Archive of Our Own

At first, it looked almost like discipline. Sherlock still rose at his usual hour. He still followed cases like a bloodhound on the scent, still filled notebooks with impossibly neat deductions, still played the violin late into the evening. If anything, he appeared calmer. Watson congratulated himself on worrying unnecessarily about 7% solutions.

Only Mrs. Hudson remarked, “Mr. Holmes hasn’t laughed in weeks.”

The changes were so small they escaped notice at first. Holmes stopped lingering over breakfast; the violin fell silent for days at a time; chemical experiments remained half-finished, as though the question that had fascinated him an hour before had somehow become too distant to matter.

He still solved cases. Brilliantly, of course. But now, when the client left, satisfaction no longer followed. It seemed like emptiness followed within minutes. Watson began finding Sherlock awake at extraordinary hours. That fact in itself was hardly original or out of character. But what made it concerning was that Holmes was not working late into the night. He was simply sitting in the darkness, the fire having gone cold and the room having fallen silent.

“What are you doing?” asked Watson early one morning. He had padded through to their sitting room in search of the carafe of water he had left there earlier.

“Thinking.”

“What about?”

Sherlock would consider the question as though it were genuinely difficult. “Nothing useful,” was all he said in response.

His appearance altered next. His collars became carelessly fastened and Watson noticed ash on one cuff one afternoon - a small thing but one that would once have irritated his friend, normally neatness personified. His became untidy through neglect, something he no longer seemed to notice. Cases that once absorbed him entirely now held him only until the solution was found. The chase had become everything; the answer, almost nothing.

Watson watched Sherlock identify a murderer from three muddy footprints, receive the client’s heartfelt gratitude, and then stare out of the window before the man’s carriage had even left Baker Street.

“Holmes?”

“Hm?”

“You’ve just performed a miracle.”

“Have I?”

“You don’t seem pleased.”

Sherlock looked genuinely surprised. “Ought I to be?”

Then he began disappearing. Not for entire nights, the way he had often done in the past for cases. Now, it was for an hour, then two, with Watson watching him return quieter than before, a sweet smell clinging to his clothes as he locked himself in his room after a perfunctory goodnight to his friend.

Watson asked no questions at first. Every man, he reasoned, was entitled to privacy. But then the privacy became isolation. Sherlock declined invitations he would once have accepted, ignored letters, forgot concerts. Twice he even failed to visit a witness until Watson reminded him. For Sherlock Holmes, forgetting bordered on the catastrophic.

Then his senses, once his greatest allies, turned against him. He complained that London became unbearably loud: Carriage wheels grated on his nerves; church bells jarred his senses and even the ticking of the sitting-room clock occasionally provoked him into carrying it to another room.

Mrs. Hudson found him standing in the kitchen one afternoon. “Mr. Holmes?”

He looked almost startled as he turned to look at her. “I came in here because…” He glanced around, a slightly helpless air descending on him like a blanket. Then: “I’ve forgotten”,was all he said before he left.

There were still moments of astonishing vitality. An impossible cipher, some puzzle worthy of him - for an hour he would blaze back into life, eyes bright and speech rapid as a chattering finch, his hands once more alive with restless energy. Then the excitement passed and the collapse afterwards grew deeper each time. It was as though ordinary existence had become colourless.

 

Watson eventually recognised another pattern, though only after the fact: Sherlock had stopped speaking about the future. Once he would say, “Next month we ought to visit…” or “I’ve long wished to examine…”Now every sentence ended in the present, as though tomorrow had quietly ceased to interest him.

Mrs. Hudson noticed other things, a little quicker - principally, the meals or rather, their absence. She would leave a tray outside the sitting room only to find it untouched hours later except for a half cup of tea gone cold. “You’ll waste away,” she scolded him. Sherlock apologised so sincerely that she almost cried. Then forgot to eat again the following day.

Another evening, as he sat alone before the fire, Watson realised that he had begun listening for footsteps on the stairs. Not just because Sherlock was returning later than usual but because relief washed over him every time he heard them. That frightened him more than anything.

When Watson finally confronted him about his drug intake, Sherlock did not deny it. He looked exhausted as he muttered, “I thought I had it under control.”

“So did I.”

“I’m sorry.”

Watson’s expression softened. “My dear fellow. You’ve apologised four times. I just wish it not to be necessary, that’s all.”

Sherlock looked down. It was the first time he understood that his struggle was no longer his alone. Whatever happened next, the burden had quietly become shared between three people: Sherlock, who could no longer trust his own judgement; Mrs. Hudson, who measured hope in emptied plates and nights spent at home; and Watson, who had begun to dread the sound of no footsteps on the stairs.

The crash finally happened on an ordinary evening: that was the cruelty of it. There had been no dramatic farewell, no final declaration. Sherlock had merely spent the afternoon over his chemical apparatus, exchanged a few dry observations with Watson over supper, apologised to Mrs. Hudson for forgetting to answer a letter, and retired to his room. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that warned anyone that the world was about to tilt.

Watson was reading. He would remember, years later, exactly where he had been on the page: a sentence about compound fractures. He never finished it.

There was a sound overhead, like something heavy striking the floor.

He frowned. “Holmes?”

There was no answer. He waited a moment longer but there was still nothing. Then, his chair was moving before he consciously decided to rise. “Holmes?”

The door to the bedroom was locked. Not something that was unusual.

“Holmes!”

More silence.

Every instinct he possessed, both as a friend and as a physician, erupted at once. He threw himself against the door. Once. Twice. The third time, the wood around the lock splintered.

Sherlock lay on the floor beside the bed, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath him. His skin had already taken on the dreadful, waxen pallor Watson had seen far too many times in hospital wards. His breathing…

No.

He was not breathing, not properly. Watson was beside him in an instant.

“Holmes!”

No response.

