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In my dreams of this city I am always lost.
~~ Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
He dreamed of London, but he lived in Barcelona. It was as good a city as any other, he supposed. His Spanish was impeccable. His accent, he was told, was Castilian. He spent little time in his apartment near la Catedral Santa Maria del Mar and even less sampling the restaurants and nightlife in El Borne. His name was Simon Hill. Those who needed to disappear were told to choose a name with their former initials. Easier to remember.
After his death and the purgatory of taking apart Moriarty’s spider-web one strand at a time from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, he chose to be resurrected in another identity and in Barcelona. He picked the city almost at random. It was far enough off the beaten path that he was safe from random recognition on the street, large enough to maintain his anonymity, and located close enough to serve as a home base in between his frequent undercover assignments throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Russia. He had always admired Gaudí’s work. Also, it wasn’t London. John was in London with his new wife.
Mycroft had not understood his refusal to return to London. He had made it safe for himself and his little group of friends, hadn’t he?
Sherlock had shrugged; had said, without meeting his brother’s eyes, “They’ve all buried me once. They’ve gotten on with their lives. I won’t ask them to do it a second time.” There hadn’t been much that Mycroft could say to that, since he knew precisely the risk level of the assignments he was giving his brother. Mycroft had always hoped his brother would return to MI6, would give up both his drug use and his amateur detective adventures. Now he had, so he wasn’t inclined to dig too deeply into Sherlock’s motives.
The reason Sherlock gave was true enough, but not the whole truth. He couldn’t return to a London in which John Watson had a wife. He couldn’t return to a London in which he was simply John Watson’s friend. He couldn’t return to a London in which he was an afterthought, an occasional distraction from married life. Better a clean break.
So Simon Hill lived in Barcelona and dreamed of London. He had known every street and alley and byway in the city; in the dreams his streets ended in walls or inexplicable chasms that reached as far as he could see. He would walk, trapped night after night, in alleys like mazes. Other nights he would walk familiar streets that connected to other familiar streets, but never in the right order, never leading anywhere. On those nights, he could always see St. Paul’s outline, light grey stone against the darker grey of a moonlit sky, clouds scudding by in a cold wind, but he could never reach it. He was always alone. No traffic, no people. He tried, night after night, to reach Baker Street. He never found it. He was lost.
~~~~~
He dreamed of London, but he lived in Istanbul. He became a Middle East expert, learned Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish, Pashto. He could also get by in several other tribal languages. Stephen Hancock ran a stable of field agents from Sudan to Kyrgyzstan. He insisted on doing field work as well, although Mycroft tut-tutted about risk and increasing age. He was, as always, easily bored. He valued his life less than his brother seemed to do. He had no real ties. After their parents passed away, he had no one anymore but Mycroft to mourn him if he died. His hair was still, mostly, dark as the sweet Turkish coffee he had come to relish. He was as slim as ever. Mycroft, balding and increasingly portly, tried not to let his resentment show. They seldom saw each other, but they actually grew to enjoy each other’s company over the years on those rare occasions when they did meet. They shared a history, a profession, and many secrets.
He had needed to be closer to his theatre of operations, and he had no ties in Barcelona. He chose Istanbul for its culture and its position as a gateway to the areas he was likely to have to…visit. It was a lively, fascinating city, and it kept him amused between assignments. He made no friends, but he developed a circle of acquaintances.
He especially enjoyed playing chess with Tarkun Sevim. Sevim was an ancient pirate of a man who had obviously gained wealth by less than legal means but now ran a more-or-less legal stall selling spices and oils in the Beşiktaş district at the Saturday market. Every Saturday that he was in the country he would sit in the stall, drinking coffee, beating Sevim in between customers, taking in the sights and smells of the market, and smoking strong cigarettes. He got the feeling he reminded Sevim somehow of his former life, and that he amused the old man, but he never probed. Neither did Sevim.
So Stephen Hancock lived in Istanbul and dreamed of London. The dreams changed when he moved to Istanbul. Now it was always day, rainy, dim, overcast day in dream-London. The streets were full of people, but they didn’t seem to see him. There were no street signs, and his familiar landmarks were jumbled. Night after night, he tried to get to Baker Street. He tried to ask directions from the people on the streets, but no-one heard him. After he gave up hope, the dreams became rather pleasant. The grey, rain-slicked streets were a relief from the relentless sun of Istanbul or Faisalabad or Medina or any of the cities in which he regularly found himself. He strolled past the British Museum once and tried to get in, but all doors seemed closed to him. He saw Molly outside St. Bart’s one day. She was dressed in her usual assortment of odd-lot pieces, her hair a mess, her face lovely. When the cry of the muezzin woke him the next morning, he found tears on his face. He tried not to think of them, had trained himself not to think of John and Greg and Hudders and Molly. He crawled out of bed, stood naked in front of the open window, and felt the heat wash over him. He no longer existed in London. Little of him existed here. He was lost.
