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“Need a doctor over here!”
“Get down!”
Bullets raining around me. Screams of terror. Cries of the injured.
“Retreat!”
“Look out! No!”
An explosion. Heavy grief. Running. Pain. Move!
“Aha!”
The doctor jumped as the front door slammed, that horrible memory shattering with the silence. Torsten watched from the corner with a frown. The medical bag in the corner had made the others believe him “seeing patients,” according to the detective that had just left, but the doctor had spent the entire afternoon closed in his room. Scene after scene played through his mind in the same way Tavish had always liked to watch his favorite memories, except the doctor’s thoughts were all of war. Why would he spend so much time reliving such horrible memories?
He could not be sure. Not when something about the visions seemed less than voluntary, but the doctor’s thoughts had expected this since shortly after breakfast. Should Torsten have prevented their landlady—Mrs. Hudson, the doctor had called her—from leaving?
Perhaps, but he could do nothing about that now. He was not some youngling unable to Protect another, anyway. He would figure this out.
Which meant watching. And listening. And shielding, when the doctor wandered across his room without watching his feet, but that was easy enough. More challenging involved figuring out what this was and what he should do to help. The doctor sank heavily onto his bed, and Torsten skimmed his thoughts once more.
Battle.
Chaos.
War.
“Glad to see you among the living.”
Alec tossed himself onto the sand beside me, leaning back as if the sky held more than a handful of stars. I could not even fake a smile at the greeting that used to refer to my love of reading.
“Alright?” I asked instead.
“About as much as you, I expect,” he answered quietly. “Think I’m better at hiding it, though.”
He would be. I never had been able to lie, but especially not to Alec or Harry. The “three musketeers” had never felt so incomplete than with the two of us in Afghanistan. I wanted to go home.
I could not, of course. Not yet. We sat in companionable silence until the late hour sent us to bed.
“Get down!”
The scene shifted to some nameless skirmish. Blood and battle and fear bled into a waking nightmare as patient after patient failed to recover. I fought more than once for the safety of both myself and the soldier I treated, but even that did not prove good enough. Another man fell still, and I hunted for someone else I could fail to help.
The doctor regained his feet to make Torsten pull out of the memory. Blank eyes still watched that battle even as he stumbled around his room. From the desk, to the shelf, to the bed, Doctor Watson followed some invisible trail on his route to nowhere. Torsten merely prevented injury and stayed out of the way. The first time he had tried to grab the doctor’s hand, a swinging fist had warned against doing so again. Aware of his actions or not, Torsten refused to let another human attack him.
Person, he corrected. Protected. Weeks had studied this household, learning its occupants and all of its guests—and the younglings the sylph Protected in that hidden courtyard. The doctor would not have swung at him if not for the image he watched in his mind. Torsten had easily seen the correlation between his touch and the assailant that appeared in the memory. Even Torsten could not consider that a true attack when the doctor had believed him an enemy soldier.
The knowledge still did not tell him what this was, however, or how to help. Another round of the bedroom avoided the sharp desk corner only because of Torsten’s shielding, and the next circuit managed to find the doorway. Quiet muttering joined the uneven gait on his way across the landing. Would changing rooms help?
Maybe, Torsten decided. He doubted it could hurt, anyway, provided the doctor did not fall down the stairs. Several barriers supported from every direction, and Torsten stayed within reach as the doctor’s unsteady gait slowly descended to the first floor. One stumble used a barrier to stay upright, but he managed that better than Torsten had expected.
Now if only he would go back to normal. The doctor’s normal included worrying thoughts and far too much silence compared to the other non-magicals, but it did not involve this. It did not involve vivid memories of war and warm shivering that made him stumble more than that old injury. Quickly readjusting a barrier prevented the doctor from grabbing the weapon hidden in the wardrobe.
The detective had pulled his bedroom door to the frame before he left, which sent the doctor wandering the other direction. Increasing tremors unbalanced the gait that stumbled from one side of the room to the other, nearly tripping on the rug as the door below clicked.
And Mrs. Hudson entered the flat. Relief shot through Torsten. The doctor had repeatedly warned his rabbits that the detective was “not safe” and did not know of the magical, but Torsten had watched him discuss the big man and the Pole with Mrs. Hudson. Maybe she would know what this was.
He simply had to catch her attention. Footsteps traveled from the front door, down the hall, and into the kitchen. Rustling evidently put groceries away, then turned toward her spare bedroom. When she showed no sign of coming upstairs, Torsten sent a pulse of magic through the floor. She would not sense the magic itself, but she would certainly investigate when an invisible hand tapped her on the shoulder and tugged toward the stairs.
What was—
Though the doctor’s amulet clearly had more uses than Torsten knew. A surprised thought changed the memory to a non-magical battle devolving into a clash between trolls, and the doctor’s breathing increased to match. Mrs. Hudson rushed up the stairs as Torsten’s barrier prevented the doctor from impacting the fireplace, though her near-running footsteps abruptly halted in the doorway.