He caught Sherlock’s wrist. A pulse was there, threads and fading beneath his fingers.

“No…” Watson’s voice was barely more than a whisper “No, no, no…”

Training took over before panic could. He called for Mrs. Hudson. When she reached the room, Watson did not even look up. “Hot water. Now.”

She did not ask why.

 

Time dissolved for John Watson. There was only the next heartbeat. Or the absence of one. Watson worked with the fierce concentration of a man refusing to accept the evidence before him. Not Sherlock. Not this man. Not like this.

He spoke constantly, shouting, pleading, bullying the man in front of him, slapping him on occasion. Afterwards, he could never remembered what he said that night, only that he could not bear the silence.

“You stubborn fucking fool…” Another attempt, another slap. “You don’t get to leave, you selfish bastard…” Again. A slap. “Do you hear me?” Again. “You stay.”

Mrs. Hudson stood in the doorway with white knuckles wrapped around a basin, praying under her breath because she could think of nothing else to do.

Then. The smallest movement. A single breath pulled in with difficulty. Then another. And another.

Watson almost sobbed with relief. “That’s it.” His own hands were shaking now. “Again.”

Another shallow breath. Then another. Colour, painfully slowly, began to creep back into Sherlock’s lips. Watson did not stop. He dared not, notuntil the pulse beneath his fingertips ceased feeling as though it belonged to a ghost.

 

Much later, when Sherlock slept under close watch, Watson remained beside the bed. Mrs. Hudson quietly placed a cup of tea in his hands. He held it but did not drink it.

“I nearly lost him,” he said.

She looked towards the bed. “But you didn’t.”

Watson closed his eyes. “No.” His voice broke. “But I very nearly did.”

He was silent for a long time. Finally he spoke again, not as a friend now, but as a doctor stating a fact. “If I’d finished the page… If I’d paused to put the book away….
If I’d assumed he’d answer eventually….”

His gaze never left Sherlock. “Five minutes.”The words seemed impossible in the quiet room. “Five minutes later…” He stopped.

Mrs. Hudson knew the end of the sentence anyway. Five minutes later there would have been no patient to save, only a body. She reached out and rested one hand on Watson’s shoulder.

For once, the doctor did not try to be brave; he just covered his face with both hands and wept.

 

When dawn came, Watson was still sitting there. He had not slept; indeed, he had not moved farther than an arm’s length from the bed. When Sherlock finally stirred and opened bewildered eyes, the first thing he saw was not reproach. It was John Watson, exhausted beyond words, looking as though someone had returned his entire world after very nearly taking it away forever. Afterwards, almost as soon as consciousness had returned, its kinder sister, sleep, came to claim him.

Sherlock slept for nearly fourteen hours. Watson did not leave the bedside except once. At 2pm, he went downstairs, found the telegraph forms in the desk, and wrote with brisk, decisive strokes.

To Dr. Henry Cartwright, Eastbourne.

Need immediate use of quiet furnished cottage on the South Downs for convalescent gentleman. Complete privacy essential. Reply at once.

He called a messenger boy from the window and paid for the fastest service. When he returned upstairs, Sherlock had not stirred.

Mrs. Hudson looked at him as he seated himself again. “You’re taking him away.”

“Yes. He needs kept away from the damned pernicious stuff with which he seems to keen to stuff his brain.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

She nodded once. “I’ll pack.”

⸻

The reply arrived just after dinner time, as Watson picked at some cheese.

A shepherd’s cottage outside Alfriston available immediately. Isolated. Clean. A Mrs. Fletcher will keep house. Come as soon as you can.

Watson folded the telegram and slipped it into his pocket. The matter, so far as he was concerned, was settled.

Sherlock woke early in the morning, blinking at the unfamiliar heaviness in his limbs. Watson was sitting by the window with a medical journal but looked up immediately.“Welcome back.”

Sherlock’s voice was hoarse. “How long?”

“A day.”

Sherlock absorbed that. “I see.”

“No,” said Watson quietly. “You really don’t.”

Sherlock looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence. Finally Watson stood, every bone in his body seeming to crack as he did so. “We leave on tomorrow morning’s train.”

Sherlock frowned. “…We what?”

“The South Downs.”

“No.”

Watson had expected that. “I’ve arranged a cottage.”

“I appreciate the thought….”

“No, you don’t.”

“….But I shan’t go. I have work.”

Watson’s jaw tightened. “You have nearly had a funeral.”

“I…”

“No.”

Sherlock looked up, surprised by the sharpness in Watson’s voice.

“I cannot simply disappear.”

“You very nearly disappeared permanently.”

Sherlock drew a slow breath. “The cases…”

“Damn the cases.”

Sherlock stared. “I’ve clients.”

“Damn the clients.”

“Watson…”

“Damn London.” Watson was on his feet now, years of military service returning to his posture. “You are going.”

Sherlock tried once more. “I don’t think…”

“I am not remotely interested in what you fucking think.” The words landed like musket fire.

Sherlock had seen Watson irritated, cross, even furious with murderers but he had never seen him so angry with him.

Watson took one step closer. “You will damn well listen to me. I have stitched boys back together under fire. I have watched men die because we reached them thirty seconds too late.” His voice remained controlled but rising in volume now. “Yesterday I broke down your bloody door and found you on the floor.”

Sherlock flinched.

“I only got to you just in time.” Another step.“Five minutes later, Holmes. Five fucking minutes later and I’d have been writing to your brother instead of arguing with you.”

Sherlock lowered his eyes.

Watson’s temper, held in check for twenty-four hours by necessity, finally escaped. “So don’t lie there telling me about your buggering cases! I don’t give a fuck about your cases. I don’t care if every thief in London helps himself to the Crown Jewels. I don’t care if the whole Metropolitan Police makes absolute bloody fools of themselves forever after.” He pointed at the bed. “I care that you’re alive.” Watson drew a ragged breath. “And if I have to sling you over my shoulder like I’m a fucking cavalry mule and carry you to Sussex myself…” - a humourless smile flickered across his face - “…then by God, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

The room fell quiet. Sherlock looked at his friend for a long time. Then, very softly,

“You’ve finished?”

