Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

John Watson, outstanding in many facets of his character, is above all the most sincere man I have known. He may keep quiet, if he does not wish to be frank, but he will not mislead you; and even in silence a lift of his brows or an indrawn breath often speaks eloquently for and in spite of him. Sincerity is an enormously attractive thing: not least because of the single-minded loyalty it engenders in him, once his friendship is declared. The courage required to attain that kind of whole-souled clarity is enormous. It indicates a man on whom you may rely without question.

As a man of quite another bent, to whom acting is as instinctive to my nature and as necessary to my profession as the pulse of my blood, I sometimes wonder why he trusts me. He has seen me enact a thousand characters in as many days, and in each shift of voice and breath and tone and angled wrist and changing tread I believe the chimera created appears as natural as the one before. If I were him I should not feel I knew me. I will say this: I am honest. Not with his sincerity, changeless and innate, but with the truest truth of whichever man I am creating; I never say a thing which that man would not. Sometimes I wonder if there is a way to learn what he saw in me: if there was any idea of me he held to, or if he loved me for all my selves.

He loved me, I knew that, as a man loves a brother-in-arms, or a knight his shield-bearer. He would likely argue that I am the knight, and he my shield-bearer, but I differ. Still he wasn’t wholly mine any longer, but Mary’s, and steadfast at her side six days out of seven. I couldn’t trust myself to see him for a while after he left me. Whatever he might have needed from me then, it wasn’t the only self I could find in those weeks, the furious and lonely self bared and howling for what I had lost, for a quick smile every bright morning across the breakfast table; for his step at my side, unmistakable as a signature, one stride caught up just slightly short in memory of Afghanistan and a burning bullet; for a gentle hand tucked into my elbow, or touching my shoulder as he passed; for the low, warm laugh I could provoke when we were sleepy and talking nonsense by the fire—just for his company.

I had not anticipated how the loss would unravel me. I am not a narcissist: I had no idea of claiming a right to him. But neither am I the self-sufficient sage I have invented for my most often lived-in self. I do not think he knows it, but I need him. So at last I found a way to gather myself up and come asking for him, offering whatever I had, my stories and my work and my company. It seemed to be enough for him. He was happy when I came.

And then there was a change. One frosty morning he sat across from me in his old chair, smoking a cigarette, while I talked to him about the Professor; Moriarty, of infamy then still to come. I had only just recognized the fact that his name came up peripherally in case after case, a stray thought, a secret behind secrets, and that his influence was all about me in the City without anyone’s realising how he’d intertwined himself about us. I was intrigued. Disturbed, too, with a faint unease far from the loathing I would later conceive for him; but deeply interested, God help me, in a man who seemed capable of camouflaging himself and his unrighteous capacities in plain sight of society, with dignity and ease. I was talking to John, as I do at times, as though to myself, swept away in the flow of speculation, when a turn and a glance at him brought me up short.

He was listening still, but with a look on his face I had not seen in years—an apathy, a kind of surrender of his courage in the slump of his shoulders and his downturned mouth. He was with me, but I was struck with the sense that something had been emptied out of him.

“Watson,” I said, and he started.

“I’m sorry, Holmes.” He sounded the same as always. “I’m a little abstracted.”

“What’s wrong?” I am not usually so direct: I prefer to tease him toward happiness with little gallant unmentioned attentions when he is low. But I was so surprised at him, I spoke without thinking.

He laughed. It was a sorry-sounding thing. “Is it so obvious?”

“No.” Not nearly obvious enough. “Not at all: I’ve only noticed just this minute, and I ought to have known you were sad when you walked in. Watson, tell me.”

“I don’t know that I should.” He looked at me wistfully; then, to my dismay, shame shadowed his features; his eyes dropped. “I don’t want to upset you.”

I flung myself down into my own chair and stared. I was used to his reticence and the dignity that demanded it, but this was new—to be denied even a glimpse at what worried him, for fear of my taking offense. “As I wish to be your friend,” I said, trying for a calm and reasonable tone, “that isn’t possible. Whatever's troubling you, I want to help.”

For some moments he regarded me in silence. I couldn’t read his face at all, which was more frightening to me than everything else so far; but then he blinked, and determination writ itself across his forehead. “All right,” he said. “I’ll hold you to that in a minute. Holmes—I’m having difficulty—that is to say, Mary and I—” He stopped, and sighed, and rubbed his chin, clearly discomfited; his eyes dropped again. “I’ve not been able to fulfill my duties to her.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Whatever I might have guessed, it wasn’t that. I couldn’t imagine a more satisfactory husband existed in England than John Watson.

“I mean—I am not able to love her. Not—I don’t mean I don’t care for her, but—in our own bed, I can’t love her as I should. I can perform the act, but only just.” He gave me a quick little look and went back to staring at his knees. I was speechless. He went on, “I suppose you’ll say that’s my own private business.”

“I wouldn’t.” That, at least, I could say. I knew he hadn’t the faintest conception of why this particular topic was sensitive to the touch, for me; his trouble was all for himself and Mary, and I had to rally myself to his need. “Is she angry?”

“No, only disquieted. I think she’s afraid I’ve lost my affection for her.”

“And—have you?” They had seemed so eager to take up the reins of married life. It hadn’t occurred to me they could be anything but happy together, in spite of my own misery over it all.

“No—that is to say—no. My feelings toward her are the same as ever, only—I’m afraid they may not have been enough. Not from the start.” His voice was sinking lower, his hands pressed hard together. My own began to tremble slightly. “I thought—I believed it would all be quite natural, once we began.”

“Your intimacies?” Heat was rising up my neck, and I prayed Heaven he would not look up at me then. He did not.

“Yes. I—kissed her, Holmes, for the first time, when I pledged her my life, and it was pleasant enough; but it wasn’t much to me. I’m afraid to say—I was a little disappointed.”

“Oh.”

“Quite. It grew pleasanter as we went on, and I supposed when we came together the joy would follow, but—” A deep sigh. A slight shake of his golden head. “I don’t much enjoy it. I find I have to distract myself from what I'm doing. I think—” A peep at me, at last, to see how I was taking it. “I believe I’m deficient somehow.”

I was, of all men on earth, the least worthy of advising anyone on the subject of the marriage bed and deficiencies discovered therein. John knew this. I knew this. I sat immobile, terrified, but strangely warmed, that he should trust me so, absolutely inadequate as I was to the question. He took my silence well, considering; glanced at me repeatedly, and rubbed his hands together, and sighed again; but his shoulders had loosened, and he sat straighter in his chair.

“I know little of women,” I said, finally, at which he smiled the slightest bit, “and nothing of marrying them, but I think you ought to explain to her. At the least, she won’t need to fear she’s lost your attentions by her own fault.”

His whole face changed. “Do you think she would think so? She mustn’t. But to admit I’ve never found my way to love her as I ought—I promised her everything!” His eyes were filling up with grief. “There must be some way to help myself—a specialist, a chemical aid, a treatment of some kind. I ought to try. She is good to me.” He looked at me, pleading, and my heart sank. What he wanted seemed unlikely. If a help for this kind of problem existed, would the creator not be known? Wouldn’t John have heard of it already in the course of his studies? But I was not a doctor; and I had never sought a medical correction to the course of my own development.

“You can try,” I said, at last. It was an ineffectual answer, and I could hear the lack of conviction in my own voice. I rose, to get us each a glass of something, and turn away my face. He had no need to witness my dismay. But I could clasp his shoulder in comfort, as I passed him, and that was something. He took the good strong port I offered, and stayed, and let me play for him a long time. He left me at last with a look and a word of kindness; and that was a great deal indeed.

When he had gone, I sank into my chair, and tried to collect myself, but it was no use; my blood was up. After a few minutes of deep breaths and blank silence, in imitation of the sages of the East who seek enlightenment, which attempt merely made me intimately acquainted with the anxiety possessing me, I sprang up. There was another way to free myself from myself. I went into my room, and collected my boxing gloves from under the bed; stripped to the waist, and removed my slippers and stockings, and began a methodical pummeling of the old-fashioned punching ball which stood beside my bed. After a few minutes of this the rhythm got into my blood and bones and all the whirlpool of my mind drained into that single point of focus, the drum-drum-drum of fists against leather. The cool of the room soothed the heat in me; the sweat ran down my face; and the fear subsided.

I must say here that John was not to blame: he did not know what he was doing. I had never expressed to him what was to me the inadmissible, the subrational tide rushing the shores of my self-command. I did not wish him to know. I wished to Heaven I did not know myself what I wanted. If only I might go on, as many a man did, with the day’s work and the night’s drink comforting and covering over my nature with layers of civilised distraction. I could act, at least, as though I did not want anything more than work and more work. Acting is sometimes almost the same as being in truth.

Still, as I lay in bed that night, one single thought went round and round my mind: He did not love her.

The days wore on; and we went on together, as close as we could be when he slept six miles distant from my door. Some days he appeared cheerful and steady, and seemed to have forgotten we had ever spoken of his troubles. But sometimes I saw him grieving silently, and a little bitterness crept into the corners of his mouth that had only held gentleness and good-humour in its generous shape for years. I watched him sinking into himself with no little horror: I had forgotten the look of John regretting himself. I despised it. Of all men alive he was the one least fit to wear that look; and it was the sight of him slumped in the corner of a hansom, staring sightlessly down at his clasped hands, with almost a sneer on his lip, that finally broke my reverence for his privacy. We had been talking of the case just concluded, but had fallen into silence as I ruminated with still-uncomprehending interest (my Lord, the arrogance of me) over the fact the the Professor’s name had come up once again, this time in connection with the financier of a dealer of weaponry among the shabbier and more desperate gangs. I had been rambling on, but I glanced up at last, and saw that look on his face, and found myself saying, apropos of nothing, “Nothing has cured you?”

He started, and stared. “Holmes!” was all the response I got at first, in a disbelieving tone, followed by a shake of the head, and then (most improbably) a small smile. “How on earth did you know what I was thinking of? No—” And for the first time since I had known him, he amended the question. “Never mind. I don’t need to hear how transparent I am."

“Only to me,” I reminded him, and he smiled a little more.

“I know. At any rate, no, there has been no appreciable change in my—condition. There is nothing in the literature of any use. One doctor laughed me out of his practice; another told me to drink cocoa instead of liquor in the evenings; a third recommended I give up frigging myself and pay her better attention. It cost me all my restraint to keep my seat and thank him for his time, instead of knocking him over.”

I’d have done it for him. “And she doesn’t yet understand?”

“I don’t understand it at all myself, Holmes. I had thought it would all be quite natural, and yet—and yet—I ought to have noticed that I was not all right. I might have known.”

“What do you mean?”

He did not answer. His face was turned to the window, his features falling into shadow and rising again into light as we passed beneath the streetlamps, through the silent streets, hushed beneath the cold. I could not catch his expression. His soft-gloved hand rested on his knee, inches from my own. I could have placed my hand atop his, stroked it, pressed my knee to his in comfort. I did not move at all. Something was just then occurring to me. “You found you didn’t care for kissing her, and that surprised you. Hadn’t you ever before…?” I faltered. I didn’t know how to find my way through the thought without embarrassment, but he compressed his lips and looked at me, finally.

“You would remember that. No, I hadn’t. Nor wanted to. It should have made me think. At school, my studies occupied me, and then there was the excitement of enlistment, and my duties on the field of war; and I supposed then that I had a little more capacity for concentration than my fellows, and a little cooler blood. I could have taken my pleasure cheaply, I do realize that—but paying for a woman’s time held no appeal for me. I never met a girl I really liked, till Mary. There’s something in her—a familiarity, a sense of confidence—” He faltered, searching visibly for verbal expression. “It’s like we’re two children who’ve found each other in the dark, and held on for safety. Something in my soul trusts hers.” He had said as much in his account of their meeting. I had been struck then by the strange innocence of his feelings; but I had not lingered over it, as I was then doing my utmost to avoid dwelling on the fact of her existence. He was looking now as he had then, when he spoke of her—a little anxious, a little dreamy. “She’s a comfort to me, and I think I am to her. I feel as if I may rely on her, but—dear God.” His voice broke a little. “She feels more. She looks at me like the answer to a question she’s asked all her life.”