~~~~~
He dreamed of London, but he lived in Cliff End. He realized when he took a bullet in the shoulder in Isfahan that pushing seventy was a bit old for undercover shenanigans. Mycroft, still the British Government well into his seventies, showed no signs of retiring, but Sherlock had had enough. He needed a changed of identity, a change of location, a change of interests. So Scott Howell bought a remote cottage in a tiny village near the cliffs on the Sussex Downs. He had missed England’s green and pleasant land. Sentiment. Perhaps, when one was close to seventy, one was allowed a modicum of sentiment.
“Why not go back to London?”
He shrugged. He had never been back to London, not in over thirty years. He would never go back to London.
“Peace and quiet appeal to me,” he said.
Mycroft quirked an amused eyebrow. “Since when, precisely?”
“Since I was shot for the fourth time.”
“Fifth,” corrected Mycroft, ever accurate. Sherlock just grunted. He had forgotten about Artashat. That one was only a graze.
“Why bees?”
“Why not? I’m tired of dealing with human beings. It’s so fatiguing. I’m done.”
To Mycroft’s surprise, retirement apparently suited his brother. Scott Howell settled seamlessly into the life of tiny Cliff End. He made no friends, but within a few months he had a comfortable circle of acquaintances in the surrounding area. He was known as the beekeeper who kept himself to himself, but that was respected on the Downs. He provided excellent honey to locals and a few pubs and inns in the area, played the occasional game of chess with a local schoolmaster, had a regular seat and a usual drink (Connemara single malt) at the White Hart of a Friday evening. He played his violin at all hours in his isolated cottage, did chemical experiments on the kitchen table where he rarely ate, tended his bees, wrote monographs under yet another name, and was more or less content.
So Scott Howell lived in Sussex and dreamed of London. The dreams changed again when he returned to England. It was always day, and it seemed to always be summer. It never rained, and his Belstaff was too hot. He tried to take it off in the dreams, but he could never manage it. It weighed down on him, stifling, as he walked the pavements. He saw them all now. He looked forward to going to sleep, in spite of the Belstaff, because he could almost count on seeing one of them. He didn’t try to speak to them, for that never worked. For a long time he had tried to speak to them, but he would just wake sweating and tangled in sheets that felt like a shroud.
If he didn’t try to make them see him or hear him, he could enjoy their faces. He could find Baker Street now, and that is where he went most often. He would sit in Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen and watch her bake biscuits or wash dishes. Once he stood at the window of Speedy’s, his hands pressed against the glass, and watched John and Mycroft drinking tea together with a thick file on the table between them. He visited Molly in the morgue at Barts. Lestrade he saw most often at crime scenes. He woke irritated from those because he could see what the fools on the force were missing, the score or more of clues they were too dense to see, but he knew it was useless to try to speak.
Most often he saw John, the John of thirty years ago. He had asked Mycroft to stop giving him updates sometime during his Istanbul days, so his John was in the past, before Mary, before Ann. Ann was the second wife. He dreamed of John, running through the London alleyways, climbing the stairs, irritated and laden with Tesco bags, laughing at the foot of the stairs after their first adventure. Most often, he dreamed of John sitting in his chair in the Baker Street flat. He would sit in the chair opposite and look at him, reading, drinking tea, scowling at something in the papers. Dear John.
Then Charles Fry died. Charlie taught mathematics at the local school and was the closest thing he had to a friend in Cliff End. Natural causes, they said. Absurd. Charlie was barely sixty, and he had a taste for married women. He had, almost, tried to stay out of it. News travels surprisingly fast in a small village, and the postman brought the news with his morning mail. He couldn't resist. He found himself at Charlie’s cottage before the local police left. Ken Albright was the Chief Constable for the area encompassing several small villages. Decent enough. Ken let him in, probably because he was more or less a friend of Charlie’s. He looked at the tea things, took a quick sniff of the half-filled cup, took in a smudge on the windowsill while the policeman looked on, bemused but silent. He looked out at the oak tree in the garden. Went to the kitchen, opened the blue tin, stuck a long, white finger into the tea and stirred the leaves around. Took a pinch of the tea and lifted it to his nose.
“Murder,” he said.
“What? Doc said probably heart.”
“Don’t be stupid, Ken.”