Watson blinked. “I believe so.”

Sherlock nodded then looked up at Dr Watson. “I’ll need to take my heavier coat with us, then.”

Watson stared. “You’re… agreeing?”

Sherlock’s mouth curved into the faintest smile. “Yes. Because I’ve seen that expression on your face before.”

“What expression?”

“The one that says further resistance would be a tactical error.”

For the first time since the previous evening, Watson laughed. It came out half exhausted, half relieved. “Too bloody right.” Then he half-fell on a chair and slumped forward, hands dangling between his knees.

Sherlock looked down at his own hands. “I’m sorry you had to be frightened.”

Watson’s anger vanished as quickly as it had come. He stood again, heaving himself up, crossed the room and rested a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “I was terrified,” he said quietly. “And I have no intention of ever feeling like that again if I can help it.”

He paused. Adrenaline wearing off now, his next words were somewhere between statement and question. “So we’re going to the South Downs….”

Sherlock nodded meekly. “Yes, Doctor.”

Watson squeezed his shoulder once more. “Good.”

Outside, London bustled on, oblivious.

 

A few days later, a hansom waited outside 221b Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson had packed enough clothing for them for a month, Watson had packed enough medicines for two while Sherlock had packed almost nothing. He moved slowly, still weak enough that the short walk from the front door to the carriage left him leaning for a moment on the polished wood of the door.

“I can manage,” he murmured.

“I’ve no doubt,” Watson replied. “But today you’ll permit me to fuss.”

Sherlock was too tired to argue at this or when Mrs. Hudson tucked a travelling rug around his knees. “There.”

“I look ninety.”

“You look alive.”

She kissed his forehead before he could object. “You’ll write.”

“I shall.”

“And you’ll eat.”

“I shall endeavour to.”

“No,” she said firmly. “You’ll eat.”

A faint smile. “Yes, Mrs. Hudson.”

Watson climbed in opposite him, the driver flicked the reins and the carriage began rolling away from London, Sherlock watching the city slide past through the glass.

He wondered, not for the first time, whether he deserved to leave it alive.

 

Across in Bloomsbury, the latest in the series of reports on the movements and general doings of Sherlock Holmes arrived on the desk of Professor James Moriarty.

His assistant laid the folded sheet on James’s desk. “The morning observations.”

He finished correcting the last page of his lecture notes without looking up. “Thank you,” he said before sanding the page and setting it neatly aside. When the door had closed, he broke the seal. His eyes moved swiftly over the familiar headings.

0600. Baker Street under observation.

0805. Dr. Watson hailed a private carriage.

James frowned. That was unusual - they normally moved around the city on foot - even Hamson cabs were rarely their means of transport and only in the evenings after dark, when speed was of the essence. He read on.

Mrs. Hudson seen assisting Holmes downstairs. Subject appears physically weak. Walks with difficulty.

Holmes required Dr. Watson’s arm while entering the carriage. Travel rug placed over knees. Considerable luggage.

The words blurred for a moment before his vision steadied. No. Not blurred. His own hand was shaking as he went over the words before him.

He read the final paragraph.

Destination believed to be Sussex. Information from station porter suggests onward travel towards the South Downs. Holmes appears seriously unwell. Dr. Watson remains in constant attendance. Surveillance to continue unless otherwise instructed.

James read the full report again, then a third time. He set the paper down with deliberate care then picked it up again.

Physically weak.
Required Dr. Watson’s arm.
Seriously unwell.

His own breathing had become strangely shallow as he read, he noted abstractly. His mind, so disciplined in every other circumstance, now seemed to supply possibilities with ruthless efficiency, completely independent of his reason

Disease.
Violence.
Consumption.
A failed experiment.
An attempt upon Sherlock’s life.

Or…

Something he had not seen. Something so grave that Watson had abandoned London altogether.

James realised, quite suddenly, that he had stopped breathing. He drew in air sharply enough that it almost hurt. Only then did he become aware that his fingers had crushed one corner of the report.

“No,” he said aloud to the empty room. It was not a command. It was almost a plea.

He stood abruptly and crossed to the window. Bloomsbury bustled beneath him, students hurrying to lectures, a brewer’s dray rattling over the cobbles: the world continued with infuriating indifference.

Sherlock Holmes had left London, weak, supported into a carriage, taken away by a doctor who plainly believed he would not recover in Baker Street.

James closed his eyes. Watson. Thank God for John Watson. The thought arrived unbidden.

James found himself gripping the window frame until the knuckles whitened. He wanted, with an almost unbearable force, to ride after the carriage, to see for himself, God, to stand at the foot of the bed for one minute just to hear Sherlock breathe….

Instead he forced himself to step back. No. His presence would be the greater danger. If Sherlock was truly ill, the last thing he needed was James Moriarty appearing on a Sussex doorstep with ten years of unresolved history.

James returned to the desk, took up a fresh sheet of paper- his handwriting was perfectly steady - and began the next page of lecture notes.

 

The next report arrived two days later; James recognised Quinn’s handwriting before he broke the seal. In truth, he had been waiting for it since dawn. He had attempted to prepare a lecture or to read but each time he made a fresh attempt, he found himself staring at the same paragraph for half an hour.

The report was mercifully brief.

Holmes and Dr. Watson have taken a cottage outside Alfriston.

Good.

Holmes walks daily, though with evident weakness.

Good.

Local enquiries suggest a prolonged illness preceded their departure.

James read on then stopped.

A reliable village source reports that Holmes is recovering from what Dr. Watson privately described as an overdose of narcotics.