A sound escaped me at that. He glanced up at me, surprised. He must have thought me uncharacteristically pained to the heart on Mrs. Watson’s behalf. His brow contracted; he leaned forward, and under that look it began to be difficult to breathe. I held his gaze with all my strength: it seemed the worst possible time for my practiced serenity to fail, but it was faltering badly. Thank God, he did not understand. “I’ve said too much,” he said, after a moment’s earnest scrutiny of me, and sat back, releasing me from the effect of his bright, worried eyes. “Forgive me, this is precisely the irrational kind of tragedy you might have expected for me when I indulged in the absurdity of marriage. You did warn me.”

I had done worse than warn him; I’d mocked him. I’d goaded and scorned him, out of my anger. I was well and truly repaid now. “I was wrong to do that. I do not think it absurd. You may tell me whatever you choose.” I sounded an automaton.

He blinked, and ran a hand over his eyes wearily. “You are very kind, Holmes.”

His politeness made it worse. He needed me, and I could not help him. I could have groaned aloud, but constrained by his silent presence I sat still, watching our breaths cloud the chilly air between us. After a minute he tipped his head back against the seat, and rested there, looking out into the night. With that reprieve I was able to compose myself a little, so that by the time we reached Baker Street I had re-formed a semblance of calm. I stepped with him into the light of our front hall, and hung up our hats side-by-side, and set his cane against the wall, while he started slowly up the stairs. He moves with more difficulty in bitter weather, and any other day I might have caught up to him and offered him my arm, but instead I stood unwinding my muffler, meeting my own gaze in the little mirror that hung there.

I had not meant to feel for Mary. I had hoped (when I thought of her at all) to be distantly courteous regarding her, and never see her. I did not want to grieve for her. There was nothing I desired less than to comprehend precisely what she wanted from John Watson. I had long accepted that love made a fool of most, and a goblin of me. I wanted unforgivable things, things that would ruin me, things that would repulse him. But his tender, wistful tone when he’d talked of what she felt—he honoured the sentiment; and just then I could not remember why I was required to despise it in myself.

Christmas came and went. The year turned silently from old to new in darkness, without any appreciable change in the quality of our existence. The city huddled hungry and half-cowed beneath the lowering sky, sending up layers of defiant soot to stain the clouds. London was sunk into the mire of a dreary March, John absent from my rooms for three months entire, and I dropped down into the depths of a blank, black mood of the kind that left me feeling there was no substance left to my soul, when John rapped on the half-open sitting room door one morning, and came inside, cheeks pinked by the cold, and smiling. As he stopped to hook his cane over his chair, with a cheerful, “Hello, Holmes,” I stumbled to my feet and stared.

Both his brows rose at that. He said, “Steady, there. All right?” and strode across the room to meet me, shoulders back, eyes alert, Captain Watson readying himself to do battle for my health and sanity. He took my hand in his, to test its temperature. His eyes dropped to my neck, looking for the racing or sunken pulse that would indicate the influence of what he called my poisons; then he looked to my pupils. His hand rose to brush gently across my cheek, my brow, in search of a sweat or a chill. I shivered.

“I am sober,” I said, and he stepped back with a sigh. I nearly swayed forward after him, so strong was the sense that he’d appeared suddenly on the road to rescue me after an endless, perilous journey. “I’m fine,” repeated, and he gave me a long look, but said no more, only took his chair with a small sound of relief. His hip must have been hurting him badly.

“Brandy?” I offered.

“Yes, thanks.” He smiled at me again. I turned away quickly to hide a surge of gratitude so strong it frightened me. When he added, curiously, “Anything to do?” I couldn’t answer; only shook my head, and poured out his drink with a hand that was not steady.

I waited a moment till I was all right, then carried it to him. “Can you stay all day, then?”

He studied me. His mouth softened in sympathy. “Yes, of course. You’ve been having a hard time of it, haven’t you.”

I could not hold his gaze. “You know I’m a moody fellow.”

“Yes, I do. My dear boy.” Compassion in his tone. “Shall I read you the morning news?”

“Please.”

He took up the paper from the stand, and turned over its pages slowly. “Well, then.”

John has a marvelous voice, warm and clear and dry. He reads charmingly, with little asides on the interesting bits, and small bouts of laughter when he strikes on something unexpected. I tucked myself into my arm chair, with my head on a velveteen cushion, and closed my eyes, the better to savour the experience. The heat of the fire seeped into my skin, the wind whistled in the chimney-grate, and his voice went on steadily, while the world fell to rights around us.

After an hour or so he grew quiet. I opened one eye to find him taking a peppermint drop from the bowl beside his chair, and opening up the notebook he’d left there, the paper set aside. He must have thought I was sleeping. I did not disabuse him of the notion, but watched him with one half-opened eye while he began to write. He is a study in earnest endeavour: he frowns, and bites on his lip, and puts out the tip of his tongue, and taps the pencil twice against a completed sentence which he finds especially satisfactory. If he knew I watched him, he would grow self-conscious; so I used to ration out the pleasure, and allow it to myself only when most needed. I hadn’t had the chance in a long while. The trouble, of course, was that in watching him I was given time to think, and it became harder and harder to contain myself, until, “Watson,” I burst out, and he started.

“Holmes,” with a laugh. “Have you been awake all this time?”

“Only thinking,” which was true enough. “Watson, has anything happened?”

He set down his pencil. “No—why?”

“I’ve been—” How to finish that sentence? “I’ve been wondering about you and—Mary.”

“Oh.” Surprise lit his face. He set aside the notebook. “In that case, yes. I’ve found some help at last.”

“Oh?” I sat up, and found I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I folded them, and did my best to offer him a courteous expression of interest.

“It was quite unexpected, actually. I had gone a month ago to meet with an old friend from King’s—Dr. Maxwell, who’s written a recent analysis of the rapid transmission of influenza amongst the lower classes. Do you know it?” I shook my head. We were on his grounds now. “At any rate, I wanted to consult with him about his methods of treatment, but as we were in his home and at our leisure, after that we fell to talking about old times.” He smiled at me. “Things are much better with me now than I’d have dared hope, then. I said so, and he asked me how you were. He thought I was still with you. He hadn’t heard I’d been married. He looked quite startled when I said so.”

Why? I wanted to ask, but did not. Most people seemed to think it was perfectly natural.

“At any rate, I explained about Mary, and then I found myself telling Maxwell about my current troubles. I stammered a good deal, and found it far harder to put the case to a friend than I had to strangers; but he seemed interested. He asked me a dozen questions no one else had thought of, about my diet, my history, mental and physical, and about Mary. About my experience, too, or the absence of it. Then—” and for the first time John hesitated, and searched my face. “Holmes, if I go on, promise me you won’t allow me to say more than I should. If I make you uncomfortable—”

“I’d like to know.”

He nodded once; his breath shortened, and a flush stained his cheeks, setting my heart to racing; he sat up straighter in his chair. “All right, then. I’ll hope for you to hear me out, anyway.”

“You know I will. Of course I will. Watson—”

“He asked me if I had read anything on the subject of constitutional inversion. I said I didn’t know what he meant, and he looked at me for a moment without making me any reply. Then he changed tack entirely, I thought, and said, ‘What about literature? Did you study the Iliad at school? Or have you read the old play, Damon and Pythias?’ I said I had, of course. He went on, ‘I have a suspicion which may startle you. I don’t mean any harm by it: it’s all quite blameless, but you may not think so.’

“Of course I told him to go on. ‘I’ve seen a good deal of life,’ I said. ‘I am not easily shocked.’ He said, ‘You’ve told me you haven’t enjoyed close contact with your wife, but you are very fond of her. Were there any friends at school, or in your regiment, who were as significant to you? As Damon to Pythias, or Achilles to Patroclus?’”

“There were one or two who’d come near, and I admitted it, but, ‘Holmes is the only one now,’ I told him, and he smiled a little, as though he’d anticipated that. Well, he’s been reading the Strand, so perhaps he had. ‘I trust him with my life,’ I said, ‘and I think he feels the same.’”

I nodded. I could not have spoken; but John was caught up visibly in a powerful emotion, and hurried on. “He asked, then, ‘Have you ever embraced a friend?’”

My heart seized in my chest.

“I hadn't, and said so. ‘Or wanted to?’ he went on, and I was bemused. I didn’t understand what he was getting at. I told him I’d had a friend at school, George Ingham, who used to cast his arm about my shoulders when I’d done well at the pitch, and wrestle me around a bit, and I’d liked that; but the fellows at King’s had kept their distance, as I was so serious, and kept to myself, and the men on the field wouldn’t have been so familiar with their captain.”

“Well, he shook his head at that, and said, ‘No wonder.’ He sounded almost sorry. ‘You’ve been all alone,’ he said. I began to protest, but he wasn’t finished. ‘You’ve had your work, of course. Still, one begins to feel the need of a companion. I’ve known a number of fellows like you, with no natural affinity for women. Some marry anyway. Some of them go on to live quite happily on their own; philosophical company, or public works, or artistic endeavours, take up the place in their soul which a family might have come to occupy; and that is no poor outcome, of course. But some turn to one another.’”

“I must have looked lost. I didn’t understand, even then. He added, carefully, ‘I mean they look to each other for love.’ I said, ‘As spouses do—they love each other?’ and he nodded. ‘Body and soul’—those were his words. ‘And while the practice is unusual, it seems to settle them, much as marriage does another kind of man. Some waste their time and their energies on hired boys, as a rake would on women. Some despise their own nature, and are unable to accept any kind of comfort in it; but given your intelligence and your self-respect, I think you will do better than that—if this idea strikes you in any significant way.’ And he smiled at me. I think he hoped to reassure me. I was stunned. I am still stunned, but—I have considered it, and I think—I believe he is right.”

I can’t imagine what I looked like then, faced with him sitting there quite calmly in the midst of the unspeakable. I might have said anything; but what I burst out with was, “And that pleases you?”

“To have an answer? To understand my own condition? Yes.” His colour was rising. “You are offended.”

“I can’t believe you’d never heard of such things.”

“That some men sought other men? Of course I had. But it was always suggested there was a licentious excess there, not a difference in their essential nature.”

“It’s not natural. It's a pathology of the mind!” I was breathless. He rose to his feet, red-faced, and stumbled a little as his stiff leg failed to hold him. He bit his lip against the pain, steadying himself. When he spoke his voice was worryingly quiet.

“Is it? Do you think I am mad?”

I did not. I could not. Faced with his furious clarity, I felt all my protection falling to pieces about me. I cast about me for some role to inhabit, some character who might have an answer for him, and found nothing but my naked self left undefended.

“No,” I said, finally, defeated, and placed my head in my hands. “But I thought I might be.”

I had just enough time to watch new depths of black self-loathing opening within me, when, “Oh,” he murmured. I heard the catch in his breath that meant he was moving carefully against his injuries; looked up, to find him just taking his seat again. He watched me in attentive silence; and the abyss retreated from me under his gaze.

“I didn’t expect to speak of it,” I said, finally, when it was evident he was waiting for me.

“You never do,” he said. He sounded terribly gentle.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You never tell me anything. Is this why—? Holmes, loneliness isn’t madness. You’re all right. You’re quite sane.”

My emotions rose, and nearly choked me. I was quite idiotic in my helplessness, but he only waited for me quietly while I put my hand over my face and counted my breaths till I could slow them. Finally he asked, low, “Were you ashamed of it, then?”

“Yes.”

“Was there someone—have you ever—”

“Yes. A long time ago. It ended very poorly and my mother never forgave me. Please don’t ask me about it.”

He blinked at me, absorbing this; nodded. “Are you ashamed of me?”

“I am not,” I protested immediately. “I couldn’t be, you are—you are—” But I found myself at a loss for words again. He softened immediately, though, and sat back in his chair again; took up a cigarette, and lit it, giving me time to collect myself. The silence between us was sympathetic, now. I was too lightheaded from the sudden exposure to feel much relief; but still—I had said it. And he had stayed.

“Maxwell, your friend,” I said, finally. “Did he offer you any studies on the subject? Any evidence for his views?”

“Clinical experience, no more. He did offer me an introduction to a society of such men, if it interested me. But he expected I would want time to consider my choices.”

