but your voice is too loud
first second third fourth
(then)
After they returned from France, four or five months passed that were easily the best of Sherlock Holmes's life.
Everything came together for him. Every case was rife with intrigue, plot twists, double crosses. Every villain was colourfully verbose despite being as dumb as a fence post. Holmes put his hand to dangerous chemical experiments, recently composed violin sonatas, the ancient Japanese art of origami--nothing was beyond his talents. He felt touched by luck, clever and strong and eternally young.
Such was his condition when he and Watson spent several weeks living in a hovel in Deptford, passing as morally suspect laborers attempting to get recruited by a growing network of larceners that had recently caught the detective's attention. The two of them shared one small room, a single pallet and a blanket that had holes big enough for two fingers. They ate with their hands, standing at the mouths of alleys watching the people pour past in ragged clumps. Drunk on the cheapest gin, they stumbled through ill-lit hallways, clutching each other for balance and laughing helplessly and muffled like boys sneaking in after curfew.
It was inconvenient and uncomfortable, that tiny rathole of a room, the violent dead-faced men they were obliged to befriend. Big smoke-coloured rats with ophidian eyes scurried along the hallways, and Holmes dreamt of the plague years. He was always hungry, always dirty, and happy in a bone-deep way that simmered uncertainly under his skin. Holmes did not trust the feeling, but he cherished it all the same.
One morning, the detective woke up in a patch of oily sunlight. Watson's arm was slung heavily over his chest, pressing the air thin in his lungs. Holmes curled a hand near Watson's ribs, feeling the thrumming heat of him.
"Are you awake?" Watson murmured against Holmes's shoulder. Holmes scratched him lightly in response, felt Watson's mouth curving in a smile.
They lay there for a quiet moment. Holmes's chest expanded slowly and then Watson's followed suit, as if they were sharing breath. Holmes closed his eyes to better isolate the sound of Watson's skin brushing against his own.
"Have you decided our course of action for the day?" Watson asked.
Holmes traced his thumb along the hook of Watson's lowest rib. "I'll speak to that scoundrel Lockhart again. He knows far more about this business than he claims, I'm certain of it."
"And what shall I do?"
"You shall wait for me here."
A moue of dissatisfaction crimped Watson's mouth. "That doesn't sound like a very engaging task."
Holmes spread one hand out wide of Watson's chest, studying the contrast of colour and texture. Watson's heart tripped along, a peaceful thrumming rhythm.
"I have every confidence in you," Holmes mumbled, not entirely paying attention to the conversation anymore. He was watching his hands move over Watson's body, tracking the slow flush as it moved across the doctor's skin. Holmes was fascinated.
Watson's hand curled around the back of his head and drew him up into a kiss, stale and heated and altogether wonderful. Holmes rolled himself on top of his friend and murmured into his mouth, "You are quite eager today, my dear doctor."
Watson stroked his hands down Holmes's sides, latched on to his hips, his body a long string pulled taut and hard. "Every day," he said, distracted.
"Yes." Holmes leaned down and licked the cup of Watson's collarbone. A small gasp caught in the air, and Watson's head fell slackly to the side, offering his throat to his friend.
"Do you know," Holmes said absently, "that I would give everything, and all I have-"
He stopped, because Watson was fairly writhing beneath him, biting his lip to keep quiet. Holmes shifted his hips slightly, pressing into Watson's growing hardness. Both of them were stripped to the skin, the friction raw and hot and building like a wave. Watson made a choked sound that might have been Holmes's name, and his fingers dug in helplessly. Holmes thought that Watson would leave marks, and he thought, good.
They came together so easily. Watson rocked against him, maddening desire scraping up Holmes's spine, and the little room filled with ragged breathing, interrupted moans. Holmes slid a hand up the outside of Watson's thigh, drawing his leg up to achieve a sharper angle. His forehead rested sweaty and slick against Watson's own, shaky breath falling on his lips.
"Holmes," Watson said, and then again, "Holmes," as his body arched beautifully, his head rolling back as he fought through his climax. Holmes went still above him, staring raptly.
The tension fell out of Watson, and he became limp, panting with a woozy smile finding its way onto his face. His eyes fluttered open, that flawless blue shine like fallen sky, and Holmes experienced a strange tightening sensation in his chest, a lock twisting shut.