The paper slipped from his fingers and fluttered onto the desk. For a heartbeat there was nothing: no thought, no movement…..

Then rage arrived, white-hot, writhing under his skin like a snake, fangs uncovered and ready to strike the closest thing.

The bell on his desk rang so violently that the servant almost collided with the doorframe in his haste. “Moran.”

“Immediately, Professor.”

Moran entered to find James standing by the window, with a stillness was infinitely more alarming than shouting.

“You wished to see me.”

James turned. “When.”

“Professor?”

“When did my people discover Holmes had taken drugs?”

Moran frowned. “They….”

James’ voice was terrifyingly calm. “My question was when.”

“We knew he’d left London and that Dr Watson had taken him south. We believed…”

“You believed…?” James took one measured step forward. “…that a physician abandons his practice and removes his closest friend from London because he has developed an enthusiasm for country air?”

Moran said nothing. It was the silence that made James’s restraint snap. “You watched him for months!” His voice cracked through the room like a whip. “You recorded every bloody walk, every meeting, every anonymous fuck, every bookshop, every public house…” His fist struck the desk hard enough to overturn the inkstand. “…and none of you noticed he was poisoning himself?”

Silence. Ink spread slowly across the polished wood.

Still Moran stood his ground. “We were watching for threats. Not compiling health reports.”

James laughed once. It was a dreadful sound. “The threat to Holmes was Holmes himself. I told you…” He spoke more quietly now. “…I wanted to know if he was safe. Even if the danger was himself.”

“We thought…”

“I know what you thought.” James closed his eyes. “I was collecting leverage. But it’s no good to me if people don’t remember what I ask for and the man himself ends up dead!”

His hand found the edge of the desk and he gripped it until the wood creaked. “I had reports every week.” He laughed again, bitterly. “Holmes visited Whitechapel.” “Holmes purchased tobacco.” “Holmes argued with Lestrade.” “Holmes spent forty minutes in the British Museum.” “Holmes had a quick fuck around the back of the White Hart pub.” He looked at Moran. “Not one line saying…” - his voice failed and the words faded as he spoke them - “…that he was disappearing.”

The report lay open on the desk. Overdose of narcotics. The words seemed impossible: Sherlock who once lectured James for an hour on the dangers of clouding observation, who claimed that the mind was the only instrument worth sharpening, who had nearly…

James could not complete the thought.

A wave of cold swept through him so suddenly that he sat down without meaning to. The rage had burnt itself out, leaving only terror behind. He pictured Sherlock alone in Baker Street, Watson breaking down the door. How close? How impossibly close?

For the first time in years, the elegant rooms of the Bloomsbury flat felt too small to contain him. He wanted to move, to ride to Sussex and see Sherlock with his own eyes. He wanted to reassure himself that the reports were true: Recovering. Such an ordinary word. It had never sounded miraculous before.

After a long silence, James lifted his head.“When the next report comes…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t care whether Holmes has read a newspaper, I don’t care whether he has walked half a mile or a whole one, or who called at the cottage.” His voice was hoarse. “I want just one sentence.”

Moran waited. James swallowed.

“‘He is still alive.’”

 

That night, he went to bed alone in the flat. No young woman, no young man was wired to come and share his evening. No concierge was asked to order food from Simpsons to be served in his small but beautiful dining room. He merely tore off his clothes after eating a heel of bread and fell into an uneasy sleep.

The dream itself arrived without warning. Not Bloomsbury, not Baker Street. Instead, he was at Appleton Hall once more, no, ten years earlier. It was Summer and he was lying in the long grasses behind the orchard, their stalks bending in a warm breeze beneath a sky so brilliantly blue it scarcely looked real. Sherlock was laughing. Twenty-one years old, all impossible angles and bright eyes, his coat abandoned somewhere beneath an oak tree. There had been no urgency that afternoon. No disguises. No murder to solve. No criminal empire waiting to be built. Only the certainty, so complete it had seemed unbreakable, that they belonged to one another. James remembered Sherlock’s hand finding his; he remembered the scent of crushed grass and wild thyme as they had rolled together, heedless of anyone that might possibly see them, Sherlock smiling at him with that rare expression that stripped away every defence.

The dream lingered there and on a future that had once appeared inevitable. Then, as dreams do, it slipped away.

James woke with a violent gasp. He was in darkness. His nightshirt clung to him and he found his face was wet. For several bewildered seconds he did not know where he was. Appleton? No, Bloomsbury. The great clock downstairs struck three.

He sat upright, breathing as though he had run for miles. He realised his hands were shaking so he pressed them hard against his knees; it made no difference.

The dream had left behind not comfort but absence, the memory of happiness proving harder to survive than misery itself. He buried his face in his hands and took one ragged breath became another. Only when he felt tears against his fingers did he truly realise he was weeping.

As though ten years had collapsed into a single unbearable moment. Sherlock: nearly dead.

James stood so abruptly the chair beside the bed toppled onto the carpet. He could not remain in the room another second. Within fifteen minutes he was dressed for travelling in a dark coat and a plain hat. Nothing that suggested Professor James Moriarty. On the desk he left a single folded note for his people.

Urgent business in Paris.
I shall return when concluded.
M.

It was the sort of explanation his household had received before: no-one would question it. Paris was close enough to be plausible and far enough that no one would expect correspondence for several days. He sealed the note, extinguished the lamps, and slipped through the servants’ entrance into the sleeping city.

London before dawn belonged to another species of humanity. Market carts and the cries of night watchmen; no-one looked twice at a solitary gentleman walking briskly towards the station.

The train carried him south beneath a paling sky. Locked in his thoughts, he scarcely noticed the countryside sliding past the window.

At Lewes he hired a horse. “No luggage, sir?” the stableman asked.

“It will follow.” A lie. James had no intention of staying long enough to require any.