“Doctor, can you hear me?”
No reaction, of course, but this seemed to confirm something instead of confuse her. The barest moment dropped his concealment long enough for her to tie him to the doctor’s inability to move, and she nodded a thanks even as she backed up and took the long way around through the detective’s bedroom. Only once the doctor stood between her and the nearest exit did she move gradually closer.
“You’re not there anymore, Doctor. You’re in London. You moved back into your old room after Mr. Holmes returned. Mr. Holmes is working a case right now. He thought you were seeing patients, or he would have taken you with him. Did you close yourself in your bedroom? You know he wants to help. Look at me, Doctor. You need to breathe. Whatever you’re seeing isn’t real…”
Her litany continued, short sentences describing their surroundings, the doctor’s actions the last few days, and the detective’s recent cases. Every few sentences took one step closer to the doctor’s right side, and when he did not react to her approach, she carefully grabbed his fingers, then his hand. Ignoring the contact put one hand on his lower arm to tug him toward the settee.
“…You need to sit down, Doctor, or you’re going to fall. Deep breaths. Whatever you’re seeing isn’t real. You’re needed here, Doctor. Come back…”
Torsten adjusted his barriers to nudge the doctor toward the settee, but most of his attention noted both her posture and her words. She treated the doctor like a skittish animal, ready to flee or attack at any moment. Predictable movements maintained the doctor’s obvious exit route. Repeated pokes and prods nudged the doctor toward the cushion, then made him sit. Calm, quiet sentences described physical, literal things within easy sight as well as mentioning the detective every few seconds. The last several weeks had shown that the cantankerous detective had more moods than a dwarf, but he did appear to care about his friend. His inability to show as much, however, had left the doctor believing himself a barely-tolerated roommate.
And perhaps contributed to the doctor’s refusal to ask for help when he had started watching memories hours ago. With Mrs. Hudson working to end the memory, this must not be voluntary, and involuntary memory-watching evidently caused other problems. If the doctor did not slow his breathing soon, he would pass out.
As Mrs. Hudson clearly knew. Squeezing the doctor’s fingers, poking his arm, tugging his clothes, all joined the constant stream of sentences almost frantically trying to pull the doctor out of his own mind, and Mrs. Hudson’s worry increased with every minute that the doctor ignored her. A momentary peek confirmed him still watching various battles, but the door below slammed before Torsten could try to do more than keep the doctor on the settee. His own observations rang a note of fear as he increased his concealment. He would not allow the detective to suspect his presence unless doing so would save his Protected.
He rather doubted the oblivious detective posed any intentional danger to Doctor Watson.
Heavy footsteps charged up the stairs but froze at the top. A significantly slower pace almost creeped across the landing to look through the doorway, concern evident. Mrs. Hudson’s litany never wavered as she gestured for him to go around, and he paused in the other doorway just long enough to scan the sitting room. Gradual progress headed for the settee.
“Mrs. Hudson is correct, Watson. You need to slow your breathing. Can you hear me? Whatever you see is not real…”
His measured pace matched the one Mrs. Hudson had used earlier, as did most of the content of his rambling sentences. Even his voice did not break into the doctor’s thoughts, however, and they soon ran out of time. With the detective barely halfway across the room, Doctor Watson’s thoughts faded to a sea of black. Torsten pulled away just before the doctor collapsed against the cushion.
“Watson!”
And the detective lunged the rest of the distance. Torsten’s barrier had prevented the doctor from falling forward, but they readjusted him to a more natural position before changing places. The detective immediately wrapped his fingers around Doctor Watson’s wrist.
“Open your eyes, Watson. I have told you that you are not allowed to scare me like this.”
Doctor Watson never moved, his pale skin starkly contrasting the settee’s darker fabric. The detective continued his monologue as several seconds checked the doctor’s pulse and counted the breaths that had slowed immediately. The tremors eased in a few more seconds, to Torsten’s relief, but Mrs. Hudson stopped on the landing to wave at Torsten. With his Protected safe enough for the moment, he moved toward the doorway, flickering into view once hidden from the detective. What could she want?
“That was a regression.” Concentration pushed the thought towards him instead of risking speech. “It is an effect of battle fatigue, or soldier’s heart.” Abandoning words sent a stream of information on causes, how to identify one, and what to do if he saw the doctor struggling. Primary on the list involved “get Mr. Holmes,” but if the detective was not available, Torsten had a few ways he could help, and a few things he needed to prevent. A deep nod thanked her for the information just before the detective’s monologue changed to ordering Torsten’s Protected to open his eyes. Torsten quickly reapplied his concealment, and an empty spot on a table provided a place for Torsten to process the information without being in the way.
Could this be part of the danger he had sensed that day in the park?