“Now look here…,”
“No, you look. Really look.” He pointed to the window. “Someone came in the window, doctored the tea in the tin, and left. Viscum album. Mistletoe.”
“Mistletoe? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I am not kidding,” he said, twisting the word.
“But how did you…,” said Ken.
“Oh, do listen,” he said, “you’re just wasting time. Viscum album. All the Santalaceae family are highly toxic to humans. He’s probably been drinking this tea for a week or more. It would take that long for the toxins from the tea to build up in his system.”
He pointed to the oak tree in the front of the cottage, thickly laden with mistletoe. He held out the tin to Ken and shook it impatiently. The tiny, curled leaved danced in their tin. Some were greener and shaped differently from the others. “Charlie’s head was always in the clouds; he would have just spooned up the tea into the pot as usual, never noticed that it was half poison. Most likely Joseph Micklewhite. He teaches biology, and he and Maggie were friends of Charlie’s. Charlie had a long-term liaison with Maggie. Joe is stupid, but apparently he finally figured it out.”
“Bloody hell,” said Ken.
He knew that Ken might now come to him for advice. He would enjoy it, he admitted to himself. It would make a change from chemicals and bees. He thought it was safe, now. London and Sherlock Holmes were both far away.
~~~~~
Nightmare. The streets were dark this time. They were never dark. Back to the dark. John was running ahead of him, down Gloucestershire Street. In danger somehow. He knew it, but not why. He had to catch him, warn him. John ducked down an alleyway. He rounded the corner. No John, no street sign, surrounded by blank, brick walls. “John,” he cried, gasping, leaning against one of the damp, dark, brick walls. Of course John couldn’t hear him. Never heard him. He was lost.
“Sherlock!” He heard his name. John needed him. Was calling him now.
“Sherlock!” He woke, disoriented and panting. Daylight blazed through his bedroom window.
“Sherlock!” Someone was pounding on the door. No-one here knew that name.
“Sherlock! Open this door or so help me God I will break it down.” More pounding.
The voice was…. John. Here. He dragged the sheet around him and ran for the door, almost tripping on the trailing edges, trailing dreams.
He jerked the door open, still blinking at the daylight, shards of dark dream-John in his eyes.
“You found me,” he said.
“Of course I bloody did.” The man planted on the flagstone path looked like a combination of dream-John and a bulldog, with a more-than-slight suggestion of Winston Churchill. The hair was much the same, just more silver now than ash, the bulldog-determination was the same, the torso just a bit thicker, the face a bit more Winston, a suggestion of sagging flesh at the jaw, the face more deeply lined. Angry. Winston before the “never surrender” speech, then. The cane was back, still lifted from pounding on his door.
The cane came down, gestured at his makeshift toga, then planted itself firmly on the walk-way.
“Some things haven’t changed,” John said, eyeing the sheet. His eyes were fierce, his jaw pugnacious.
“John,” said Sherlock. “How…”
“Aren’t you going to invite me in, you tosser? You can put your trousers on, I’ll make tea, and you can explain why you tried to make me think you were dead for thirty years. Over thirty years. Thirty sodding years, you wanker.”
“John,” said Sherlock.
The fierce expression suddenly left John’s face. He smiled. The thirty years dropped from him. “For someone who would never, ever shut up, you seem at something of a loss for words.”
“I…,” said Sherlock. Suddenly he enveloped John with half the sheet and two strong arms.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” Sherlock said into John's hair.
“More fool you, then,” said John, holding him for a long moment. Then he pushed Sherlock away. “Unless you want anyone who happens to pass by on the road to think you’re more of a lunatic than they undoubtedly do already, we’d best go inside. Besides, my leg hurts. Need to sit.”
So they went inside. Sherlock dressed, John made tea.
“How did you find me?”
“Long story. Short version is that I hounded Mycroft every few years. I was never quite satisfied with his story about your death. I probed over scotch, over tea, over beer once or twice. He hated beer, but I sort of enjoyed watching him try to drink it without making faces. After several years I noticed that he never actually said that you had died. Never used the word dead. He always said that he was sorry you were gone. Gone. Strange euphemism for someone as precise as your brother.”
“Ah,” said Sherlock, shifting in his chair.
“Why, Sherlock? Why didn’t you come back? Why did you let me think you were dead? Mycroft explained about Moriarty, about the gunmen. But once I got over....," he stopped. Started again. "Once I got over the first of the shock, I always half suspected you weren’t really dead. Sometimes I thought it was just a ridiculous hope. But you were...are... the best, the cleverest, the wisest man I’ve ever known. I thought that maybe, just maybe, you would somehow have figured a way out. But you let me think you were dead. For all these years, Sherlock. Why?”