By afternoon he reached the village next to his target: not Alfriston itself but close enough to overlook the same broad sweep of Downs. The innkeeper apologised for the modest room. James assured him it was perfect, paid a week in advance then, after barely setting down his travelling case, he climbed the hill behind the village.

The Downs opened before him in great rolling folds of green and white chalk. Somewhere beyond the next rise lay the cottage here Sherlock Holmes currently lay. James could not see it but he knew roughly where it must be. That was enough as the wind carried the scent of sun-warmed grass and larks sang high above. He stood alone for a long time, looking towards the unseen valley. He had crossed half of England for this: not to speak, not to be forgiven - he was not such a fool as to believe that possible- not even to be seen. Only to be near enough that, if the next report came, he would not have to wait for it to travel all the way to Bloomsbury before learning whether Sherlock Holmes still lived.

It was completely irrational. He knew that. A distance of fifty miles or five yards made no difference to a doctor’s potential verdict. Yet his breathing eased for the first time in days. Because somewhere nearby, beyond those hills, Watson was watching over Sherlock. For now, James told himself, that would have to be enough.

 

Dr. Watson was returning from the cottage at the edge of the village. The house he had visited contained an unmarried soon-to-be mother and her over-anxious family. The request for help from her brother - as the village doctor didn’t want to be seen helping a “fallen woman” and wasn’t Watson going to be writing a strongly worded letter to the British Medical Council about that - had been simple enough.

His thoughts were still occupied by dosage schedules, nutrition, and the gratifying fact that both mother and unborn child were likely to do well. So occupied, in fact, that he failed to notice the gentleman approaching from the opposite direction. They collided gently at the bend in the lane. An elbow caught another elbow.

His gloves nearly escaped Watson’s grasp.

“Oh! My apologies.”

“No, sir, mine.”

The stranger removed his hat at once. “My attention was elsewhere.”

“As was mine.”

Watson smiled. “No harm done.”

“None.”

For just a moment they regarded one another. Watson saw before him a handsome man, dark-haired with riotous curls, elegantly but plainly dressed, with an Irish brogue that sounded like it had been sanded down by years in England. There was something vaguely…scholarly about him. And something… Tired. Profoundly tired.

Watson inclined his head. “Good afternoon.”

“And to you.”

They continued on their separate ways and neither looked back.

Ten minutes later Watson pushed open the door of the inn and stopped in his tracks. “Good heavens,” he said, delighted. The same stranger looked up from his untouched pint then smiled.

“It appears fate is determined that we are to collide.”

“I shall endeavour to avoid your elbows this time.”

The stranger gave a quiet laugh. “I’d be grateful.”

Watson accepted his own ale from the landlord and, finding the room almost full, gestured towards the empty chair opposite.“May I?”

“Please.”

For a few moments they drank in companionable silence. It was Watson who spoke first. “Passing through?”

“So it would seem.”

Watson raised an eyebrow. “‘Would seem’?”

The stranger smiled faintly. “I find myself here without having entirely intended to be.”

“A familiar experience.”

“To a doctor?”

“To anyone with friends.”

That drew another smile. “A fair point.”

Watson broke off a piece of the loaf that was sitting in their table. “My name is John Watson.”

The other man hesitated for the briefest fraction of a second before replying I turn, “James.”

Nothing more. No surname. Watson noticed; he also politely ignored it. A man had a right to privacy, as he well knew. “A pleasure.”

“The pleasure is mine, Doctor.”

Watson looked mildly surprised. “You knew I was a doctor.”

“I asked the landlord who the gentleman carrying gloves might be.”

“Astonishing deduction.”

“I fear merely efficient gossip.”

Watson chuckled. “The village appears well supplied with it.”

“It does.” James turned his glass slowly between his hands. “And you? I understand you’re staying nearby.”

“For a little while.”

“Holiday?”

Watson considered. “Something like that.”

“With family?”

“No. With a friend.”

James nodded once. “I hope he appreciates the trouble.”

Watson’s expression softened. “I suspect he will.”

“If he doesn’t…” James looked into his ale “…he ought to.”

A comfortable silence settled again; Watson found himself liking the man. There was an easy courtesy about him, the sort acquired neither by wealth nor education alone.

“You aren’t from Sussex.”

“No.”

“Ireland?”

James inclined his head.

“Dublin and thereabouts. The accent gives me away.”

“It does.”

James smiled. “And you are here from London?”

Watson smiled, slightly startled. “Yes. How did you know? I know it isn’t my accent.”

“The boots.”

Watson looked down. “My boots?”

“They’ve met the mud of too many London pavements.”

Watson laughed. “Touché.”

The conversation wandered from there. The weather. The harvest. The extraordinary number of sheep occupying the surrounding hills. Meaningless chatter between friendly strangers. James proved unexpectedly funny, though there was a curious quality to it. He never laughed for long. Each smile seemed to fade before it had properly arrived.

Eventually Watson said, “Forgive the observation…”

James looked up.

“You seem burdened.”

The words hung between them and James’s fingers tightened slightly around the glass.

“I expect I do.”

“Nothing I should pry into.”

“No.”

A pause. “But you’re not wrong.”

Watson nodded. “I’ve known that expression.”

James tilted his head. “Have you?”

“On soldiers. Men waiting for news.”

Neither spoke for a moment. In the background, the fire crackled softly. At length James asked, very carefully, “Did they usually receive it?”

Watson looked into the flames. “Sometimes.”

“And when they couldn’t influence the outcome?”

Watson sighed. “That was always the hardest part.”

James lowered his eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I imagine it is.”

For reasons he could not have explained, Watson felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. He had the distinct impression that this courteous, intelligent stranger was carrying the weight of someone else’s fate on his shoulders. He wondered who.