“A society?” That startled me. I would have expected the brothels and back alleys would serve well enough for buggers’ connexions. I supposed high-class liaisons might be arranged at the wilder society parties, but I’d never imagined a convivial group of chatterers having drinks in a gentlemen’s club. But then—“You’re not going to go behind Mary’s back?”

Quick anger in his look; blank weariness after. “No, Holmes. I’m going to talk to her.”

I'm sure I gaped at him. “How can you?”

“How can I not? She’s lent me her strength throughout my confusion. I’m quite sure I owe her the truth as I know it. If I frighten her too much, she can tell me so; but you must understand this is a problem that belongs to us both. I asked her to share my life.” He still spoke bravely, but his eyes were growing desolate. To a man of his loyalty—

“You didn’t know,” I said. “You couldn’t have known.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, but it was clear he was not all right.

We sat silent together in the morning light from the east window. It was a little as though the end of days had passed over us, and left us just coming to our senses, lost and amazed, on the charred new earth.

Chapter Text

I had loved before. It was a word I would have owned at the time it happened, but I had not thought to use it since, after my mother’s horror at it, and the finality of my father’s silence. For years after I would have called what I had felt for Victor a kind of perverse greed, at the kindest, and yet I hadn’t even felt frightened when it began; only amazed, that he should like me so. When the holidays came I had asked him home to meet my parents—introduced him as a friend. They were very pleased. They hadn’t imagined Cambridge would have the effect they had never achieved in all my boyhood, of making me sociable. I didn’t mention that we’d met over an injury done to me by his dog; nor that he’d courted me with the offer of the dog’s company, as well as his own, while I was invalided on my couch, and couldn’t run away. I had preferred the canine’s society at first; only for a little while.

I could easily have left them at peace in their ignorance, had I not been so recklessly happy with him. Barely twenty-four hours from our arrival we were seen kissing tucked away in the greenhouse. I can’t imagine how I’d expected to get away with it. I suppose I should be grateful that it was my mother’s lady’s-maid who spied us, for she went to Mother directly, and no gossip started in the lower halls. Father seemed almost indifferent to the act itself, if bemused. I suppose as a man of the world he’d seen stranger things. But he was protective of Mother, and she was humiliated, and frightened, and it made her wholly unforgiving. Victor was sent off at once. I was put on a train to London a few days after, with instructions to apply myself to my studies unwaveringly, and the threat of complete financial foundling if I was seen with him again by anyone.

For a little while I had thought my greatest, probably my only chance at happiness was ruined. But after a very little while I began to be astounded at myself for wanting him so, to the wreck of everything else I cared for, studies, dignity and home, and despised myself for my weakness. I had wasted my mother’s confidence in me for the sake of a tryst. Had Victor asked me to go away with him till the trouble blew over, or had he made any attempt at all to defend me to them, I might have sustained my feeling for him; but at my mother’s orders he’d left me there and gone off without leaving me any token of his care, any sign that he might wait for me—without hesitation, it had seemed to me. He’d made no effort to speak to me again. Left alone, it seemed obvious that I’d surrendered my good sense without provocation to the worst kind of base emotionality, and paid the cost. I had promised myself never again to let sentiment so cloud my judgment.

I lay awake night upon night as March sank into April, and April bloomed into May, reviewing the fifteen years past, every effort to contain myself, all the compression of my impulses and ideals into a rational, controlled, dry, clear and cold mechanisation of a soul, and the black restlessness beneath it all which would rise up to drown my senses when the better means I had of occupying my mind began to fail. I had often lay inert and unmanned beneath the worst of it, and thought my mother’s horror at me proven apt: there was madness in me. I had used syringes and fist-fights and the wonderful self-transcendence of thought to lift me clear above it; but still the subrational need surged beneath.

And now John had suggested, quite calmly, that it be released. That it be nurtured, in fact, and raised into consciousness; that the source of my darkness wasn’t in the passionate impulse but in my endlessly thwarting it. He thought, in short, that I might look to someone. Put that way it began to sound frighteningly reasonable. And if—if—if I did look—but there the thought found no conclusion. Because if I did want someone, it would be him. And he was still not mine. In all the years I’d had him before, I’d allowed myself no more joy than an arm offered to his support, or a press of his hand in the dark.

I had kept my self-command when I thought my instincts a depravity. Surely, I thought, if I granted them a better name, I could still keep myself to heel out of love for him. If he honoured his duty to Mary, I could honour it too. With that thought I found a foot on solid ground at last.

But as I began to find my courage, he was losing his. He was coming to me less, and quiet when he came. I thought it must be grief over Mary. He would have spoken to her; he had sounded quite determined to do it. I couldn’t imagine what she’d have said, what she could do. He didn’t speak of it, and I didn’t ask. I knew he and Mary would have to piece it out between them. But at last there came a night when he told me quite suddenly, in the very act of putting on his hat to go, that he believed they would separate. He was pale, but calm. He smiled at me, even, before he left; and I managed to keep from pulling him bodily back into the room and keeping him there with me, to defend him against the sorrow I saw in his eyes.

They broke apart in June. I had his note in the morning post, and had him back to Baker Street by nightfall, with his few bags. He looked about him with such a bewildered, blank expression that I felt he was farther from me than the day I’d first brought him home. I made him tea, and saw him to his old room, his own bed, and then went to mine, thinking that he would sleep, at least, amid familiar things; but soon I heard him weeping. It went on for hours. He would quiet, and then begin again, worse than before. There was no bearing it.

I sat up in my bed, and flung back the covers; went back out to into the darkened sitting room, the starlight coming faintly through the front window, and the scent of roses from the bowlful on the mantle. I needed something—anything to calm myself. I had no expectation of reaching him; what did I have that was remotely adequate to his loss? I began by looking for the syringe which was tucked up somewhere in my desk, but some vestige of sense stopped me, and I took up the Strad instead and began to play—softly, but after some time it drew him out of his room at last to stand barefoot on the bearskin rug before the fire, pale and quiet, watching me through swollen eyes.

When dawn broke over the rooftops he was dozing in my chair, wrapped up in my shawl. I laid myself down on the sofa, thinking to watch over him till he woke, but the ticking of the clock amid the quiet in the room pulled me under with him into blessed unconsciousness.

I had not anticipated his shock. I am no stranger to John Watson at a loss and grief-stricken, but I knew him better, then, than I had at the first, and strangely that made it harder to think what to do. I sorrowed to see his loneliness. I mourned over the blackness in his gaze. His silence unnerved me. At times I even became angry—with myself, Mary, Maxwell, Providence, everyone who had known but could not help him. But I could see him making an attempt at courage every time I came into the room. He’d offer me a weary smile and a kind question. I, both shamed and heartened by it, would search my own reserves for a little more patience, a little persistence, and pick up a semi-developed solution, or a book, or again take up my violin and play for hope.

After two months he began to rally. Mary had gone to stay with her mother. Returning, she asked him to tea. I watched him off, feeling a good deal of trepidation on his behalf. But he returned brighter-faced, carrying some of the books he’d left at their home, and said to me warmly, “She is a brave woman.”

After four months he began to smile a bit when I teased him, and read aloud with me in the evenings, and even consented with a laugh to accompany me to dinner when I asked as prettily as I could. After five months he had re-established his practice at a new set of rooms in the center of the city, and begun seeing to the health of the Irregulars in his spare time, as well as the recovery of as many as he could reach on his Saturday charity calls. Sometimes he still sat blank-faced, slumped at his desk, staring down at the empty sheet which had been meant to receive a story from his pen. But then he would shake himself, and stand, and fetch his walking-clothes, returning after some hours abroad with a look that was somber, but clearer; and watching his efforts, I began to feel we would recover him after all.

John has written of the blackmailer Milverton, and the drama surrounding his death, but he has not mentioned that his was the first case he accompanied me on, after seven months at Baker Street. Of course he was magnificent. I had told him all about my plan to break Milverton’s private safe, and take back my client’s information, without any thought that John would try to come, but he insisted. In fact, he quite sincerely proposed to turn me in to Scotland Yard if I wouldn’t accept his company. I was so pleased by that, in spite of myself, that I was in danger of becoming cocky as we made our furtive way through the sleeping house, quite outside the law. To have him home was joy; to have him again at my side, glorious in his courage, trusting, and radiantly absorbed in our task, was joy unspeakable.

Even at Milverton’s unexpected entrance, while barely hiding ourselves in time, I felt no real misgiving; only some horror and a greater sense of sympathy as the woman he meant to destroy followed after, and brought him his end. John wrote that I held him back until the man was dead, and the woman gone, and then leaped out to rifle the cursed safe he kept full of his trade-secrets, and cast the letters there into the fire, before we ran out with all the house and a few policemen on our heels and took ourselves safely home.

All that is true, but one letter I did not destroy. It had lain open atop the rest, undoubtedly received that very day; perhaps the last thing he had looked at, and it had my name on it. My eye had been arrested by the familiarity. I had secreted it in my waistcoat, and finished my task, and fled, with John just behind.

At first I thought nothing of it. Milverton had been to see me; he had been piqued by my interference, though barely concerned by it; and I supposed that he had written for himself, or written to some other party, a memorandum concerning me and what trouble he might reasonably hope to get me into. Death having come for him so suddenly, I suppose I thought the chance of trouble from that quarter was at an end. I wanted to enjoy my triumph, and to linger a little over the memory of Watson, in a black silk mask, tucked into the window-recess at my side, and clinging to my arm.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I went back to look at the letter properly. Within a few lines I was sobered. Milverton had written to the Professor about me. I had been following any mention of Professor Moriarty with interest for years, and had of late began to track him in earnest, in hopes of unraveling the secret of his uncanny influence over London. I had learned enough to know how difficult it would be to prove malicious intent against him, though what a difference it would make to the state of our city if I could! But now I saw our own names written out in the Professor’s hand, cultured, but cramped with ill-feeling; saw his smooth acknowledgment of Milverton’s request to end my interference, and an elegantly-worded promise to deal with me apace. I was foolishly pleased to see him refer to me as “notably difficult to touch on moral grounds,” but in the next moment my heart sank down to my toes, for the line went on, “but he may easily be reached, I think, through the weakness supplied by Doctor Watson.”

It took me some moments to quell the immediate murderous impulse which rose up in me at seeing John’s name down in that hand. Until then I had not imagined him to be at any risk from my investigations in that quarter. I dropped my eyes to the page again. “Mr. Holmes has been making his way round the outskirts of my business for some time. I wouldn’t mind seeing him put away. Watson is not generally a difficulty on his own; but his removal together with Holmes’ would be preferable. He would undoubtedly work out a way to make trouble should Holmes be imprisoned alone.” My stomach turned at my John being discussed between those two miserable reptiles in this impersonal fashion, but what followed was worse and worse: A dispassionate recital of the most private and sensitive events of the year just past, John’s separation from Mary, his immediate removal to my rooms, his being continually seen in my company; the living-money being paid Mary from John’s pocket, and—what made me both furious and helpless—his continuing to send to print sensational, personal, and admittedly sentimental stories about me. It was becoming transparently evident what all this meant.

“There is almost material enough to convince a British jury evident in the actual facts,” said the cool lines, “but I am prepared to furnish you with several men of good, ordinary, honest-seeming quality, who will testify to the intimacies required to infer the act itself between Watson and Holmes.”

I dropped the letter. I believe I exclaimed aloud. Fear struck first; then a hot bolt of the old shame—someone had found me out; laid out my heart to make game of me. But fast following that came fury that two fools should be allowed to spoil a half-bloomed, lovely thing. Because I had been  happy. I had John home, at last, and he was better with me; he was even approaching contentment. It felt as though he might belong to me again. But now—now. Milverton was dead, but the Professor lived, and if he’d thought seriously of removing me, he would do it if I could not get the better of him, and quickly.

Which brought me sharply to the inevitable: I had to tell John, and then I had to get him away. He could not remain with me. He might not want to, after this. I could, very probably, have Moriarty in court in the end. He was very well-equipped in his chosen life, but so was I. But it would take time and there would be risks, enormous risks involved. If I let John be brought into it he would end in Reading Gaol in a heap of refuse with irons on his legs, and I would break my heart or lose my head, and the game would be up. So: John had to be removed from play.