“I thought it was for the best, John. I had been gone for too long. It seemed better to let it go.”
“To let us go? All the people who loved you?”
Sherlock shrugged, didn’t meet John’s eyes. “It seemed….,” His throat closed. Loved. That word closed it.
“…for the best,” finished John. “Well, it wasn’t. Thirty bloody years.”
Sherlock didn’t look up. Couldn’t.
“You’re an idiot,” said John “You know that, don’t you?”
Sherlock nodded. Didn’t look up.
”Didn’t you know that I loved you?”
Sherlock shook his head. Didn’t look up. “You married,” he said softly, a slight question in his tone.
“I thought you were dead at first. Tosser. It didn’t seem to matter much at that point.”
Sherlock sighed. Finally looked up. “I might have… misjudged the situation.”
“Bloody right you did. Idiot. For the love of Christ, Sherlock, how could you not know?” But he read the truth of it in his friend’s eyes. He hadn’t known he was loved. John sighed. They were both idiots.
“Anyway, I looked for you. Had nothing to go on. Mycroft never let anything else slip. Then I remembered something you said a long time ago. About retiring to Sussex and keeping bees. Thought it was a joke at the time, but it was all I had. I waited until I thought you might retire from whatever nonsense you were doing for Mycroft.”
Sherlock quirked an eyebrow.
“I’m not stupid, Sherlock. It had to be for Mycroft if you stayed away that long. Anyway, after Ann died, five years ago now, it became a sort of hobby. I’ve spent a lot of time in Sussex, talking to people at pubs, reading local papers.”
“Micklewhite the poisoner?”
“Yeah, you cock. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist at some point. And you didn’t think I’d be looking, did you? Thought you were safe….,” John growled.
“I did,” admitted Sherlock.
“Well, you weren’t. Poisoning with mistletoe? Just up your street. A Mr. Howell assisting the police with their investigations? Please." John smiled. In all those years, Sherlock had never been able, or willing, to delete that smile.
"So you deduced...?"
"Bloody right I did. I nosed around. Found out that the eccentric Mr. Howell was quite the local curiosity. Sounds of the violin at all hours, strange smells coming from the cottage, kept bees, curmudgeon. Knew you’d slip up eventually.”
“You looked for me all that time.”
“Of course I did. Of course,” said John. He cleared his throat. “Gave me something to do.”
“So where are you living now?”
“Baker Street, where do you think?”
“Baker Street, but you…,”
“Yeah, I know. Left, married, married again. Mrs. H left it to me when she…..” He somehow couldn’t finish the sentence. Although it had been years and years, he still missed her.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, John.” John nodded.
“I know. Couldn’t bear for anyone else to live there, somehow. I let Mrs. Hudson's flat and the one in the basement. Kept up... ours. Moved back after Ann died. I thought you might... might want to come back. Someday. Was I wrong?”
“You want me to come back to London? With you?”
“Of course I do. I always have. We can stay here sometimes if you like. That is….” It was his turn to let his eyes fall. “That is, if you…”
“Of course I do,” said Sherlock. “John, I always have. I’ve always….”
Loved. John’s eyes came up. They looked at each other for a long, satisfying moment. Loved. Of course.
“Well, we’ll have to get rid of that…,” Sherlock gestured to the cane.
“It’s not psychosomatic this time. It’s arthritis.”
“Hmm,” Sherlock said. John rolled his eyes, but his heart lifted. He had missed being managed by Sherlock Holmes.
“… and that,” Sherlock continued, gesturing to the mustache that adorned John’s upper lip. “I can’t be seen wandering around London with an old man.”
“I’ve had this mustache for thirty years. I like it. Mary liked it. Ann liked it.”
“No they didn’t.”
“How… Oh, never mind. And we are old men.”
“Not yet,” said Sherlock. “Not yet.”
Funny, right now John didn’t feel like an old man. “I’ll shave it if you come back to London.”
London. John. Baker Street.
“I’ll have to arrange for someone to take care of the bees while we’re away.”
“Arrange it then,” said John.
We, thought Sherlock. I once was lost, and now am found… The phrase from the hymn ghosted through his mind. That’s what he got for going to St. Alban’s for the music. Now he was thinking in hymn-tunes. He had been bored.
Sherlock Holmes laughed.
“What’s funny?” asked John.
“Not a thing. I’m just… not a thing. I’ll call Dick Parsons down the road about the bees. Shall we leave this afternoon? Is Angelo’s still there?”