The inn had quietened around them without their noticing. The labourers had drifted home for their suppers, leaving only the crackle of the fire and the gentle clink of glasses being washed somewhere beyond the kitchen door.

Watson found that he had become fascinated by James’s accent. Though so different, it reminded him strangely of his father’s own Scots brough. Not strong, time and education having rounded its edges, but every so often a vowel escaped back across the Irish Sea.

“You’ve travelled,” Watson observed.

James smiled faintly. “I’ve had to.”

“I thought as much.”

“And you?”

“The Army knocked a little of my own accent out of me.”

“A little?”

Watson laughed. “My patients tell me it returns whenever I’m annoyed.”

“I shall endeavour not to test the theory.”

“You’d be wise.”

For a while they watched the fire. Then James said, almost idly, “Your friend.”

Watson looked up. “Yes?”

“You spoke of him as though he were unwell.”

“He is.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

James turned his glass between his fingers. “Will he recover?”

Watson took his time before answering. “I believe so.” The words carried hope but also caution. “And yourself?” Watson asked gently. “You look like a man who has come a long way because of someone else.”

James’s gaze remained on the fire. “I have.”

“Another invalid?”

A tiny smile. “Not exactly.”

“But someone about whom you’re waiting for news?”

“Yes.”

Watson nodded. “I know that business.”

“It’s an unpleasant one.”

“The worst.”

James looked up. “Worse than receiving bad news?”

Watson considered. “No.” He shook his head. “But waiting invites the imagination to become extraordinarily inventive.”

James let out a quiet breath that might almost have been a laugh. “It does. It supplies details no physician ever would. It has been doing so for several days for me.”

Watson regarded him with growing sympathy. “I recommend occupation.”

“I’ve tried.”

“Success?”

“None.”

“I feared as much.”

Silence settled comfortably between them again. It was James who broke it. “You’re very devoted to your friend.”

Watson looked mildly surprised. “I suppose I am.”

“You left London for him.”

“Without hesitation.”

“You’ve put your own affairs aside.”

“They’ll wait.”

James smiled into his glass. “The fortunate fellow.”

Watson’s expression softened. “I’ve known him for years now.”

“A rare friendship?”

“The rarest.”

James nodded slowly.

“I’ve sometimes thought…” Watson began, then stopped.

“What?”

“That friendship is the oddest bargain.”

James tilted his head. “In what sense?”

“You agree, without quite noticing when it happened, to let another person’s welfare become your own concern.” James’s eyes did not leave Watson’s face. “You begin by sharing lodgings or conversation or
a profession and one day you discover that another man’s fever has stolen your sleep.”Watson gave a rueful smile. “No one warns you.”

“No. They should.”

“They’d never find any volunteers.”

That earned a genuine laugh from James. It disappeared almost at once. “I wonder,” he said quietly after a moment, “whether that is the measure of friendship.”

Watson looked interested. “How so?”

“Not affection, not admiration but the quiet rearrangement of one’s own life around another’s needs.”

Watson sat very still. “There is something in that.”

James continued, almost as though thinking aloud. “You don’t resent it. You scarcely notice you’ve done it until someone points it out. And then you realise that another person’s suffering has become intolerable to you.”

Watson looked into the fire. “Yes. Exactly that.”

For a long moment neither spoke. Outside, the evening breeze stirred the hanging sign above the inn door, its creak nearly drowning Watson’s soft murmur. “The burden is peculiar. You carry it willingly, entirely willingly. And yet… And yet there are moments when you would barter almost anything merely to hear someone say, ‘He’s improving.’”

James’s fingers tightened around the glass.

“So little. So very much.” Watson smiled faintly. “It is astonishing how comforting three words can be.”

James looked away before his expression betrayed him. After a moment he said, with studied casualness, “You speak of your friend almost…”

“Almost what?”

James chose his words with care. “As though the distinction between friendship and family had become rather academic.”

Watson smiled and nodded to himself, as if pleased by the thought. He wondered whether there was any language in which one could accurately describe a love that had long ago ceased to concern possession and had become simply the unbearable desire for another human being to remain alive. Friendship came close. Devotion came close. Neither reached it.

Watson rose, pulling on his coat. “I ought to get back before my patient decides he’s well enough to ignore every instruction I’ve given him.”

James smiled. “Stubborn?”

“Magnificently.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“No, you’re not.” Watson’s faded burr thickened with amusement. “You’re smiling.”

James laughed, a real one this time. “I confess I am.”

At the door, Watson turned. “I hope your friend receives good news.”

James inclined his head. “And I hope yours continues to improve.”

Neither man realised that they had just wished the same thing.

 

Watson let himself quietly into the cottage. The first thing he saw was Sherlock, the second, the chair lying on its side. Sherlock himself had progressed approximately three feet across the room and was now gripping the back of another chair with both hands, breathing rather harder than the undertaking appeared to justify.

Watson folded his arms. “An expedition?”

Sherlock looked over with the expression of a schoolboy discovered halfway through climbing a forbidden tree. “I wished to sit by the window.”

“So naturally you attempted the crossing without assistance.”

“I judged the distance manageable.”

“And?”

Sherlock looked pointedly at the overturned chair. “I may have miscalculated.”

Watson crossed the room, righted the chair, and, without a word, slid the second chair into position. “There.”

Sherlock lowered himself into it with quiet relief. “I dislike being an invalid.”

“I know.”

“I dislike it intensely.”

“I know.”

Watson busied himself at the dresser, uncovering the meal Mrs. Fletcher had left before going home. Cold ham, fresh bread and cheese with some rather sad little pickled onions in a jar. There was also a pie large enough to sustain a regiment. It had Mycroft’s signature written all over it.

“I’ve been to see my expectant mother,” Watson said, slicing the loaf.

“How is she?”

“Considerably less alarming than her family imagined.”

“Good.”

“The child appears healthy.”