"Come along, old boy," Watson murmured, and guided Holmes's hip with his hand, making a breath snag in the detective's throat. "You wouldn't leave me alone, I'm sure."
Holmes did not respond; the language had escaped him. The world had narrowed down to the cracked stained walls, the rough hemp weave of the pallet, the sinful push and give of Watson's body beneath him. Holmes set a fumbling hand on Watson's face, thumbed open his mouth. He did not kiss the doctor, preferring instead to thrust against the slick plane of his stomach and stare down at his own hand holding Watson's mouth open.
Watson said, "That's it, that's perfect," ill-formed and slurred, and Holmes groaned, dropped his face onto Watson's shoulder and finished in a shuddering rush. His fingers jerked on Watson's face, pulling away from his lips and leaving faint damp marks on his cheek. Pleasure hummed under his skin, release as sweet and all-encompassing as the very best kinds of drugs. Holmes was caught up, obscured for a long moment.
"Holmes?" Watson enquired, breaking the spell. Holmes grunted, still lying full atop his friend. Watson poked at his shoulder, then smoothed a hand down the gentle curve.
"How much longer do you suppose this sojourn of ours will last?" Watson asked after another serene respite.
Holmes rolled off Watson with a thump and a gasp, the pallet rasping against his oversensitive skin. "Three days at the least."
"Hmm," Watson hmm'ed. His fingers played idly down the crooked line of Holmes's arm.
"Are you pining for home?" Holmes asked, turning his head to look at his friend.
A slight smile graced Watson's expression, and he shook his head, gazing up at the ceiling as if they were in a chapel in Vatican City.
"No," Watson said. "Recently I've discovered that my home has become a moveable feast."
"Yes," Holmes said, and then because it was so entirely true, he said again, "Yes," and touched the place where his body lay along Watson's, ensuring that there was no space between them.
They were another five days in Deptford, as a matter of fact. Holmes squirrelled his way into the band of thieves and won them over with his visceral stories and the coldness of his glare. The upcoming heist began to coalesce into solid fact, and Holmes passed Watson notes in crowded taverns, pressed against him for a few spare moments. Watson didn't like leaving Holmes in such company, but the detective would hear nothing about it, patting his friend on the cheek condescendingly to make Watson scowl.
And then things went to hell.
It happened fast. That was what Holmes would remember forever afterwards, how fast it happened, how immediately the world turned on its end. He had left Watson clutching his revolver in an alley, warning the doctor to wait for his signal before alerting the police. Watson told him, "Don't get killed," just like he always did, and Holmes gave him a puckish smirk, just like he always did, and disappeared into the dilapidated building.
It was meant to be an ambush. Holmes would ensure that the boss of the gang, a massive-shouldered man with a bald testudineous skull, was present, and upon Watson's relay of his signal, Scotland Yard would sweep in and the matter would be resolved. Holmes came into the warehouse and resolutely trained his gaze away from the window where Watson would be crouched and peering. His mind ran with data, convoluted and over-full.
And then it happened so fast. The loose cluster of men turned as Holmes approached, and there was one among them that the detective did not recognise, although something about the troglodytic hunch of his brow rang familiar. All the men were watching him, and Holmes's gait slowed, a distrustful look tightening his features.
"All right, lads?" Holmes said in the craggy voice of the lawless character he was playing.
The new man gave him a chilling smile, and stepped forward. "Good evening, Mister Holmes. We've been waiting for you."
They set upon him. Holmes whirled and spun, struck someone in the face, wet crunch of a nose shattering, and kicked someone else's legs out, but they were too many. A blackjack came smiting down and Holmes fell to his knees, his eyes wheeling and crazed. Still his brain whirred, flung bits of evidence at him like sand in a harmattan. They knew his name. They had discovered him, and sold their knowledge to this man with the prehistoric face, this vaguely familiar man that Holmes had never seen before.
You're in trouble, Holmes noted to himself, fists and cudgels falling in a pulverising rain. One of the men was snarling predictable imprecations against his mother. Intractable points of pain were blooming all over his body, and a final swift blow drove him to the ground, wiped the fight out of him.
Half-conscious, he was dragged down the length of the warehouse, limp hands scraping across the floor. With his head lolling bonelessly, Holmes turned his eyes up to the filthy window where Watson was meant to be, but it was empty now, hollow.