He was out on a house call. His absence gave me time to think. It was not a comfortable exercise. I lay in the depths of my arm-chair, picking a hole in my dressing-gown. I had lost John once already, not by choice. I knew what it would be like to watch him leave. Would it be better or worse for me, having sent him off myself? Could I find the fortitude to pull apart the Professor’s operation on my own? But of course I would—I must. John would not be safe so long as Moriarty kept a hand on the workings of London; not so long as John kept up any association with me. I did not delude myself into thinking I would have the strength, or the cruelty, to sever our friendship altogether, even to protect him. So: defeat was inadmissible. I must win.

I gathered myself, and went to my desk, and wrote out some letters, to old clients in high places, to Lestrade, to my brother. I had to muster all my resources, and gather any scrap of intelligence that might help me to corner the man. I might couch the threat in general terms, except to Mycroft; but every one I wrote to would care enough to bestir themselves if we were in danger. On sealing the last note I found myself struck with a rare emotion: gratitude for my friends. I generally thought of myself in plural terms only with John: he and I stood together; he and I would depend on one another. But when it came down to it, we two were not alone in the world.

I turned up the lamps, and picked through the pile of rejected requests atop my workbench, recovering several letters from the Lieutenant Général in Paris. He had offered me work across the Channel, well-paying work, with official protection. To accept his request would purchase me a little time, and space enough to let me breathe, away from our silent rooms, once John had gone. I might gather the funds necessary for any larger operation around the Professor, while giving my connexions time to work up the information I required.

And the freedom would be good. In Paris I was not notorious, I would not be spoken to in the street, I would not even appear unusual. I might stay up all night, and live on coffee and bread, and wander about bookstalls and chemists’ shops dressed in the most careless fashion, and no one would say a word.

I had tucked away the Général’s letters in a carpetbag, with some francs, a set of false whiskers, and three forged passports, and was looking about me vaguely for something else to pack, when John came in with the scent of the rain about him. “There’s tea,” I said, and picked up a folio by Béchamp, considering it. I would have supposed myself quite calm by then, had I been asked; but he (bleary-eyed, and damp through the trouser-legs) stopped midway across the room to stare.

“Holmes,” he said, and through the exhaustion in his voice alertness sounded suddenly, “what’s wrong?”

My heart gave a horrid thud. I was not prepared to discuss it with him yet.

“Go change,” I said. “Your cuffs are wet.”

He did not act as though he heard me. “Are you all right?”

“You won’t help me by catching cold. Go change your clothes.” I waited until he turned away. Then I sank into my chair. My fingers had begun to tremor. I sat, trying vainly to form a sentence in my mind which would ease him into it.

He returned too quickly. Hair smoothed roughly back by hand, cheeks still pink with cold, his quilted emerald smoking-jacket brightening his eyes and squaring his shoulders, making him look faintly royal. Wool stockings, my gift three Christmases ago. Incongruous, shabby, soft old slippers on his feet. I looked up and found his gaze clear on me. I quailed, but felt more certain still: I could not risk him.

“You have to go,” I said.

Whatever he had feared or suspected, that was not it. He blinked, and blinked again.

“I’m sorry,” I added, when he did not speak.

“What do you mean?” he said, finally.

“I mean that you need to move out. Not—not forever. I hope.” It was quite terribly obvious that he might never come back, once I had him out. This could take months, or worse; and he was not a man who ought to live alone. If I sent him off lonely, someone else would soon love him—

“Holmes,” he said, when I did not speak. He looked far too brave.

“We’ve been threatened,” I said, dismayed by the sharpness in my voice, but powerless to find another tone. “You—your presence here will be used against us.”

He took that in with a sharp breath. “How?”

That was the crux of it. “Because you’ve left Mary to return here. Because you write about me so kindly. They mean to accuse us of indecency.”

Helpless, I watched it hit him. He jolted, and blanched; stood a moment, with parted lips; took two steps backwards, and lowered himself into his chair. I watched his gentle hands curl tightly round the arms of it, the little callouses on his fingers standing out white. Then he let go, deliberately, and stretched out his hands slowly, and placed them on his knees.

“I’ll go,” he said. His voice was barely changed. “I—Forgive me, Holmes, I hadn’t realised—Of course. It looks bad. I ought to have been more careful—in the timing—more circumspect in how I wrote of—you. I am sorry.”

“No!” His lips parted at my vehemence. “No, for Heaven’s sake, don’t apologize.” I stopped under his stare.

He said, “But surely I’ve caused you pain. To be accused of—by association—You called those feelings madness.”

I had. I had shouted it at him. We hadn’t spoken of it since, Heaven curse my spineless reticence. I could have wept before him. “Forget that, if you can—please. I’ve rethought my position. I’d be proud to stand in court for—if there was no consequence to you, I’d be more than glad, for you—”

I faltered to a stop, with a thundering heart. Too much truth. His mouth moved slightly, soundlessly.

“You mean you’ve accepted your nature. You wouldn’t be ashamed,” he said, feeling his way, “to be known for it.”

“I mean more than that. I mean what I said. If it was with you, I’d be proud,” I repeated, breathless. It seemed essential that he grasp that. After a moment, his hand covered his mouth. His eyes began to flicker through indecisive shades of deep feeling, and settled at last on a kind of gleaming recklessness.

“It seems a pity,” he said, almost lightly, “to be sent off for something I’d only wished I’d done. Shall I make it all worse?”

I couldn’t answer him. I rose to my feet, under the pressure of mounting emotion, and found I could not stand steadily. He rose with me, watching me—reached out, and grasped my shoulders, anchoring me.

“I love you,” he said. “I have for years; I know that now. And,” growing gruff, “if I must go I should like to kiss you first.”

I staggered. He held me up. My throat seized; I couldn’t speak. He waited, bright-eyed, holding me there, while I struggled to swallow, to breathe. “Steady,” he murmured, and then, “Hold on,” and he got us both down into my arm-chair. I closed my eyes and sank.

“Tell me I’ve not mortally offended you,” he said, when I risen to the surface slowly, had begun to get my breath back with the steady pressure of his hand clasping mine, the warmth of his calm at my side.

“No,” I managed, and he smiled a bit. My mind was still spinning round the solar-blinding thought of loves me, he loves me, loves me—

After a moment he began again, “So then—” just as I said, “I’ve been packing my bag. I was leaving.”

He paled sharply; let go of me. “For where?”

“For France, as soon as possible. I need time. You aren’t safe—until I find conclusive evidence against the Professor—if I can find it. Now at least we could say truthfully we had never, if it came to court—” My voice failed me. I wrung my hands in my lap; but his face had changed again.

“Holmes. My dear fellow. You will find what you need. You’ll stop him.” He sounded quite sure. “You will return. I will wait for you, if I can’t come with you.”

“You can’t.”

“All right. Ordinarily I should argue the point, but I understand the circumstances are—difficult. That said, I should like to be quite clear, Holmes. Do you mean to say that if you successfully bring this man to court and a charge, I may kiss you?”

“John,” I said, but words deserted me, and he turned his face up to the ceiling and laughed aloud. His hand crept about my arm and squeezed it. The heat of it went right through me.

“If you use that tone on my given name, I will have to leave,” he said, “or else kiss you now. I am mortal, Holmes. There is only so much I can bear.” The absurd, shining good-humour on his face was my undoing.

I said, “I do love you. I love you,” and then, “Heaven help me,” and I seized the strong hand that held my arm and brought it almost to my lips. I could do it; he would not stop me. I let him go. “Leave, then. I can’t bear this either.” And then I lost my breath again at his expression.

“Suppose we stop trying to bear it,” he murmured. His eyes were welling with tears. He swept a shy thumb over them, and gave me such a wry, glorious look I felt myself blush. “Suppose we just be mortal for a moment. Let me at least hold you. Please,” opening his arms to me, and I lost all vestige of sense. I went to him. I laid my head on the broad, thick shoulder of his dressing-gown; turned my face into his tender neck, where his pulse raced, and placed my lips to it, slowly. He shuddered; said my name, hoarse and deep and tender. Past speech, I drew him closer; put my arms about him, felt the heat and the strength of him beneath me. Took him in, like a drowning man taking air.

Whether I’d sink again, or live and breathe—I didn’t know yet.

Chapter Text

France was a sufficient distraction for about a week. I could forget myself in wandering the crooked streets, ducking in and out of second-hand shops and third-rate music-halls, a cigarette in my hand and my cravat undone; I could disappear into my research for hours, and go to bed at any time of day or night, and rain curses, unreprimanded, on my uncooperative fireplace and my draughty window and my empty room. For John wasn’t there, and the release of utter self-indulgence was failing to counterbalance the weight of his absence.

He’d let me go at the platform with a quick press of my hand; stood motionless, watching, as my train pulled slowly out of the station. When I could not pick him out amid the crowd any longer, I’d settled back into my seat with a queer, uncomfortable feeling about my heart. I had not been parted from him by more than a county since we had met. Now Europe lay ahead.

We had bought my ticket at the station, five minutes before departure, using one of my false names. I’d taken only the Strad and my carpetbag, so that I would not have to get a porter anywhere along the route. It seemed wisest to leave as few traces of my passage as possible. I boarded ship with a forged passport and a new false mustache wreaking havoc on my sensitive upper lip. John would have laughed to watch me twitch, and warned me to try out my disguises before I used them. But of course John was safe home, well away from me. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself—I knew that.

Still, I questioned my judgment in leaving him there—questioned it, semi-involuntarily, about twice an hour from my arrival in France, alone, until the morning I was served a cup of poisoned tea at a tea-house on the Boulevard. I had been about to take a sip when the faintly bitter scent of the cupful struck my senses like a warning note. I knew that scent. I could not place it for a long moment, and then it came to me: cyanide. A mouthful of that tea would have killed me in moments.

Of course I took note of the maid who’d brought it, and spent some time in pointed conversation with the chef. But my investigations came up short against the unfortunate fact that there were a hundred people in the tea-room who might have dropped a drop into my cup as the maid carried her tray about. And the party culpable would have left the moment I failed to drink it, if they hadn’t had the sense to go before.

I left, and lost some indeterminate time in consideration, as I do when there’s no kind hand at my elbow to bring me back to earth—came to myself in the middle of the Jardins du Trocadéro as the sun was going down, still running round and round the facts of the event in my mind. It was possible that the cup had been intended for someone else. If not, if I had in fact been the target, someone had recognized me; someone who objected to my presence in Paris to a lethal degree. Was the unknown enemy connected to the work I was doing for the Général? Or was the source of the attempt the Professor? If the former, success in my endeavours would end the danger. If it were the Professor—then my flight from London had changed his plans, and pushed him to consider more reckless and less public methods of recompense for my interference; and I might expect the attacks to continue until I could bring him to court.

Any possibility reasoned out to the same conclusion: I could do nothing but warn my colleagues, and continue with what I had to do, keeping a sharp eye out. And no more boarding-house meals for me: I’d make my own tea in the mornings. Accordingly, I stopped to buy a kettle on the way back to my rooms, and three packets of good black tea; stopped off again at the telegraph office, to send a message to John.

We had developed a simple code, years back, for use when our communiqués might be read: I became William Scott, a periodic patient of John’s, and any threats to my life or his were transformed into the guise of William's many imaginary illnesses. Any dedicated spy would see through the ruse in a minute, but a mere casual surveillor of John’s mail would miss the point. I wrote:

SCOTT SUFFERED NEAR-FATAL ATTACK OF FEVER AFTER LEAVING YOUR CARE STOP ILLNESS FEARED CONTAGIOUS STOP PLEASE LOOK TO YOUR HEALTH STOP SCOTT NOW FULLY RECOVERED DO NOT WORRY STOP

The beauty of the telegram is in its brevity: the medium forbids sentiment. I should never have found my way through everything I would wish to tell him, given the chance. I would have embarrassed myself in a letter, and even a telephone call would have rendered me speechless. I had been away from him a week. For a week I hadn’t known how he slept, or what he did, or where he was; for a week I hadn’t heard his voice. The telegraph steadied me immensely in its commonsensical stricture. I continued on to the boarding house with only a very small, niggling temptation to throw it all up and purchase a ticket home at once.

