Chapter Text
By the time the cab reached Baker Street, I felt nearly ill with tension. There was nothing for it. This was a mess of my own making, and it was up to me to deal with it, but I have felt less jittery going into battle.
I let myself in with my key and started up the stairs, grateful that there was no sign of Mrs. Hudson. I needed to see Holmes, first and foremost. Anything – anyone – else would be a distraction that I wasn’t sure I could bear, not now.
I reached the landing without hearing or seeing any sign of anyone. I had almost convinced myself that Holmes, too, must be out when the sitting-room door flew open with a bang, and there he was. He was in his dressing-gown, and his normally sleek hair stood out from his head in all directions, as if he had been pulling on it. His face was paler even than normal, and his eyes were wide. We stood there staring at each other for a frozen moment, and then he reached out with both hands and seized my arms in an iron grip. “Watson? You’re all right?”
“Perfectly fine, Holmes.” My voice sounded strange in my ears. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”
“If you worried me?” Holmes pulled me into the sitting-room, and then practically snatched his hands away. “What did you think would happen?” His cheeks flushed as relief gave way to anger. “Watson, I know that you have no talent for deduction, but I would have thought that even you might - ”
All at once, I was tired of it all. Tired of everything, and I spoke before I could think twice. “I overheard you, Holmes.”
“…what?” Cut off in mid-diatribe, Holmes looked as confused as I had ever seen him.
“I heard you speaking with Hiaasen. You could have told me, you know,” I added, the bitterness and anger of the last days rising within me. I tamped the emotions down with an effort. “If you wanted me to stay in London – if you did not want me on the case with you – all you ever had to do was tell me so.”
Holmes stared at me as if I was speaking in tongues. He stood so still I wasn’t sure he was breathing. Finally he spoke. “What exactly did you hear me say, Watson?”
It was not hard for me to repeat the words exactly as I had heard them. I felt as if they were written on my skin, burned into my forehead like a brand. “‘Your hypothesis is predicated on a fallacy. I did not invite Doctor Watson to accompany me on this case,’" I recited tonelessly. "‘He volunteered his services. I did not decline them at the time, a decision I now sincerely regret. I would vastly prefer that he was back in London.’ That is what I heard. That is what you said."
If I had thought Holmes pale before, now he looked as white as marble. His thin lips pressed together until they nearly vanished in the starkness of his expression. His gaze briefly took on that faraway look that marks his most profound moments of cogitation, and then his eyes fixed on me. “Oh. Oh, I see.” He shook his head and then walked slowly to his chair as if his whole body pained him. I started forward, alarmed, only to halt as he looked at me again. There was not a trace of his usual unemotional mask. I could see – because he plainly let me see – everything that he currently felt: regret, remorse, a profound sadness, and over and above it all, a deep compassion for me, for how those words had affected me. “My dear Watson. I am terribly sorry.”
I found myself in need of my own chair. I sank down into its worn comfort, across the hearth-side from Holmes as I had sat hundreds of times before. Yet this was like none of those times whatsoever. “You didn’t mean for me to hear you,” I said numbly.
“No, of course not. And Watson, forgive me, but although you heard, you did not understand.”
“What do you mean?” Anger tried to stir again, but only dully, smothered by too many other emotions to catch hold. “Your words seemed plain enough to me.”
“Because you did not know their context!” The sudden snap of Holmes’ temper jolted me back in my chair. He saw it, and his voice softened, but lost none of its intensity. “I do not blame you, my dear fellow. Had I been in your place, I would have thought the same as you.”
I drew a deep breath. “Then explain it to me, Holmes. What did I miss?”
“Hiassen thought I had brought you with me as bait,” Holmes hissed. Momentary rage twisted his face, but then faded as fast as it had come. “He had just congratulated me on my ruthless cleverness in arranging so tempting a target.”
I felt my breath leave my lungs in a startled whoosh. “What?” I gasped with the last of my air, but even as the word tumbled from my lips, I started to understand. The victims in the case had all been pensioners. I had even toyed with titling the case-notes as “The Adventure of the Poisoned Pensioners,” assuming that the vicar’s suspicions as to the nature of the illnesses of his parishioners proved correct.
And I was a pensioner, an ex-Army doctor invalided out due to permanent injury. There had been two others like me among the men who had sickened, one an officer, one an enlisted man, both crippled in earlier wars than the one that had claimed me.
The officer had been old, and had died, I vaguely recalled.
Before my thoughts could go any further, Holmes leaned forward and seized one of my hands in a crushing grip. “I swear to you Watson, I never saw you like that. I never intended - ”
I returned the grip immediately. “Of course you didn’t,” I assured him with absolute faith. “I would never believe that of you.”
“But I should have seen it,” Holmes continued, genuine self-loathing in his tone. “I should have realized that others might – that you might be at risk, and yet it never occurred to me!”
“Holmes.” I shifted so that both my hands held his own. “Thank you.”
That arrested him.
“Thank you,” I repeated. “Thank you for never seeing me in that particular light. As a half-crippled pensioner, even though that is what I am - ”
“Never,” Holmes contradicted fiercely. “You aren’t, Watson. You never have been. You were injured, yes, and cruelly, but you have never been a cripple. Or useless. You are essential.”
I colored, feeling my throat tighten. “I – thank you, Holmes,” I stammered.
A soft expression gentled every keen line of Holmes’ face. “Oh my dear fellow, it is the other way around. Thank you.”
Such heights of emotion cannot be sustained, particularly not between two men who are by nature and training unused to sharing much of anything of that nature. I do not believe that we would have managed to have said so much to each other, had our mutual habitual reserves not been battered down by fatigue, stress, and days of elevated emotions. We turned instead to safer subjects as we sat there together by the fire. In the warmth of brandies and companionship, Holmes revealed to me how he had solved the case, and I shared a few details of my travels and adventures in the days I had been away. He laughed at my rescue of the doll, and chuckled even harder at my description of Alfie’s light-fingered humor. Gradually, we spoke of a few other things, too. Not in many words, but enough.
We eventually fell asleep there in the sitting-room. I awoke in the morning with a terrible crick in my neck, looking up blearily from my chair to see Holmes snoring, slumped in his own seat. But when I woke him, he greeted me with a small, warm smile. That warmth persisted, just as a newfound closeness bound us even more firmly together than before.
We both learned valuable lessons from the incident, and though it was painful, I cannot regret the decision I made in changing trains – if only because the eventual benefits far outstripped the initial cost.