Holmes closed his eyes for a split second, thinking frantically, don't, don't, but it was too late, and Watson was banging through the door, shouting with savagery and dismay.
No, Holmes thought, and no no no, as the men turned towards the doctor and their black-handled weapons rose in unison like a funeral salute. Shots exploded. Bullets splintered the floor. Holmes saw Watson stagger backwards, sudden agony wrenching his face, and the detective screamed out loud. The effort fractured him, and he sank into merciful unconsciousness.
*
When Holmes awoke, he was tied to a chair.
There was a mossy scent to the air, and no windows, and Holmes understood that the room was subterranean. It was solid black, as if he'd been dropped in a pot of ink.
"Watson?" Holmes said in a weathered tone. He said it again, twice then three times.
There was no answer, and a net began to close around Holmes, fearful sweat breaking out on his skin. It was so dark; the only thing Holmes could see was Watson's face as the bullet struck home, harrowed and ugly with pain.
Holmes tested his bonds, striving hard with his shoulders jerking, his head bowed and neck stiff. Injuries made themselves known all over his body, bruises shadowing tangibly under his clothes. He had several broken fingers, and several cracked ribs. There was a gash in his leg, the lower part of his trousers soaked in blood and clinging to him.
Watson was not here. Possible scenarios flooded through Holmes's mind, merciless in their detail. Watson was dead on the floor of the warehouse, the hole in his chest bleeding a dark lake around him. Watson had been hauled still breathing through the streets and thrown in the river to drown. Watson had been kicked to death, every bone in his body crushed. It was grisly, horrifying, Watson shaking and coughing red, as limp as a bundle of rags.
"No," Holmes whispered. He twisted against the ropes, barbs of lancing pain taking his breath and sharpening his thoughts.
Just then a strip was ripped off the fabric of the world, and white light poured into the room. Holmes gasped and hissed, screwing his eyes shut. Heavy footfalls came into the room, two men--no, three. One of them dragged his right leg slightly. One of them whistled and snorted through a deviated septum.
"Awake at last, are we?"
A meaty hand cuffed Holmes's head. He ducked away, baring his teeth. Rage boiled up in him like a cresting drunk; he wanted to kill all three with his hands, press his face close to watch the light wink out of their eyes.
"Is he sensible?" one of the men asked. "Charlie wants him sensible."
Blunt grimy fingers manhandled Holmes's head up, turned his eyes into the light. He lunged and bit sharply into the air, his teeth clicking together. The man jerked back, swearing.
"Sensible enough," the man said, and hit Holmes with an exploding backhand that snapped his head to the side. Now his mouth was bleeding, slick ferric taste coating his tongue.
"Now you sit still," the man said, a vicious wire of a smile contorting his face. His teeth were rotted black and brown. "You might take the time to make your peace with God--we're going to kill you, you know."
"You're going to try," Holmes corrected him, and spat blood on the man's boots.
"Aye," the man said, and playfully tapped the barrel of his revolver on Holmes's forehead. "We're going to try."
They turned away from him to form a small cabal, left him to suffocate slowly from his many minor injuries. Holmes wished to be taunted and scorned, needing the energy gifted by rage. He wanted whatever was going to happen to him to happen now, immediately and at once. He couldn't abide waiting.
His broken fingers hurt so badly his vision kept fuzzing over. Holmes forced his attention back to the men, absorbing what he could of them. In the wings of his mind, behind the short curtains, Watson jerked backwards over and over again, his hand flying to his chest. Holmes ignored it, banished the breath-taking panic that welled within him. He couldn't do anything for the doctor until he got out of this chair.
There wasn't long to wait, at least. The man with the deviated septum left briefly and returned with the one from the warehouse, the one who had said Holmes's name. Again, Holmes's memory hummed with off-kilter recognition, that sense of having known someone very much like this stranger before him now.
"Have you worked it out yet, Holmes?" the stranger said, eyeing the bound detective with the brutal look of a boy preparing to kick a dog.
Holmes didn't answer, seeing no margin in it. The stranger began pulling on a pair of black gloves with the air of an executioner's ritual.
"Allow me to aid you in your quest for enlightenment," the stranger said, as bright as a professor at the slate. "For your crimes, which are legion, you are about to be hanged by the neck until you are dead. Familiar sentence, no? I thought it only too apt."
The threads drew together for Holmes. The gallows, that was where he had seen that protrudent brow before, the Neanderthal ridge over shrewd piggish eyes.