I spent three months in France, working on behalf of the governmental heads of that indulgent nation, as well as several Scandinavian neighbors. Their trust in me was flattering, but the great benefit was the money involved. I wired it to Mycroft in steady increments, to be used in purchasing the confidence of Moriarty’s associates, or engaging in false transactions with them, or in supplying the needs of the men who were working round the organisation, trying to find a weak spot. There was no man more fitted than Mycroft to manage it all.

He kept up a stream of information to me in our own simple code, Greek letters forming Latin words—again, no real protection, but a point against a quick perusal. The messages were hand-carried week by week across the Channel by his lackeys. He kept me abreast of the movements of the Professor and his men, the communications intercepted, the threads I might pull to unravel, bit by bit, the web wrapped carefully round the whole of London. It was a delicate task; one great tug might break the thread I held. I had to proceed with horrible gentleness.

Throughout, I was nearly murdered a half-dozen times in an unamusingly creative variety of ways. I went to Narbonne, to Nimes, to Lyon, to Montpelier; they followed me. An ordinary interview was abruptly interrupted by a bullet fired through the window nearest my head, passing so close as to leave a burning sensation across my endangered ear; the gendarmes in my company rushed outside, but found no one to chase; no one in the street seemed to know where the shot had come from. Later, a letter was sent to my address, containing a powder which, analysed, proved a chemical agent which could have paralysed me in an hour had I inhaled two grains of it. Another night I returned home late to find scratches on the window—someone had been trying to cut through the bars with a saw. Still another day, in the thick of a sudden spring rain, I was set upon by thugs on the banks of the Saône. There were three of them. I had a revolver in my boot, which I could not get at until nearly the end of the scuffle; a knife of good steel, and my fists. I fought them off without a word said between us. They fought like trained men and not vagrants. I will never know who they were. 

I had stopped wiring John about events by the third near miss. He would be already well up on his guard, with the endless patient suspicion of a soldier. Any further warnings would only alarm him painfully for my sake, and make it far harder for him to stay away from me. I knew that, because each instance had precisely that effect on me. To be able to see for myself that he was that minute quietly at work, whole, unharassed by murderers, was all I wanted. It was only my conviction that he was safer with me gone that held me steady at my task.

I did think, once, in Montpelier—established at a little room-for-rent above a widow’s quarters, the rain against my window, the scent of the wet earth coming through the melting snow in her back garden, and the sound of a man passing on the street below, whistling in the dark—I thought of giving up, and telling him to come. I could show him everything: the ancient library, the modern, beautiful laboratories at the university, and the footpaths into the budding lavender fields round about the town—we could have walked through them together every warm day. I thought how it would be to stay there with him, away from everyone who knew us, and would notice us; away from England’s most sanctimonious, unnecessary, interfering laws. But of course I was called away at the end of the week, and left my daydreams behind me when I went.

I made a full circuit back to Paris in the end; established myself in the headquarters of the Gendarmerie, and spent a glorious twenty-four hours in which neither time nor human limitations seemed to touch us, while we raced our marks to the finish. And then it was over. I had done what I came for. Five days later, in a lodging house in Calais, I had the last of the evidence in hand which would put Moriarty in the dock. I believe I sat half-an-hour with Mycroft’s letter before I rose all at once to pack my bag. But I know nothing clearly from the time I first read his message until the moment I stood outside the gate, giving my landlady every coin I had left in my pockets, in gratitude for her forbearance, and her kindness, and her existence generally.

With a hot baguette from the bakery next door tucked under my arm, I set out on foot for the harbour. Nearly there, on some strange impulse, I pulled a rosebud through the fence of a little fishing house on the borders of the dockyard, and tucked the soft bit of colour into my buttonhole. There was a tramper leaving port in four hours, with room for a paying passenger. Baguette and bag in my lap, I sat on a bench by the quay, watching the ships pull in against the waning tide, the gulls wheeling above us in the darkening sky, crying into the cold, clear wind, and came fully into the realisation that I would be in London by the morning.

Having watched the moon set as I boarded the train in Dover, I found myself in London, on Baker Street, at eight o’clock in the bright, crowded morning—just the time Mrs. Hudson would be setting out breakfast. I was strangely moved by every little thing around me—the shouts of the tin-mongers and the newspaper boys, the baker’s children playing kick-the-can in the gutter, the maids sweeping up the front steps, calling out gossip to each other, the elms just bursting into joyous leaf overhead. I thought of John, his hand tucked into my elbow as we came up that street through every change of light and shade and season, the two of us always in one mind. I thought of home.

I was in sight of No. 221 when I became fully conscious that I was being pursued, as when a sound outside a dream suddenly startles one into the waking world. I had noticed, without knowing I noticed, a man coming through the crowds on the other sidewalk some way back, small, sturdy, his hat pulled down over his forehead. His clothes were all dark. He walked quickly, with a definite aim. I noticed all this properly for the first time as I realised that he was crossing the street, his gaze fixed on me. I began to think where I could throw my violin case and my carpetbag, if I had to run for it, so as not to harm the Strad. But now the door was approaching; and I reached it, and pulled hard on the bell, just as my pursuer gained the sidewalk on my side some ten yards behind.

He stood watching me openly while I waited. Something shone in his gloved hand: a knife, most probably. His stance was patient: a trained man, used to waiting for his quarry, confident of his capacities. I might have anticipated this: I had been hunted for three months, and why should it stop because I had come home?

Then the door swung open, and Mrs. Hudson cried my name.

I stepped inside. There followed some minutes of the inexact, familiar, kind exclamations anyone receives on their sudden arrival home. She seemed surprisingly worried over me. My insufficient weight and my apparent weariness were fussed over, and the state of my shoes and my bag and my hat, and then she insisted on hanging my things for me, and hustling me up the stairs, with promises of tea and sausages, and no attention paid at all to my repeated, “I’m really all right,” which I meant to follow with, “but there is a hired murderer waiting just outside and you ought possibly to take a day’s holiday,” as soon as I could get a word in. This I only managed to convey once I was seated at my own table, with a napkin on my lap, and my cup steaming.

The situation explained, Mrs. Hudson looked a little alarmed, but said, “Well, I sha’n’t answer the bell, then, but I don’t mean to go anywhere. My sister’s coming at ten and I have a new novel for her.”

“It is good to be home,” was all I could find to say in response, and she flushed up happily, and beamed at me.

“I should hope so,” she said, “the Doctor’s been missing you that badly. I can’t imagine why the French had to keep you so very long.”

“Has he—” I found I had to stop and clear my throat. “Has he been here, then?”

“Once or twice.” She shook her head. “He’d give me his greetings on the way in, and say he didn’t need tea, he was just stopping in for a moment. I’d come up an hour later and find him standing in the middle of the room, staring at nothing. I think he borrowed a book, once, and another time he said he was looking for a missing letter. But I will say he looked sad when he went up, and better when he came down again, which makes one think, doesn’t it—him living all alone as he is, now. You’ll be going straight over to see him?”

It was not really a question; an order, more. I bowed to it. “As soon as I’m rid of our company on the street. And I must see my brother.”

“Family’s family,” she conceded, but doubtfully. John Watson clearly came before Mycroft in both our minds.

“There are assassins about. I only want to be sure everything’s all settled before I drag John into some accidental adventure,” I said. And then I heard myself, and my heart began to beat faster; but she only smiled at me.

“That’s right,” she said. “You do take care of one another. That’s as it should be. Ring the bell, then, if you need me, and send your washing down when you’ve unpacked.”

I had expected the musty chill of three months’ disuse in my chamber, but instead the room smelled of lavender and washing-soap, and the ashes of a fire not long gone out. The curtains were drawn, but as I opened them, the sills revealed were clean. My poker was stained with ash at the tip. My dressing-gown was hung over the backboard, neatly folded. Mrs. Hudson had kept it all ready for me, as though I might come home at any minute.

I put away my things, and donned the dressing-gown; sat down with a sigh, stroking a hand over the worn, familiar pillow. I had to think what was next to be done. Arrests could not be made until Monday; the precise location of each member of the Professor’s inner circle had to be tracked until then, without alarming them, intelligence finalised as to their probable escape routes, fail-safes, and suicide risk; the security of the agents involved in their collection assured. I ought to see Mycroft soon.

I had registered a step on the stair, but I was too deep in my thoughts to question the weight of it. When my door opened, I looked up expecting Mrs. Hudson with her basket, in pursuit of the laundry. Instead, I was met with a face and a form I had only seen in newspaper reports, and one photograph, folded and scarred, sent over to Nantes by my brother’s hand. Familiar, then, to me, the sunken, cold, curious stare, the stooped and hardened form, the balding, fine-featured head. Familiar, but new in their full effect, met in person. I am afraid I started when I saw him in the doorway. Then I reached into the table-drawer, and slipped the revolver I kept there into my pocket.

"You have less frontal development of the brain than I expected,” he said slowly, and smiled. The smile was much worse than the stare. He added, “It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one's dressing-gown.”

I drew the weapon out, and laid it cocked upon the table beside my bed. He still smiled and blinked, but there was something about his deadened eyes which made me feel very glad that I had it there.

"You evidently don't know me,” he said. The words were threatening, but his tone was calm, almost interested, as though I were a novelty for his observation. I should have liked to stand, and look him in the eye, but I kept my seat on principle. I would not rise to his invasion.

"On the contrary,” I answered, “I think it is evident that I do. Pray take a chair. I can spare you five minutes if you have anything to say.”

He had ceased smiling. “All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,” he said, and took a step nearer.

Leave off pursuit of him, or I should face the consequences. "Then possibly my answer has crossed yours.”

"You stand fast?”

"Absolutely."

He shoved his hand into his pocket, and as I registered the motion I had my pistol in hand, and raised it. But he merely drew out a memorandum-book, very like the one John kept.

“You crossed my patch on the fourth of January.” He was reading from the book. “On the twenty-third you incommoded me; by the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced; at the end of March I was actually hampered in my plans; and now, at the close of April, I find myself in danger of losing my liberty, thanks to you.” He put the book away, and raised his brows. “The situation is becoming impossible.”

I had to agree, though I knew our solutions would be irreconcilable. “Have you any suggestion to make?” I asked.

“You must drop it, Mr. Holmes.” His head swayed a little on his thin neck. I suspect the unsteadiness heralded early palsy, but the motion put me in mind of a poisonous snake, gaze fixed on its prey.

“After Monday,” I said.

He clicked his tongue at me, and shook his head in a disconcerting imitation of regret. “You are clever enough—you must see there can be but one outcome to this. You have to withdraw. After all you have done to us, it is the only way. It has been an intellectual treat to watch you at work, and I say, genuinely, that I would grieve to take any extreme measure against you.”

I had heard enough of him to know any appeal to his supposed sympathy would gain nothing. I said, “Danger is part of my trade.”

“I do not speak of danger,” said he. “I speak of inevitable destruction. You are standing not in my way, but in the way of an organisation whose extent you cannot have realised. You must stand clear of our progress, Mr. Holmes, or be trodden under foot.”

With the distinct feeling that we were getting nowhere, and with a rising need to get out from under his empty stare at once, I stood. “I am afraid that in the pleasure of this conversation I am neglecting business of importance which awaits me elsewhere.”

He stood, too, and sighed.

“Well,” he said, “It’s a pity, but I have done what I could. I know every move of your game. You can do nothing before Monday. This is a duel between us, Mr. Holmes. You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand there. You plan to beat me. I shall not be beaten. If I were to be ruined, I should bring ruin on you at once.”

“You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,” said I. “Let me pay you one in return when I say that I would, in the interests of the public, die cheerfully if I could take you with me.”

“I can promise you your destruction, but not mine,” he snarled, and rounding about, left the room, and I was once more alone.

It took me an unforgivably long moment to collect my wits enough to think of it, but then, “Mrs. Hudson,” I shouted, and went down, taking the steps three at a time. “Mrs. Hudson!”

“God in Heaven!” was the muffled exclamation from the kitchen, and my heart bounded up in near-painful relief as she appeared at its door, wiping her hands on her apron. “What is it?”