Sherlock nodded. “I’m glad.”

Watson placed a plate in front of him. “You’ll eat all of that.”

Sherlock looked at the generous helping. “I may require diplomatic assistance.”

“You’ll manage.” Watson poured them two mugs of cider and settled beside his friend at the adjacent table. “Oh,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “I had rather an agreeable conversation in the village.”

Sherlock reached for the bread. “Did you?”

“A remarkably pleasant Irishman.”

The knife slipped from Sherlock’s fingers, striking the plate with a sharp metallic crack.

Watson looked up. “Steady.”

Sherlock did not seem to have heard him. “…Irish?”

“Yes.”

“You’re certain?”

Watson blinked. “I’ve generally found it best not to argue with an Irish accent.”

Sherlock’s complexion had altered so completely that Watson set his own plate aside. “Holmes?”

Sherlock looked at him with unsettling intensity.

“John…” It was very rare that he used Watson’s Christian name. “Was he… all right?”

Watson frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Did he threaten you?”

“No.”

“Follow you?”

“No.”

“Attempt to learn where we were staying?”

“No.”

Sherlock was already shaking his head. “No, he wouldn’t.”

“What?”

Sherlock looked up sharply, as though he had spoken aloud without intending to. “You said he was Irish.”

“Yes.”

“And here because of… a friend?”

“Something like that.”

Sherlock’s voice had become almost inaudible. “What exactly did he say?”

Watson searched his memory. “Only that he’d come a long way because someone else’s welfare was weighing on him.”

Sherlock stared.

“He asked whether my own friend would recover.” Watson smiled faintly. “We ended by discussing friendship.”

Sherlock did not smile back: he had gone utterly still. Watson’s concern deepened. “Holmes… have I stumbled into something?”

After a long pause Sherlock asked, “What did he look like?”

Watson leaned back, thinking. “About your height, perhaps an inch taller.” Sherlock closed his eyes briefly. “Dark curly hair. He wore it a little longer than is fashionable. Not untidy, exactly. It had a habit of falling forward whenever he forgot about it.”

Sherlock’s hand tightened around the edge of the table. “Clean-shaven?”

“Yes. And very striking.” Watson laughed softly. “I remember thinking that if he’d been born without a brain, society would probably have forgiven him on account of his face. He had high cheekbones,” Watson continued thoughtfully. “A strong jaw, though not a heavy one. Brown eyes, I think. Exceptionally expressive, despite the fact he seemed determined not to let them be.”

Sherlock looked as though each word cost him something. “What else?”

“There was an air about him…” Watson searched for the right phrase. “…of a man who had once been full of energy and had lately misplaced it.”

Sherlock’s breathing had become shallow.

“He smiled often enough.”

“But?”

“It never quite reached the end.”

Watson looked into the fire. “It was curious.”

“How?”

“He listened with extraordinary concentration. As though every ordinary remark mattered. And when I mentioned my sick friend…” Watson paused. “I had the oddest impression.”

Sherlock forced himself to ask, “what impression?”

“That he understood rather more than I had actually said.” Watson thought for a moment. “He asked nothing improper, nothing intrusive. In fact he was almost excessively careful.” Watson looked back at Sherlock. “I liked him.”

Sherlock’s face had become almost bloodless.

“He struck me as…” Watson smiled sadly. “…a fundamentally decent man carrying an intolerable worry.”

For a long time there was no sound except the ticking of the little clock on the mantel.

Finally Watson said quietly, “Holmes?”

Sherlock looked down at the untouched bread on his plate. Very softly, almost to himself, he added, “…thank God he was kind to you.”

Watson heard the words. He did not understand them. But he was quite certain that, somehow, the courteous Irish stranger in the village had disturbed something buried very deep in Sherlock Holmes’s heart.

 

That night the wind worried gently at the cottage roof. Sherlock slept more deeply than he had in weeks. The medicine had quieted his body but his mind had chosen another route entirely.

 

He was standing in a library but it took him a moment to recognise it. Appleton Hall. Or rather, the room that had become Appleton Hall in memory and imagination. The library seemed familiar with its towering shelves, its ladder on brass rails, the great windows overlooking lawns that existed now only in recollection. Every fire burned exactly as it had on winter evenings ten years before. Every book sat in precisely the right place. Memory had been meticulous.

James was already there. He sat in one of the leather armchairs, a tumbler of whisky balanced on one knee. “You’ve redecorated,” he observed.

Sherlock looked around. “I didn’t mean to.”

“No.” James smiled faintly. “One never does.”

A second glass waited on the table. Sherlock picked it up; the whisky was exactly the one Mycroft had once hidden on the highest shelf, convinced his younger brother would never think to look there. James had found it in under three minutes.

“You still remember.”

“I remember everything.”

They drank and the fire settled softly. Neither seemed surprised to find the other there. Dreams have no need of explanations.

After a while James said, “You look better.”

“I’ve been told.”

“You don’t believe it.”

“I’m not accustomed to trusting mirrors.”

James nodded. “I understand that.”

Silence drifted companionably between them. Then Sherlock asked, “Are you real?”

James considered. “Does it matter?”

“No, not really.”

“I didn’t think so.”

They drank again. The room smelled of leather, old paper and peat smoke. It was, Sherlock realised, the smell of safety.

“I met a doctor today,” James said.

Sherlock looked up sharply. “In a dream?”

James raised an eyebrow. “I thought we had agreed not to interrogate dreams for consistency.”

Sherlock gave a reluctant smile. “Fair.”

“He was worried about a friend.”

“So was I.” James turned the glass slowly in his hand. “Curious, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“How alike friendship and love can appear from a distance. They both wait. They both fear. They both hope.” James nodded to himself. “And they both discover that another person’s suffering rearranges the furniture of one’s own soul.”

Sherlock laughed quietly. “That’s rather poetic.”