"Cyril Willingham's brother," Holmes said, disgusted. The injustice of the family was without end.
"Charles Montjoy, lovely to make your acquaintance. Cyril's cousin, in point of fact, though we were brothers of spirit, certainly. Grew up right alongside each other, you understand."
"And both of you turned out so well."
"Shut your mouth or I'll cut out your tongue," Montjoy said, the cheerfully sincere menace in his voice sending a painful shiver through Holmes's frame.
"I saw you at his hanging, looking like you watching a play. You have marched many men to the gallows, have you not? I consider it a true privilege to show you the other side of the rope."
Montjoy took a length of rope from one of his fellows and tossed it over a hook set in the ceiling. There were other such hooks, rusty and dangerous-looking, and Holmes understood that he was in the basement of a butcher's shop. Montjoy let the noose fall to bounce jauntily, strung it up high and passed the end of the rope to the man with the deviated septum. He came back to Holmes, grinning.
"Oh, yes, I'm going to enjoy this," Montjoy said, and punched Holmes in the face.
It was a drop of pain in a monsoon. Red pressure seeped through his brain, and he shook his head briskly to clear it. One of the men came behind him to cut his bonds, jarring Holmes's broken fingers and making him hiss. The detective was jerked up, shoved and pummelled over to the dangling rope.
So, you are going to die, Holmes thought. He looked up at the noose, feeling a spill of cold resignation, as if some part of him had always known it would end like this.
You are going to die, Holmes thought again, and he asked, "Did you kill the man behind me?"
"Shut up, I told you," Montjoy said, watching with black glee as Holmes's hands were tied behind his back again.
"There was a man who came in behind me," Holmes insisted, blinking fast in the dim light. "He was shot--did you leave him alive?"
His only response was another punch in the face. Holmes greyed out for a moment, his head hanging limp. Behind his eyes, Watson was sitting too close to him in a train compartment, and smiling, and rolling his eyes. Holmes felt the noose being slipped around his neck, an abrasive rasp against his skin.
"No," Holmes muttered, and last-ditch strength flooded him. He struggled fiercely, lashing out with his legs, demanding hoarsely, "Is he alive?"
"Hold him--hold him, you useless git," Montjoy snarled at one of his compatriots. Heavy hands clamped on Holmes's shoulders and a revolver was cocked against his temple, forcing him still.
"Is he alive?" Holmes said again. He wasn't interested in the noose around his neck, the revolver at his head, the abattoir in which he had awakened. He didn't care about any of this. His voice was almost gone, and Holmes begged, "Is he alive?"
"Will those be your last words, I wonder?" Montjoy said, reaching up to tighten the noose.
"Tell me, tell me-" and Holmes was delirious from fear and pain now, his eyes gaping and dry.
Montjoy grabbed two hard handfuls of Holmes's hair and yanked his head up. Eye to eye, Montjoy showed a smile that looked like a bloody hatchet.
"He's dead," Montjoy told him. The world inside the detective ground to a halt, and Montjoy's lip curled victoriously. "Another man dead because of you, Sherlock Holmes."
He was lying. Holmes was certain of it. It didn't seem to matter at all; his blood had frozen. His heart was a rock now.
This must not register on an emotional level, Holmes thought. From a great distance, he was aware of Montjoy jerking the noose snug against his throat, air suddenly precious and rare. Holmes stood armless, unmanned, his wrists bound behind him. The fight was gone from him, and the light, the hope, every good day he'd ever known--all of it had been driven away.
Montjoy stepped back, surveyed Holmes's dire predicament with satisfaction. He gestured to the men holding the rope, and they pulled hard, drawing Holmes up onto his toes. Holmes choked, great glassy stars filling his vision, spiralling pain in his head. He closed his eyes, and thought of John Watson.
"For my cousin," Montjoy said. "For every man you have brought to his end. Do you have any last words?"
The pressure on his throat lessened as the men let the rope slacken, and Holmes sank onto the flats of his feet again. He kept his eyes closed, and said not a word. In his mind, Watson was lying with him on a thin pallet in a filthy room, telling him that they were home.
"Do it," Montjoy said, and the two men pulled hard, hefted Holmes off the ground. The toes of his boots stirred up faint dust, and then lost contact entirely.