“He’s been here,” I said, “the man I am after. He threatened me, and I don’t doubt he would harm you if he thought it would dissuade me from him. Mrs. Hudson, please take the day off. Go out. Go home with your sister when she comes. Sleep somewhere else until this is over.”

“If I must,” she conceded, but doubtfully. “I’ve got a double batch of bread in, now, but that’ll be done in an hour. I suppose I could sleep over at Dolly’s.”

“Thank you,” I breathed, and she gave me an odd look.

“I think,” she said, “you ought to lie down just a bit. You’ve been traveling a long while, you know.”

“Lie down! No time for that.” I needed to get out of 221–I needed to go—I needed—

“Good Lord,” said Mycroft, mildly, when I limped into his study covered in brick dust and mud. He was seated at his desk, the curtains behind him half-drawn. The hush in the room, even at midday, was absolute. It always felt in those rooms as though the rest of the world had ceased to be, not extant, exactly, but imminent in any meaningful way: it was sanctuary.

“A brick flung from a rooftop,” I said, while his gaze traveled over my dirty trousers, “meant to brain me, but it missed and shattered at my feet. And a carriage tried to run me down.” The limp was the consequence of that. I had flung myself out of the way, barely in time, and jarred my knee badly on the paving stones. I’d given up foot-travel, then, and taken a cab the rest of the way to Pall Mall.

“I presume they are feeling pressured,” was Mycroft’s dry response, as he settled back in his chair. “And therefore they are pressuring you. Tea,” he added, to the boy who had shown me in, and who was still hovering round the door, “and a cold collation, and you will tell Phebe to light a fire in the second bedroom. No,” as I opened my mouth to object, “I don’t doubt you have lost your appetite, Sherlock, between the exhaustion and the shock, but you evidently haven’t slept two hours in the last twenty-four. A little food and a rest are absolutely essential at this stage if you are to make it to Monday. A steady pace, dear brother, not a headlong dash, even as the finish line hoves into sight.”

“I ate at home,” I objected, but feebly, and sat down too hard in the chair he’d gestured towards. My legs were beginning to tremble.

“Good,” he said, smiling. “I assume that was Mrs. Hudson’s doing. Have you taken steps to secure her safety?”

“She’ll go to her sister’s.”

“And the Doctor?”

“I haven’t seen him yet,” I said. Something must have sounded in my tone, for Mycroft’s brow went up again, and he leaned forward.

“We’ve been watching him,” he said, gently, “though I’m not certain it was necessary. He’s capable enough, as you well know.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, startled. From Mycroft, this was effusive praise.

“But as you are evidently under close attendance by multiple undesirables, I think his visit ought to wait for darkness, for both your sakes. You must spend the afternoon here. Ah, tea,” as a knock sounded on the door, and with a raised voice, “Come in, Will.”

I was beginning to feel rather strange. I watched Will set out the tea tray, and Mycroft direct his arrangement, as though from far away, suspended outside of any hurry or sense of the danger at hand. When the whole was done to Mycroft’s satisfaction, and Will had closed the door, I heard Mycroft say, “Can you sleep a little?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I couldn’t think. “Must I?”

“I think you must. Alacrity of mind is crucial to what’s ahead. Eat what you can, and rest, if you can’t sleep. I will have you roused at five, to discuss what’s to do. At six you will go to him.”

I could not find a thought with which to object. I ate all of my beef, and drank two cups of tea, without really noticing the taste. Then I was shepherded to my room by Will. There was a beautiful fire made up in the grate. The counterpane was large and soft. I had enough presence of mind to wait until Will had gone to remove my outer clothes and crawl like a child into bed.

Chapter Text

His door was grey. Smoke trailed up above the house into the looming twilight. I stood waiting, my chin sunk down into my muffler—the night was cold, and getting colder—my bloodied knuckles stinging inside my gloves. The rough who had attacked me on my way had come off far worse than I, but I knew the blood would worry John. I would keep my gloves on until I had seen how he was.

All at once the door was opened by a sturdy, keen-eyed woman, about thirty, with paint-spattered hands. A streak of blue paint adorned her hair—she had put her hand up to tidy it out of habit when I had rung the bell.

“Sir?” she said.

I tried to smile winningly, through the trembling of my heart. “I’m here for Doctor Watson.”

She shook her head. My soul sank, but she was saying, “It’s past hours. Come tomorrow—”

“I’m not a patient,” I interrupted, and then, hoping on my notoriety, “I’m Sherlock Holmes.”

I had gambled correctly: she raised her brows. “Oh,” she said, with a suddenly significant tone, “you ought to go up at once, then.”

“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say, and stepped into the warmth of the front hall as she drew back.

“I’m Doctor Liddell,” she said, and I nodded; I was all at once past speech. To be so near—

His umbrella stood against the wall at the top of the stairs. There was a light shining under the door, on the landing. All was quiet within. I thought of knocking, but the impulse to surprise won out, and I pushed it open softly.

He was there, golden in the warm soft pool of lamplight, reading—weary about the eyes, a little wistful in the mouth, but calm, and safe.

He looked up; and then he sprang up, and stood staring. My heart began to pound.

He started toward me first. We reached each other, and he was pulling me into himself and burying his face in my hair. My head found his shoulder: I hid my relief in it, and breathed in the safety there, slowly. When at last we broke apart he was smiling such a smile as I had not seen in a very long time. But as he stepped back, and took my shoulders in his hands, and looked me over, a sudden visible worry swept him. Well, Mycroft and Mrs. Hudson had looked at me much the same. I tried a smile. “Yes, I’ve worked too hard, and used myself up a bit too much, but—John, it’s almost done.” Then, as I came further to my senses, “Might we close up the window?”

"Yes, of course." His voice—oh, his voice; warm and dry and beautiful. I blinked hard against the impact of it; turned from him to look round at the dangers still inherent in the setting. We were not yet safe.

The only light in the room came from the lamp on the table; the only window stood beside it. We could be reached quickest that way. His expression grew more concerned as he watched me sidle round the edge of the room, keeping close to the wall, and fling the shutters closed, and bolt them. I bolted the door, too, on my return.

“Are you afraid of something? Here?” he asked. Calm eyes, steady tone, steel beneath. If we were at risk, he was ready. The feel of having him by me again in a fight—

“Well, yes.”

“Of what?”

“Of air-guns,” I said, suddenly too weary to be sardonic about it.

“My dear boy, what do you mean?” He had drawn closer, and catching at my hand, pulled me across the room, and down, to sit pressed close upon the settee. I shivered as he touched my sore knuckles. His lovely brows drew together. “Let me see."

It had been a long time since he had ordered me anything, and I sank into his decisive air, and reveled in it, as he pulled off my gloves without waiting for permission, and shook his head over the split and bleeding skin.

"I had a run-in with a rough on the way here," I said. "And that was the third attempt on my life to-day. We can't stay here."

He had risen to get his kit, and he paused, then, in the midst of pulling out ointment and tape, to beam at me unexpectedly.

"What?" I said, bemused, and captivated.

"You said, 'We,'" he said, returning to take my hand into his own warm one again, and dab off the blood with a sure touch. "If you and I go together, I can have no possible objection."

"Together," I agreed, no longer caring what he could hear in my tone. "Come away with me to the Continent—please. Only for a few days, till all is over. Mycroft will see to the trial, but we cannot stay here. I am sure we are being watched; I will have to leave you over the back wall, shortly, to escape detection."

"You can't sleep here?" He looked quite dismayed. That pleased me immoderately.

"Too dangerous for you. I'll rest at Mycroft's, and meet you at the station for the Continental—second first-class carriage from the front. But think, John—Europe. We'll go together—see the ocean on the crossing, the gardens, the music-halls, the mountains, if you like. You can have as much of me as you choose." And then I broke off and blushed; but he was blushing, too, and smiling.

"Marvelous," he said, gently. "I shall hold you to that. But remember I am quite uninformed. Who is trying to kill you? What will be over in a few days? Whose trial will Mycroft ensure?"

"Forgive me. I had told you everything in my mind—a hundred times, I—You recall our friend, Professor Moriarty?” I said.

“Yes.” His expression said he more than remembered. Of course he did.

“He should be in the dock in three days, and we will be safe."

"Holmes." A wealth of feeling in the word. His hand still held mine; it tightened, and his face shone with sudden delight. I found myself speechless before his happiness a long moment: no one else had ever looked at me quite so.

"My brother has directed the police, and his own men, into position, following the information I have given him. The organisation is compromised, the evidence in hand. He is finished—he cannot escape. But he knows what we are doing. He is growing desperate. He came to see me this morning." I described to John the events of the morning, and the dangers of the day, culminating in the plans my brother had helped me to lay as I sat with him over dinner, coming slowly back to myself from the fugue induced by a deep and dreamless sleep. He was right: I had needed the rest badly.

At the end I rose. "I have to go. You are more at risk every minute I stay here. Mycroft and I will tidy up my end of the affair this evening before bed. I needn't be present in England for the arrests; and I have enough funds to take us anywhere—I've come into enough, through the last few months' work, to make us comfortable forever. We can do anything we like. I'll meet you in the train—I'll take you to France. I'll show you everything."

He had risen with me, and was holding my arm, as though reluctant to let me out of his sight.

"Promise?" he said, a little hoarsely.

"Promise."

"Be careful tonight." And then, "All this time—I've had no idea where you were, how you were. It feels strange—to think of having you to myself again."

"I know,” I said. “There was a cottage in Montpelier, with a garden behind. It was raining, and the trees were budding around us, and the swallows were returning to the fields. You’d have liked it there.”

He only looked at me, for a moment. Then, “Never,” he said, very low, “never again, never so long away from me—you mustn’t, I can't.”

“Never,” I agreed, moved to a whisper, “John—”

How little we know of the future. By the time Mycroft, in a remarkable coachman's cape, had dropped him at Ludgate Station at half seven, to find me hidden away in our compartment in clerical disguise, I was very much enjoying myself. And then, to return across the Channel, not alone but with him at my side!—The wind lifting his hair off his brow as we looked out across the waves, the blue of his eyes reflecting the bright noon sky. I felt as though luck loved me. I bought him a penny bun at the quay in Calais where I had sat alone with the birds, thinking of him. I carried his bag onto the train. I told him stories, of the months past and the strangers I had met and the gendarmes’ horror at my behaviour, as we rode the night through to Brussels. I made him laugh, and held his arm, and stroked it sometimes, and he let me do it. We fell asleep together on the seat, breathing as one in the darkness.

The dawn woke us—to Belgium and freedom. Two days till Moriarty was in court, and we had nothing to do but stay together, out of the way of harm. I suppose we knew each other as well as two Englishmen generally can, by that point; yet I found all at once had no idea how to behave. He loved me. He had said so. Now what was I to do with him?

As it happened, John was perfectly capable of making clear to me what we were to do; and though he looked a little shy at first, within hours of our establishment in a quiet room overlooking the Senne, he turned to me quite suddenly from the little chest of drawers wherein he had been laying our clothes and said, “You don’t have to be afraid of me, you know.”

I was lying on the bed, smoking. I said to my stockinged feet, "I'm not afraid of you."

"No, but—Listen, Holmes, this is what we've been wanting. You know who I am; I am not changed. Whatever you wished for while you were gone, it's yours."

"John—" I sat up, searching for words, but he held up his hand.

"No, I know. Not—everything, not until he is in irons and we are safe from his knowledge. But—only take me walking, Holmes, and let's see the city. Tell me about the people we pass. Bring me home, and talk to me, and let me read to you, and be with you." He spoke lightly, but his expression was hungry. "Just let me be with you."

I swallowed; nodded my assent.

Two days of calm followed, of sunlight, and street fare, and music in the evenings. Two days of his smiles across the breakfast table, his unmistakable step at my side, his hand on my arm, his warm laughter beside the fire in the homely dark. Two days of looking, looking, looking at him, knowing that he knew; watching him blink and fidget and brighten when he caught me looking. Thinking of how he had sounded when he'd said he loved me.

On the third evening, the telegram came: the whole of Moriarty’s company, of any significance, was in custody. But Moriarty had escaped.

After all I had done to be sure of him, and all that I knew of him, I could not let him go.