“I’ve been spending too much time with your memories.”

Silence lengthened from comfortable to ponderous. Then Sherlock asked the question that had apparently been waiting somewhere in his mind for years. “Did you ever stop loving me?”

James looked genuinely puzzled. “No.” The answer was so immediate that it scarcely seemed to require thought.

Sherlock looked away. “I wondered.”

“I stopped expecting.” James’s voice was gentle. “I stopped believing we would meet again as we once were. I tried to stop imagining futures. But love?” He gave the smallest shake of his head. “No.”

Sherlock closed his eyes. “I tried.”

“I know.”

“It didn’t work.”

“I know.”

Sherlock opened them again. “What, then, becomes of it?”

“Of what?”

“Love that has nowhere to go.”

James smiled sadly. “It changes its occupation.”

Sherlock frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It stops asking to be returned. It contents itself with just existing.”

Sherlock thought about that. “Does it?”

“For some people.”

“And for others?”

James looked into the whisky. “It disguises itself.”

“As what?”

“Concern.”

Sherlock gave a rueful smile. “That sounds dangerously close to friendship.”

“Doesn’t it?”

James looked up. “Perhaps friendship is simply the name we give love after it has surrendered all ambition.”

The words hung in the warm room. Sherlock found he could not answer immediately. At last he said, “And what of love that is neither found nor entirely lost?”

James leaned back. “Ah. The country in between.”

“Is there such a country?”

“I think we’ve lived there for ten years.”

Sherlock looked towards the windows.l; beyond them lay only mist. “You can’t build a home there.”

“No.”

“But neither can you leave.”

James nodded once. “It’s a curious place. No maps. No borders. Just two travellers convinced the other went on ahead.”

Sherlock laughed, though there was sadness in it. “You’re becoming philosophical in your old age.”

“I’m thirty-one.”

“So ancient.”

James lifted his glass in mock offence. “I shall require a walking stick by Christmas.”

Sherlock smiled: a real smile. It transformed him. James watched it with quiet affection.“There you are.”

“What?”

“I’d forgotten that smile.”

Sherlock’s expression softened. “So had I.”

The fire burned lower but neither moved to replenish it. It didn’t matter; this was just a dream. They were content simply to sit together in the library that memory had preserved better than time ever could.

Eventually Sherlock asked, “When I wake…”

“Yes?”

“You won’t be there.”

James looked into the flames. “No.”

Sherlock nodded.

“But…” James’s voice was almost lost beneath the crackling logs. “…if there truly is a country somewhere between finding and losing…” - he looked across at Sherlock - “…perhaps it isn’t the worst place in the world to wait.”

 

When Sherlock woke just before dawn, the dream was already dissolving. Only one sentence remained with him. He could not remember who had spoken it.

Love that has nowhere to go contents itself with existing.

He lay listening to the wind over the Downs and for the first morning in many weeks, perhaps months, the ache in his chest felt fractionally less like an open wound, and fractionally more like an old scar.

 

James woke in the inn before dawn. For one impossible instant, he thought the fire had gone out. He could almost smell peat smoke and old leather or the faint, dry perfume of centuries of paper. The smell of Appleton Hall.

Then the unfamiliar ceiling of the inn came slowly into focus. The smell of the sea drifted through the open window. Sussex. Not ten years ago, but now. He lay perfectly still, the dream clinging stubbornly to him, refusing to dissolve in the ordinary way. Usually dreams broke apart the moment consciousness arrived, leaving only disconnected images. This one had remained whole.

The library. Two armchairs. A bottle of whisky that had somehow migrated from Mycroft’s highest shelf into their glasses. Sherlock. Not the Sherlock of memory: not the laughing young man who had once sprawled upside down across the library sofa to prove that books were easier to read from impossible angles. The older Sherlock: thinner and wearier, his eyes carrying those shadows James had only glimpsed from a distance in recent reports.

James rubbed one hand across his face. He could still hear Sherlock’s voice. Not every word - dreams were mercifully imprecise.

…what becomes of it? And his own answer - or what he believed had been his answer: It changes its occupation.

He laughed softly into the empty room. “Trust me,” he murmured, “to start explaining emotions as though they were civil servants.” The laugh faded as he remembered something else - the feeling of extraordinary relief of sitting opposite Sherlock without needing to defend himself, without disguises. Just…talking.

He swung his legs out of bed and crossed to the window. The Downs were silver beneath the first light. Mist lay in the folds of the hills like water collected in green hands. Somewhere beyond them, hidden by distance and morning haze, stood the little cottage. He found himself wondering whether dreams ever travelled, whether two people separated by a handful of miles and a decade of silence might, just once, wander into the same remembered mental room.

Ridiculous. His rational mind dismissed the notion immediately. But he found also that his heart was slower to comply.

He rested both hands on the windowsill. “What did we say?” he asked the empty landscape. The dream had left certainty without detail. He knew they had spoken of love. He knew neither of them had lied but the words themselves had vanished with sleep; only their truth remained.

The church bell in the village struck six as James dressed slowly, carefully. Today, he told himself, he would do what he had done every day since arriving. Walk the ridge, keep well away from the cottage, be content with reports that consisted of ordinary things.

He walked.
He ate.
He slept.

How astonishing that a man who normally measured success in fortunes, schemes and victories could now find profound gratitude in the simple knowledge that somewhere beyond the next rise, another man had awakened to another morning.

As he reached for his overcoat, he paused. There was one fragment of the dream that had survived after all. Sherlock had smiled. The old smile, the one that had first undone him in Candlin College library so many years ago. James stood for a long while with one hand on the latch. Then, with a quiet shake of his head at his own foolishness, he stepped out into the Sussex morning, carrying the memory of a smile that had existed only in sleep, and hoping against reason that somewhere, on the other side of the Downs, Sherlock had dreamed of a library too.