He couldn't breathe, of course, and he was going to die, and that wasn't even the worst thing that had happened to him today.
His heartbeat thundered, multiplied and filled his head to overflowing. The world was ending, and the Angel Gabriel did not blow a trumpet, but instead beat a planet-sized drum. Holmes thought he would go mad from the cacophony, and then remembered that he was currently being murdered, and so it didn't matter.
All outside awareness fled from him. He could not hear or see or feel, and that was only to the good.
Watson, Holmes thought, and clung to it with everything he had left. He was going to die with blue eyes in his mind, and nothing else.
And then suddenly, someone had an arm wrapped around Holmes's legs, holding him up. The rope gave just enough for a skinny breath of oxygen to suffuse him, his throat burning as if it were vaporised acid.
Holmes's eyes flew open. The room was awash with action, a brace of blue-suited police constables grappling with Montjoy and his men. Holmes's hearing triggered back on, assaulted by grunts and gasps of pain, and someone was saying his name, chanting it in a desperate song.
Holmes looked down, and of course it was the good doctor. It could have been no one else.
Watson's face was wrenched with terror and exertion, his teeth showing. He had his chin dug into Holmes's stomach, one arm clenched around the detective's legs to support his weight and the other bent in a sling and pressed between them. Holmes met his eyes and saw something unprecedented break across Watson's expression, a collapsing relief that was so intense it should have been fatal.
"Breathe," Watson told him through gritted teeth, and then turned his head, and screamed for someone to cut the rope that Montjoy's men had tied to a bit of piping on the wall. Hearing Watson scream like that made Holmes shudder, and moan from the pain.
The rope was cut, and Holmes slammed down, briefly on his feet but he could not feel his legs and so crashed into Watson, knocking them both to the floor. Watson cried out, and Holmes rolled off him, graceless with his hands still tied behind his back.
Holmes attempted to say the doctor's name, but his throat was smashed flat and only produced a tortured wheeze. He butted his head into Watson's shoulder instead, rubbed his nose on the coarse wool of Watson's jacket, trusting him to understand. The riot around them was calming, Montjoy and his men forced to their knees against the wall with the constables ringed around them.
Watson's hands pulled the noose off and cradled Holmes's head for a second, thumbs solid on his cheekbones, and then shifted him carefully so Watson could put a blade to the bonds around his wrists. Holmes sagged with the freedom, deep cramps sinking talons in under his shoulder blades.
"Your fingers are broken," Watson said in a whisper.
"Not all of them," Holmes whispered back, his voice like something scraped off the floor.
Watson's seeking hands mapped out the ravaged landscape of Holmes's body, brushing over his cracked ribs and the livid burn sure to be developing on his throat. Holmes couldn't take his eyes off his friend's face.
"My apologies for not arriving sooner," Watson said, darting a nervy look at Holmes.
Holmes made a weak gesture through the air. "I found your timing impeccable," he croaked.
A steady hand curved under Holmes's head, and Watson helped him sit up. "I'm taking you home."
The room dove and whirled like a dervish as Holmes nodded. "Yes, my dear, I think that would be best."
And then he passed out again.
*
Holmes awoke first in the back of a cab, and then again as Watson and two constables muscled him up the seventeen steps, his feet tripping and catching. The detective had his eyes open long enough to make a brief flurry of deductions: he was home, he was alive, Watson had been shot in the shoulder, Watson was shaking with miserable fury, the constable on his right was distracted by thoughts of his dying mother, and then Holmes let the darkness have him again.
The next he knew, he was on the settee, no longer wearing his trousers, and Watson was stitching the gash in his leg. There was an ethereal sheen to everything, and Holmes recognised it as a low dose of laudanum, beating back the worst of the pain. For a long thoughtless moment, Holmes watched the meticulous crawl of Watson's fingers, the snaking near-invisible thread, the pinprick glint off the needle.
"You have three cracked ribs," Watson told him. "And three broken fingers. How does your throat feel?"
Holmes made a powerless groaning sound. Watson nodded, eyes fixed on his task. "It'll be tender for a week or so."
Holmes studied him narrowly, struggling through a haze that felt more concussive than narcotic. Watson was stitching with one hand, his other arm in a sling. Holmes reached out cautiously and touched Watson's shoulder, a curious tapping of splinted fingers that made Watson's mouth go thin and tense.
"You came after me," Holmes said in his destroyed voice.