"You have to go home," I said, in the courtyard, over dinner. I had thought he would take it more calmly if we were in public.

"I will not." His answer was perfectly level. "Not without you."

"He's coming here."

"And he'll find two of us to deal with if he does."

"He's desperate. His work is in shambles, his name ruined, his men in custody, his livelihood forfeit. He cannot go home to England. If you go back, you will be safe from him." I was having trouble keeping my voice down.

"And so would you, and yet you insist upon staying here."

"I cannot let him loose on Europe, to begin again! Heaven help whatever nation he chose for refuge. John—Watson. You would not wish him on anyone. If I could end his career I would consider mine complete. I could retire in the country, to my chemicals and my philosophy."

Unexpectedly, he laughed at that. His laughter is a sound so perfect, I take it like an arrow to the breast. I blinked.

He shook his head at me. "You would not retire. You'd last three months, and then some enduring injustice or some badly-hidden secret in the neighborhood would catch your eye, and draw you back into the fray again. You forget that I know you. I know that you cannot leave a man like Moriarty alone, to do what he does to the innocent. But there are always men like him. It will never end. No,” as I started to speak, “listen to me. I understand, you have to do this, now. You have to meet him. But Holmes, you know me, too. You know I can't leave you alone in it. It is impossible. Don't ask it of me."

He had won. I knew it. I pleaded with him anyway for twenty minutes more, making every appeal I could conceive of; but there was no hesitation in his steady gaze. I never could dim the light of his certainty.

"Very well," I said, in the end, "you stay. But we leave here tonight. Perhaps my brother's men can find him before he finds us."

I saw satisfaction settle over him at my surrender. He nodded, and stood. "Come on, then," he said, "let's go upstairs. I have some things to say to you."

My heart gave a sudden, hard leap in my chest, but I followed him, schooling my breath. Where did all this leave us? What did he mean to do?

When I had followed him into our rooms, and closed the door behind us, he rounded on me; studied me soberly. Coming near, he lifted my hat from my head, proprietary, and slid my coat from my shoulders; lay them over a chair. He caught up my hand; ran his thumb lightly along mine, and smiled a little when I shivered.

"Sit down," he said, pulling me on toward the fire. Obedient, I sat down on the settee. He remained standing before me.

"My dear man," he said. "It cannot have escaped your attention that the conditions in which I was promised a kiss have failed to materialise."

The firelight shone a radiance round about him as he stood there, with such an expression in his eyes. He went on, softly, "But we are left to settle what is between us, anyway. The fact remains that he can't harm us any more, not lawfully, not in England; not a man in the court would believe his word against ours, now, thanks to you."

"John—" I said, but he held up an admonishing finger.

"I believe that brings us to the present. We stand under imminent threat to our lives, outside British jurisdiction, with nothing to do but await danger. As we have done many times before. As I have longed to do again, as many times as you’ll have me. So, Holmes, I'd like to propose what you will not. Let us return to where we left off. You have just called me by my name, and in such a tone that I really must leave the room, or else—"

My brave, my beautiful John looked at me without the slightest shame, or any hint of darkness beyond a little wry twist to his mouth, which said he knew exactly what he was about, and would do it anyway. I looked back. I could dare no less, not in the face of that uncowable joy. I said, again, slower, "John," and then I summoned up all my courage and held out my hands. He came to me.

Had I felt less, loved him less, I might have been able to speak, to praise him as he should have been praised, and try to please him. All I could do was cling to him. At first he handled me softly, but then, as I met his kisses with my own, he began to hold hard to me, too; and all at once as I kissed his cheek I tasted tears there. I pulled back in surprise, and, "Sorry," he murmured, "I'm sorry," but I shook my head.

Wordless, I bent again to draw kisses across his wet lashes, his tight-drawn brows, his lovely open mouth, until he trembled. I had never seen him so overcome. I pulled him near, and he laid his head down on my heart and wept. Astounded, I held him, feeling his breath against my neck, his life under my hands. He had waited a long time for me: I suppose the tears had been waiting too. I felt very strange, but very glad, that he would let me see. 

It was nearly midnight before we came into the station at Strasburg for Geneva. The stars poured a blaze of light across the Continental sky; we boarded the train under their silent glory. I took his bag, and placed it beside mine in the rack; laid our hats side by side on the empty seat opposite ours. There was no one else in the carriage. He sat down beside me—close beside me. As soon as the train began to move, he took my hand in his, and, after a little while, dropped his head onto my shoulder, while the moon rose over the far horizon.

We were given a week of peace. We started out from Geneva, and took in the great Rhone Valley on foot, headed toward the pass; stopping in a different village every evening, when the twilight chill fell early in the shadow of the mountains, while the clouds overhead still held last light. We walked barefoot in frigid glacial streams, stockings and shoes held in our hands, like schoolboys. We bought fresh bread and cheese and blueberry wine to eat in fragrant, greening fields of new grass and early wheat, under the broad blue heavens; every day higher amid the peaks, nearer the sky. We slept anywhere; in farmhouse beds with down pillows and old quilts, curled about each other's heat; in the back of a farmer’s cart, our hats over our eyes, the May sun bathing us. At night, he told me things in whispers that I could barely understand. I could not find words, but he did not seem to begrudge me the quiet in which I received him.

Moriarty found us. John has written about it, since; but he has made it all different from what it was. We had set out together from the hostel to see the Reichenbach cataract, arm in arm, but he'd began to lag as the path up toward the falls grew steeper. When a messenger came, begging for John to return to the last night's quarters and help a dying lodger, I was glad for his sake that he should turn back; he needed a little rest. I was glad for the patient, too, to have so steady a hand to steer them toward Death's farther shore. I am not the infallible creature of my John’s fairy tales. I did not expect danger just then. I did not meant to get him out of the way; he would have wanted that least of anything. He would have wished to be there when Moriarty found me. "Good-bye," he called to me, as he started down the trail; "don't start any trouble without me."

"Hurry, then," I said, and he laughed. I watched him out of sight, and then turned again into the wind, to begin the last long ascent toward the Falls.

The Professor did not, as in John’s dramatic recounting, approach me with a challenge when he found me, nor did he leave me time to write a suitably dignified note for John (I wish he had), to find and memorialise as my final speech for the Strand's grieving readers. In fact, I was standing over the precipice, looking through the mist to the shining ranges beyond, when several shots rang out hard at hand. I turned to find Moriarty coming at me, pistol raised. I suppose it was his enormous anger that made him fire before he was quite sure of his aim, or he could have had me; but I believe he was half out of his mind with fury and thwarted pride. I sighted him, and returned fire.

The first bullet hit him in the shoulder, the second in his arm. He gave a cry, dropped his sidearm and stumbled, and I rushed him, meaning to fling him back upon the ground and secure him. He struggled my grasp a long moment. Desperation made him strong. Then, bleeding and gasping, he wrenched himself from my grasp, unbalanced and went over.

I heard his cry suddenly silenced below. In the stillness that followed the roar of the Fall rose once more undisturbed. For long moments I stood panting and stunned on the very edge of the abyss, while the mist of the falls rose cold around me. He was gone. It was finished: we were free of him.

My wits returning to me, I looked about me sharply for any witness, or accomplice, and saw (my heart began to beat faster) a man standing farther up the mountain, peering down into the mist.

He held a revolver in his hand. His stance was military, his attitude intent. He could not have seen me, or he would have brought the rifle to bear upon my future at once; therefore he had heard Moriarty scream, and was now trying, through the spray of the fall, to see whether there was any survivor of our meeting, or whether I was gone. Was this only a stranger hired by the Professor for a guide or a precaution? Or was he a member of the organisation whom I had overlooked? I could not recognize him through the mist and the distance, but I supposed if I had known his face, he would be in irons, and not standing there.

I had to hide myself. I crawled my way across the damp earth to the face of the cliff, out of his line of sight; and then I clambered up a little way, with trembling legs and an ache in my fingers that did not bode well for me, till I found a ledge I could rest on, and wait, and think.

If he had been only a hired man, a bodyguard, a rough, he ought to have left as soon as the Professor fell. His work was done, his employer’s life over. But if he was one of them—if he was waiting for me—

All at once a great boulder went crashing down the side of the cliff, barely missing me where I lay; and another, and another. I lay down upon the ledge, to make myself the smallest possible mark; and knew for a certainty that I had failed. This was not a hire. He was not waiting to see if his employer had died; he was trying to be sure that I was killed. He had a loyalty that extended beyond the Professor’s death to mine; there was at least one man of the Professor's whom I had missed entirely, very possibly more; and neither John nor I was safe at all so long as I was alive and they were free.

At last the fall of stones stopped. I lay scarcely daring to breathe, till I heard his footsteps going away slowly, and then all was still.

I could return to the hotel, to John; and we could start home—unknowing who our enemy was; what he looked like; what resources he had at his command. It would all begin again, the ceaseless attacks, the certainty that the risk of death would follow us until I had found them all; but this time John would not let me out of his sight, and so he would be their target, too. It could take months to find our new enemy. I might not find him before he found his opportunity.

But right now—and I sat up at last with this thought, and breathed deeply of the cold, wet air, considering—now, whoever he was, he thought me dead. He supposed I had either fallen over with the Professor, or been killed by his stones, if I had been lying there in the path—so would I have been, had I not found my escape in time. The face of the cliff appeared sheer from a distance; he would not imagine I could have gotten up it. He would return to England satisfied that I was gone. He would go on about his business; and sooner or later he would make some misstep, and expose himself—if I could get word to Mycroft to be ready.

If I could remain out of sight.

All at once it was quite clear what I had to do. I clambered back down to the path, and caught up my staff and my pack, with all my things, put up in preparation for our evening’s stay in the next town over—my money, papers, stockings and smalls, three forged passports, and a blanket roll. There was flatbread and sausage in the side pocket, wrapped in wax paper, and I could fill my flask in the river. It would do.

In the eyes of Moriarty’s company, whatever was left of it, I had died. So long as I stayed dead, we were safe. I could walk through the night. There was a telegraph office in Berne, from which I might wire John and Mycroft, and a bank in Turin with a gold exchange, and captain in Florence who would ship me anywhere at mention of my brother’s name.

I started down the path into the gathering twilight, pulling the straps of my pack tight across my chest. I had planned to meet John by the Falls. We’d have walked to the next village over, and at our lodgings I’d have asked him to read to me a while beside the fire. When I'd gotten up the courage, I’d have laid my head in his lap, to tempt him into playing with my hair; and at last, sufficiently distracted, he’d have set the book aside and bent to kiss me.

How could I have expected such peace to last? To think I had won, in a world like ours? I ought to have been more up on my guard. Now I was already unused to being alone; but worse was the thought that I was leaving him alone again, too, without any warning. Surely he would guess some part of what had happened, at least. He was used to my periodic disappearances. He would wait alone by the fire tonight for a word from me, trusting me to let him know what to do next.

But as I went on I began to have doubts. How could he imagine I would have reason to disappear into the wild without a word? How much more likely that he should walk the trail to the Falls expecting to meet me, and finding me nowhere, think he had failed me utterly? That I had been kidnapped—attacked—wounded—without him there to help me? I could imagine no greater hurt to him.

Moriarty’s last cry still resounded in my ears. And as I walked, the memory began to mingle with the imagined echo of John's voice, as though I heard him calling my name amid the thunder of the Falls, shout after shout, growing hoarse at last and fading. I had to stop now and again and put a hand to my eyes, and breathe a little, before I could walk on.

Chapter Text

I reached Berne on the second morning as the dawn broke exultant over the distant peaks. The city was spread out below me, sprawling and mortal. It took me some minutes approaching with my eye on it to be certain it was real—I had been alone with my thoughts too long already. In town at last, speaking only French and keeping my voice low, I bought a cheese for my breakfast; ate it sitting on a sunny bench outside the telegraph office while I waited for it to open. I had been traveling by night, and sleeping by day, a precaution against discovery. It was good to sit in the daylight amid humanity again. When the proprietor arrived at quarter to nine, yawning, I accosted him eagerly—perhaps rudely—asserting my need to send a message at once. I had been thinking about John, waking somewhere between the mountains and England (if he had slept at all), still unknowing where I was.

