The doctor holds great issue with the man’s definition of ‘fine’, but that’s an argument he will store for another time.

The smile and flippancy is back, more broken and brazen than before. “With that oblique farewell and the business with Moran concluded there was only one further matter on the agenda - that of putting the body of Sherlock Holmes where everyone had supposed it rested these past years. After all, you’d written it up in The Strand old boy, couldn’t very well make a liar of you...”

Watson knows the words are designed to wound and so ignores them. “Are you mentally deficient?” he enquires after a moment.

Holmes looks at him, eyes temporarily unguarded in surprise, mouth parted but no sound emerging.

“After a lifetime of logic, that is where your reasoning takes you?”

“I...”

“You shot a man who ought to have hanged ten times over. To compound your crime - and really, this is what I take issue with - you then leave those who care for you believing you are dead, suffering at your loss whilst you gad about on the Continent - or hell - or Eastbourne - or wherever the deuce it is you went! Belatedly you return to finish off one scrap of the duties you shirked and then, job done, you proceed to kill yourself with opium because the world believes you dead and you feel generous enough to oblige. How in the name of heaven is that logical?”

“Because what I did was unforgivable!”

“You’re damn right it was!”

Something in his gaze quiets, locks down and goes still like a creature crawling away to die. If Watson had to name it he would call it ‘hope’.

Those five words drew a sharp knife across the throat of forgiveness and left it bleeding on the carpet. Holmes shifts his feet, curling his toes as if to avoid the metaphorical puddle of crimson, and immediately despises himself for it. “I see,” he says softly, addressing the hearth rug, because he sees far too much and is currently wishing he could stop. Nirvana must be very peaceful. “So why did you...” He bites his tongue - literally - his teeth snapping shut on the words so fast the edge of his tongue is still in the way, pain and the taste of copper rewarding his stupidity. He does not want to ask that question because he does not want to hear the answer. The answer that Watson will give will kill him, and it will be an infinitely more painful death than the one he’d tried to orchestrate for himself.

Watson will say that he is a doctor, and he holds to his oath. He will say that allowing Holmes’ death does not balance the unlawful killing of Moriarty. He will say that if he is set on pawning his soul in the name of the Empire and its Good, then he should not be such a coward as to try to renege on the arrangement when it no longer suits him. Perhaps he will even say that saving Holmes’ life has given him the chance to atone, in word, thought or deed for the murder he committed...

For a moment Holmes closes his eyes, feeling wretchedly sick, but a second later he forces himself to open them and look at the doctor, awaiting the axe to fall.

John Watson does not say any of the things Holmes scripted for him. In fact he does not say anything at all. But he lifts his head a little and looks up at the detective, and his look says a very great deal.

Holmes had not expected sorrow, tinged with understanding and pity. He finds it hard to breathe, his ribcage has become three sized too small and his heart two sizes too big. The air stutters in his throat, the sound of his pulse thundering in his ears and his fingers clutch convulsively at the mantelpiece.

“Holmes?”

The floor tilts alarmingly, quite against his wishes, and the room appears to be full of raw cotton that obscures sight and sound. Standing is suddenly too much effort, so he allows his body to convey him floorwards. He’s dimly aware of Watson crouching anxiously by him. Not to worry dear boy, just a little tired...

“Breathe, Holmes,” the doctor orders.

For some moments Holmes finds that simple act takes all of his concentration and energy as his lungs seem singularly ill-equipped to the task, resembling a compressed and sodden sponge more than a functioning organ. The grey recedes from his vision and the sparks of white fire from his brain returning clarity to him as he takes shallow hasty sips of air. “You... you don’t despise me then?” he asks as soon as he is able.

“My dear fellow,” Watson murmurs. “How on earth could I?”

“But I do not have your forgiveness.” It is a statement.

A mixture of amusement and infinite sorrow crafts lines around the blue eyes as they stare down, and a huff of almost-exasperation leaves his mouth. “Holmes... I cannot possibly forgive you.” His voice is velvet and lead like a funerary urn.

Holmes stops breathing, having lost all interest in the practice.

“How am I to forgive you - if you will not forgive yourself?”

And then it is not sorrow that keeps his lungs still but wonder. The white sparks return and colour leaches from his vision but he isn’t looking at anything in the outside world anyway so it scarcely matters. He is reliving the last fifteen seconds of his life in all their pain and splendour. Breathing is a distraction; he doesn’t have the attention to spare, not when every shattered and aching fibre of his being is wrapped around the doctor’s words and all they meant. Because of course what they meant was that Watson did forgive him - or was willing to if given the opportunity - he just didn’t see the point in having a long and protracted argument on the subject, which would be the inevitable result for as long as Holmes still horded self-loathing in his soul. Instead he would wait; when Holmes had slain his own demons and lain their corpses to rest then Watson would decorate their graves with the wreaths of his absolution.

He suddenly finds that image as funny as it is delightful and dearly wants to laugh, only it seems he’s forgotten how. Seems in fact he’s forgotten how to do anything much, so he returns to smiling at Watson’s words, letting the sound of them loop round him like ribbons and bind him whole again...

A set of hands is shaking him roughly by the shoulders causing his head to jar against the floorboards with a crack and he to gasp in surprise.

Holmes turns his eyes again to the outside world in some bewilderment to find Watson leaning over him wearing an expression that Holmes has long ago accepted as habitual in his presence - that of a not-quite-scowl. A weak smile softens it. “Thought you might have been leaving for a moment there, old boy.”

“No,” he says, an affirmation and promise all in one. But he is tired, so after all he might have to stretch the bounds a little. His eyes skitter in his sockets, seeking out the form of his bed as if by looking at it he might be transported there.

The other man is smiling, a stronger smile this time and a more familiar one. “Bed,” he agrees, helping Holmes to sit up and contemplate full verticality. “I’ll help you up but I’m not bloody carrying you, come on...”

“Mother hen...”

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NOTES

Paregoric - a very mild tincture of opium used to calm asthma.

Onwards...