"Yes."
"You were shot."
"Yes. Do stop talking, Holmes."
Holmes obliged, his mind cluttered with dim pain and shuffled memory. His throat felt like a rag wrung dry. There were sad lines on Watson's face, pulling down the corners of his mouth.
At last the doctor finished, and put aside the needle, and framed Holmes's leg in his hand, staring down at it.
"I can't do this anymore," Watson said so low that Holmes knew he didn't really want to be heard.
"What?" Holmes asked.
"I, I," and Watson forcibly stopped himself, took a deep breath. He wasn't looking at Holmes. "I did not think I would survive it."
"The bullet?" Holmes sat up too quickly, his ribs crying out, and Watson set a hand on his shoulder, pushed him back down.
"No, not the bullet," Watson said. "It was. You were taken. They took you."
The doctor was having difficulty, his brow knotted, the words mulish and uncooperative. His good hand was in a fist on Holmes's leg. Holmes lay there in his shirtsleeves and underclothes, watching the doctor with feverish intensity.
"I have never experienced anything like it," Watson confessed, hushed and faintly ashamed. "This fear, this, this unholy, unbearable--it consumed me. I could not feel the bullet in my shoulder. I could not think. It was only you. You were taken and I--I was crippled. Maimed."
Holmes shook his head, an icy feeling solidifying in his stomach. "You found me; it couldn't have been so severe."
"Scotland Yard found you. I was barely able to follow."
"Your shoulder-"
"It was not my shoulder. Holmes. It was not my shoulder."
A shudder went through Watson, and he bowed his head, his back curving like a protective shell. A hateful flush stained his cheeks. Holmes stared at him, entranced.
"I have never been so scared," Watson told him. "I do not have the words--I felt like I would die. I wished I would. Do you--do you understand? I would have rather been dead than live in that agony one moment longer."
Holmes said nothing for a long moment, and then, "Do not do this."
Watson's head snagged up, guilt dancing across his face. "I, I don't know what-"
"You intend to leave me," Holmes said, and the plain fact of it broke a series of strings in him, sent him careening quietly into despair.
Staring at his hand where it still rested on Holmes's leg, Watson whispered, "I must."
"No," and Holmes was going to explain to him why it was so absurd, why there was no reason in the wide world that they should be parted, but Watson was already on his feet, pacing away, saying fast:
"I believed myself capable of this, I truly did. I was already--you were already of such importance to me, and I did not imagine that it could worsen. I, I never thought, I could not-"
And Watson stopped. He drew in a ragged breath, and fumbled a cigarette out of his case one-handed. Tremors infested him as he attempted to strike a match, the cigarette shivering in his mouth like an arrow stuck in a tree.
"It's not just your most recent ordeal," Watson continued finally. "Although you must know that I will never escape the memory of you hanging there. I did not know until that moment how utterly I have come to rely on you."
Holmes sat up gingerly, favouring his ribs, and tracked the doctor's movements back and forth across the room, the slender twists of smoke trailing behind him like a knight's banderole. For once the detective's mind was blank, bearing silent witness.
"This, it's too dangerous. The risk is unacceptable." Watson shot Holmes a glance, looking weary and shredded. "I could not live through seeing you dead. It would decimate me."
"And what will this do?" Holmes asked, asperity clipping his tone. "What benefit do you imagine you're bestowing with this cruel effort?"
Watson smoked nervously, standing near the window where he had stood a thousand times before. "It is not--I'm not--I don't know." The doctor shook his head, frustrated. "I cannot be expected to stand by, to, to, to merely observe as you throw yourself into the fire time and again."
"So instead, I am expected to abandon the only livelihood I have ever found remotely palatable?"
"No!" and Watson looked startled, his refusal immediate and vehement. "I would never ask that of you. I know what your profession means to you."
He appeared about to say more, but then thought better of it, and held his tongue. They stared at each other from across the room, only smoke between them.
"You have always known the risks with which I live," Holmes said eventually. "Surely one near-death experience is not enough to shake your faith in my abilities."
Watson's eyes dropped, and he turned away from Holmes to stub his cigarette out. Holmes understood from the slight gesture that Watson's faith had indeed been shaken, and was now as delicate and frangible as the thinnest crystal. Holmes investigated the sinking sensation this revelation elicited in his stomach, and could find no proper words to define it.