I wired Mycroft first, and then sent on three messages for John; one to the hostel in the mountains, hoping he had not yet left it; one to the hotel in Brussels where we had stayed together; and one to his rooms in London. I prayed Heaven he would not need the last. I shrank from the thought of him recrossing the Channel alone and afraid for me. Each said, SUDDEN ATTACK OF FEVER NECESSITATED SCOTT’S IMMEDIATE REMOVAL STOP APPLY TO HIS BROTHER FOR NEWS STOP I AM SORRY STOP.

Mycroft's read, AM WELL IN SPITE OF APPEARANCES STOP FURTHER DETAILS FORTHCOMING VIA USUAL CHANNELS STOP. I hoped my brother had not been frightened. I forgot sometimes that I was really all he had in the world, but being alone myself just then, I felt it suddenly and keenly.

During the long nights walking, I had come to a decision: I would go to Montpelier. The lady of the house I’d stayed in had liked me well enough; the persona I had adopted there was studious and calm, designed to appeal to her quiet nature, and it was a personality I could maintain for some time with a little self-control. I only had to forbear from shouting out my discoveries, or shooting the walls, however my feelings moved me. The laboratories and libraries would provide me with work enough to occupy my mind until we knew something more.

I arrived just as the trees around the university grounds were coming into bloom. It would have been an ideal retreat to come to, had John been with me; but I had not even had a telegram from him the whole of my time in Turin, nor Florence, though Mycroft had told him where I was. The silence between us was worse than the miles. I had not found the courage to wire him again; but on the fourth night from my arrival I sat down at last to write him a letter.

It took me three cigarettes and a considerable amount of self-scolding to begin: every word I could offer him seemed a poor, weak thing. "Forgive me"—for leaving him without a word? How could I ask it? "Believe me"—that there had been no better choice? I had found none, but that scarcely justified me. "Come to me"? It was all I wanted, but clearly he could not, or the entire point of my flight was made moot. In the end I only told him the facts as they had happened, and tried to write out a little of my useless regrets. "I would very much like to hear from you," I added at the last, "at least to know that you are all right, and will take particular care of yourself until I can see you. I will promise to be as careful as I can if you will do the same.”

I signed the letter, “William Scott.” I did not write that I loved him. I felt I did not deserve to.

But his answer, when it came, began, "My dearest."

* * *

My dearest William,

I thought you were dead for five days. I nearly broke my heart over it. Please understand me—I am extraordinarily glad that you are safe away, that you saw your chance and took it. I only wish you would have warned me.

As always, I remain your own

John

John,

I can scarcely find words. I owe you a thousand apologies. I’d thought you might break my heart, but never I yours. I had no idea of leaving you mourning for me.

Tell me you are well and home—that you have had no trouble since you arrived. If you are safe, then one thing at least has gone right.

William

My William,

I am safe, and have had no trouble. I’d like to give someone trouble. It rankles me that there is nothing I can do for you.

You thought I would break your heart? I would never.

John

John,

You might speak to my brother. He holds the information I had gathered on the organisation as it stood, including the members we deemed unimportant, wherein you could search out those hangers-on and minor associates remaining at large in London. Our man must be somewhere among them. I would prefer you stay well out of it, but if you feel it is necessary to your peace of mind, my brother can bring you into the case.

I didn’t anticipate you breaking my heart deliberately. I only thought—I am a difficult man to live with. I’d imagined it would be exponentially more difficult to live with me now that you feel you love me. There are myriads more ways I may misunderstand you, and wrong you. And I have no more to offer you now than I had before. I already loved you, though I've been a very poor hand at showing it.

Now that I am far away I can’t do anything for you. And I have hurt you badly.

William

Sweet William,

You don’t understand what it is like to love you—which, by the by, I have also done for years already; it isn’t a feeling but a fact—nor do you comprehend what a miracle you are to me. You are too secretive, and damnably unwilling to care for yourself as you should, but that will never make me tire of loving you.

And you are much better at tending to me than you know. In fact no one has ever taken such care over me as you have. I have only ever found you generous of soul.

As to the idea that you can do nothing for me when you are gone: You are with me still. You are always with me. I write you out of my head onto the paper, because you are always in my head. I fill my pipe and think about you. I hear a boy singing in the street and think about you.

John

My John,

You are always with me, too.

There is a stoat’s burrow in the riverbank, out beyond the university. He has made himself quite a small hole, close to the waterline. Periodically he emerges, slips into the river and busies himself therein with stoaty past-times. He does not seem to mind me. I am very quiet; I sit still atop a log, with my hat in my hands, and breathe softly. The gnats and dragonflies hover over the water, but do not bother me. I have gone there daily since I discovered the place. I often do a little rambling early in the morning while the town is still abed.

I used to sleep longer. I wake up, now, feeling as though there is something to do, and then I remember I can do nothing until we know who it is that followed me to the Fall. Who I overlooked. So I make myself a cup of cocoa (I keep a tin of the powder and a kettle of water by the fire) and I walk down to the river. There are always a few birds awake, even before dawn. I never go into the laboratory until the clock strikes eight. I am trying to avoid notice. A mad chemist working his experiments in the dark of the morning might get talked about.

This is the longest I have ever had to appear ordinary.

William

My dear William,

I would like to see the stoat, and the river, and the mad chemist himself most of all.

As to the man you saw at the Falls, we think there are five likely possibilities, given your description of him. Your brother assures me his sources are surveilling them all thoroughly. Of course it is very important that our man, whoever he may be, does not notice he is being sought. But the necessary artfulness of caution is infuriating. Terrible as the work of a battlefield is, it is at least straightforward. One sees what must be done, and one does it. How did you ever find the patience for cases like this?

I do not see how you could possibly appear ordinary for one minute.

John

Dearest John,

If you really must have something to do immediately, there is something. Forgive me for this. You might write an account of my death. It would counter the accusations the Professor’s brother has publicized regarding me. And it would further assure my security, as well as yours. I believe you could make it quite convincing. You may of course dramatise the facts as you choose; you know what the public wants to hear.

William

William,

I've written it. Will send you on a copy when it's printed. You come off quite the hero in my version, if a little colder-hearted than is strictly fair. That's my feelings over the experience coming through, I expect; I can't write it any better than that, and I've worked over it a good deal. Wept over it, too.

I suppose leaving was no joy for you, either.

John

My dear John,

It was not. It is not. I ought to be there with you. You ought to be able to see for yourself that I am as incorrigibly alive as before, and very much with you in spirit at all times, if not in truth. Tell me you have help of some kind—that you aren't alone. It isn’t good for you.

William

My heart,

I am not alone. I met up with Stamford only last week; wrote him, and said I owed him a drink. He introduced us, after all. I suppose I feel a sort of intimacy with you in his company by proxy. I meet the ghost of you about the city everywhere, anyway, there are so many places we have been together. It used to be a torment to me, when I left you for Mary; but now it is a help.

I have been back to our rooms, at Mrs. Hudson's urging—she's fed me more than one Sunday dinner. And I have been with your brother, too. Supposedly we are plotting, but I think he's mostly only humouring me; there's so little of substance I can contribute. He makes me stay to tea anyway, and indulges me in conversation about you.

I didn't realise he knew what was between us, but he went and thanked me for it—for making you happy. I was thunderstruck, which amused him. You are terribly lucky in him. I do wish Harry could have met you, though I can't imagine what he'd make of you, of us.

I am glad to be your

John

Dearest boy,

You mentioned Mary. Have you spoken to her? Do you miss her still?

Please pass Mrs. Hudson and my brother my gratitude for feeding you, and taking up the duty of your care which I am egregiously neglecting.

William

Dear William,

I do miss Mary. We've exchanged notes, but I've yet to make another visit to the house. But I don't miss her in the way I think you mean. She's been a true friend to me. I hope she’s happy now. I couldn't give her that. I have sometimes believed I could make you happy, as you do me. Those weeks in Switzerland were the most wonderful of my life. Forgive me the sentimentality, but you are very far away, and sentiment is a comfort.

John

John,

You ought to see her, to learn how she is, if it would ease your heart. Let her know you wished to see her well. She cared for you, too, and I owe her a debt of gratitude for that.

As to the sentimentality, I feel quite the same, though I haven't your gift for expression.

Your William

My William,

I went to visit her. As it happens, she is teaching now in the same set of tenements where I do my Saturday calls. She has taken up with a group dedicated to spreading literacy among the working poor. She divides her time between a makeshift classroom and a series of society functions, seeking patrons. She has even written pamphlets for distribution amongst the over-rich, to direct their troubled consciences toward her cause. I think she may do more good in the slums than I ever have been capable of; my practice can only patch up the damage done in abysmal conditions, while her work offers a way out of danger.

She has found a friend, too, among her new group—the sort of friend you and I are, now, I mean. I am glad. It is a relief to hear she is loved as she ought to be.

John

My dear John,

That is all good news. I am especially glad to hear it satisfies you. I had wondered whether you were still as sorry as you were that you had lost her.

I have a very great deal to tell you about my current reading and my experiments, and some theories I am developing regarding agriculture, most notably the cultivation of the bee-hive. It would not do to write my thoughts out now—I want to see your face as I tell you. Your eyes are a particular joy of mine. That was (truthfully) a good part of my motivation in bringing you into the cases, to begin with: to watch your eyes’ changing expression as you discovered the truth, and delighted in it.

Then, of course, I found I needed you; in fact I could not do without you. I am only half myself when you are not here.

William

Dearest William,

We have discovered him. Colonel Sebastian Moran is the man; your brother will have sent on his photograph, to get your confirmation as to his height and build, but we are quite sure of it. Now all we have to do is wait for him to be a little, a very little uncautious; enough to give us reason to set the Yard on him, and get a warrant to his house. Then we’ll have him. You are nearly there, my boy—nearly home. You will not have to do without me an hour longer than Moran's good behaviour holds.

Nothing is right without you here, either.

John

HAVE RECEIVED WORD OF THE MORAN MURDER STOP AM WIRING YOU FROM THE HARBOUR STOP WILL BE IN LONDON IN THE MORNING STOP THE GAME IS AFOOT STOP

* * *

On my arrival, I did follow John into his office in disguise, as he wrote later; and he did collapse into his chair in shock when I revealed myself, though I should hardly call it a swoon. We both clung to each other, and I will be forgiven, I think, for not recording what we said; but I shall never forget the look on his face.

I paid a distant cousin to purchase his practice, so I could bring him home at once. I had money enough, and no reason to use it but for him. To see him at Baker Street once more was all I needed.

Whatever the public may have heard in the years since, he has not left me. And I shall not leave him again. I had not imagined I could be known as he knows me, and then find that he wants all I am. It is his—my soul—so long as he has need of it.

Ten years after the events described above, I brought him there, to Montpelier, to the house by the lavender fields. I paid the lady of the house to take a week's vacation, and let us have it to ourselves: such is the privilege of resources. I gave him the key to the place as we approached, a calculated move. He propped his cane against the wall in order to unlock the bolt. I waited until he had the door open, and then swept him up in my arms. He would have knocked me over the head with the cane had he retained it—his reflexes remain deadly quick—but as it was he could only sputter in outrage as I strode over the threshold, and deposited him within.

"What was that?" he demanded. My laugh made him more suspicious: he stared at me, and then suddenly looked down at the little gold ring on his own smallest finger (placed there by me privately some years before). When he looked up again his expression had changed entirely; his eyes shone bright and very blue.

"Is this a honeymoon?" he asked, and at my abashment he began to smile. "It is!"

"Does that please you?" I managed, and the smile grew.

"Immensely," he said, "Sherlock, you improbable Romeo. Why here?"

I couldn't find words. I shrugged, and he let me be; turned to examine the place. But that night, after I had walked him down to the river (the stoat's burrow was gone, but the last sunlight hung golden in the haze over the water), and played for him, and taken him to bed, he said suddenly into the stillness, "Is it because you missed me here?"

I had wrapped myself close about him. I said into his shoulder, "Yes," and then, finding it easier to speak in the dark, "I missed you the more because you were so near me here. Nearer even than you had been at Baker Street. I wanted to make the memory true."

He made no answer, but I felt him sigh. We lay quiet, listening to the birds in the eaves, and the wind in the trees beyond.