Training his eyes over Holmes's left shoulder, Watson told him, "It's been more than one, Holmes. This was just the worst. The--the closest. And I'm sorry." Watson swallowed, not liking the taste of the word but he pressed onwards. "You must understand, I'm not as strong as I once was. My mind cannot tolerate such horrors anymore."
"Ah, I see," Holmes said on a sneer, striving to feel only anger and the physical pain of this moment, because those things he knew how to withstand. "The trouble isn't that I'm fated for an early grave, it's that your bloody nerves can't stomach even the vague possibility."
Swallowing again, still not looking directly at his friend, Watson said, "I'm sorry. I'll say it as many times as you wish."
"Don't-" and Holmes went to stand without thinking, a firebomb detonating in his chest at the sudden movement, and he collapsed back, gasping. His eyes slammed shut, and he worked on breathing, thinking like a mumbled rosary, it'll pass it'll pass it'll pass.
"Are you all right? Holmes? Can you speak?"
Watson hovered over him, and even with his eyes closed Holmes could see the stricken expression on Watson's face, the jumpy flutter of his good hand. A deeply affecting strain of déjà vu overtook Holmes for a moment, spurred by breathless pain and the concern in Watson's voice. He kept his eyes closed until the laudanum resumed its slow numbing seep and his mind could separate out emotion from fact again.
One splinted hand to his chest, Holmes looked up at the doctor, wilfully keeping his face clean of any undue agony. To a stranger peering into the room, Watson would have been the one who looked heartbroken.
"Steady on," Holmes said. "You make a very gangly mother hen, you know."
"You must be careful," Watson said with that familiar scolding edge that made Holmes's skin crawl.
"I wish you wouldn't speak to me as if I were a child," Holmes snapped.
"I'm sorry," Watson said as if a button had been pressed. Holmes grimaced.
"My dear fellow, please believe me when I tell you that the next time I hear those words from your mouth, I shall be obliged to resort to violence."
Watson ran his hand over his hair and shifted his weight, distress bleeding out of his every movement. It was difficult for Holmes to see his friend like this, that destructive temper of his turned inward.
"This is precisely what I cannot do," Watson said in a rush. "I cannot see you damaged. I never forget whose body I'm stitching together, leaving all these, these scars-" and his voice cracked hard.
The doctor turned away, ducking his shoulders shamefully. He covered his face with his hand, a penitential sorrow emanating from him.
"You'd leave me alone instead?" Holmes asked hoarsely. "You know I am at my best when you are with me, so how will I fare now?"
"Don't, please don't do that," Watson begged, but Holmes wasn't listening to him anymore.
"You find it so difficult to see me thrashed, I wonder how you'll feel when you read of my death in the newspaper, knowing you might have been there to save me. Grief or guilt, Watson, which do you suppose will prove the victor?"
It was a genuinely vicious thing to say. Holmes watched shocked misery blanch Watson's expression, and the detective suffered a stab of bitter satisfaction at knowing that they were both in pain.
"It will be both, of course," Watson managed in a crooked little whisper. "It will be both, and each with enough strength and fury to kill me on its own."
"There, you see," Holmes said eagerly. "You cannot wish for it to end like that."
"I don't. I pray to God it does not." A humourless smile curved Watson's mouth briefly. "Of course, I've prayed for a lot of things that never happened."
"Watson-"
"You must let me go, Holmes," Watson told him, as quiet and forlorn as Holmes had ever seen him.
Holmes blinked, and said without thought, "I cannot."
"Please," and Watson's voice cracked once more. "I have given you everything. Grant me this one last request."
"No," Holmes said, and then again, louder, "No."
Watson's face was crumpled, looking old and bruised. He pressed his knuckles against his eye, fighting for control.
"I will engage another doctor to see to your convalescence." Watson visibly forced out each word. "And I will--I will come to visit you if my courage allows."
"Stop it," Holmes said, his mind swimming in an oily black panic. His injuries pinned him down. "You, you have no need to visit, as you live here."
"Not anymore."
Watson stumbled for the door, and Holmes said his name sharply, so sharp it almost sounded like a cry. Watson hunched against the force of it, and turned with his hand on the knob to give Holmes a look of utter devastation.
"Never again in my life will I love anyone as I love you," Watson told him, and then he was gone.
Just like that: gone.
*
*
onwards to the last