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“Sir,” the voice was saying, low and panicked, a child’s voice. “Sir, doctor sir, wake up.”
John Watson resisted the voice, poking finger, and tug on his arm. He didn’t have the energy to open his eyes. Just a few more hours, he figured, and he’d be done. No more worries and no more fears – not of the insidious Floods, of Alpha thugs who ruled and killed for pleasure, of this dark metropolis so unlike the London he’d known as a youth. Oblivion was a distant speck of light inside his eyelids, a warm promise of nothingness. A violin song in the distance, a siren of memory. Much better than the grim reality of the fever in his bones, the thick syrupy feelings of his lungs, the shudders that worked through his atrophied muscles every few minutes.
“Sir!” Another sharp poke. “You promised you’d never go away.”
Recognition of the voice made him force his crusted eyes open. “Sam,” he ground out in a hoarse voice. “You should be taking care of your mother.”
The eight-year-old was short, skinny, barely any cleaner than John himself, but there was an Alpha fierceness in his eyes that had impressed John since Sam was a little baby. A cold breeze off the Thames ruffled Sam’s hair.
The boy insisted, “You should be coming home with me. Mother said so.”
“All those antibiotics I got for her,” John said, but the rest wouldn’t come together. His clinic. His patients. All lost now, thanks to the murky waters that destabilized the foundation of the tiny building he’d worked in all these years.
“Yes, she’s better,” Sam said, pulling on John’s arm. “You’ll be better, too.”
John swatted Sam’s hand away. His terribly dry throat made speaking difficult. “I’ll infect her all over again.”
The boy hesitated, but didn’t retreat. He’d been born immune to the Crud. One of the few lucky ones, if lucky meant watching your father die and leaving you to care for your mother on your own.
A wracking cough worked up John’s throat and made his head ache more. He tilted his head up. The sliver of sky above was black in the absence of city glow and smelled like chimney ash. Who had electricity anymore? Not Westminster. Not Southwark. The waters had seen to that. He couldn’t remember what month it was, but it didn’t matter. Spring, perhaps. When the sanitation crews came around, they’d cremate him and bury the ashes unnamed and unmarked. No one would care about the exact day of John Watson's death.
The violin lament called to him. Unfinished, unrealized. He remembered walking down the stairs, away from Sherlock’s music, unwittingly stepping into a trap and ultimatum.
Sam’s eyes were teary. “Sir, I can leave you.”
“You must.” With the last of John’s energy, he dug into the pocket of his vest. He had only one thing of worth left in his life. A minor thing to a boy, but it had once been an immeasurable treasure to John. “Take this, and remember me. You’re a good boy. Go on, now.”
He pushed the small amber pendant in Sam’s eyes. Patted his shoulder, and then closed his eyes and turned his head away.
Sam sobbed once, then run off with his small feet splashing in puddles.
John closed his eyes and listened for the violin. Life was a hard habit to break, but he was ready.
#
Sherlock Holmes ignored the dank smell in the air as he stood over the victim’s body. He resented Mycroft for dragging him out of the warmth and comfort of Baker Street for the pedestrian murder of a minor government official.
“Not minor, Sherlock,” Mycroft said coldly. “A direct advisor to the Prime Minister.”
The body of a middle-aged Alpha was splayed on the sitting room floor of a flat only blocks from the latest high tide marks. The shabby, squalid surroundings were out of keeping with the advisor’s posh clothes and shoes. The bloodstain on the rug made it clear he’d been killed here, one bullet straight through the abdomen. It had not been a pleasant death.
“He met someone here,” Sherlock said, bored. “Someone he already knew. You can see by the ink stains on his left hand that he was carrying a newspaper. Odd for a man of his position. Only the lower classes still read on paper. Wrapped inside it was something he intended to sell or trade. The deal went wrong and he was killed for it.”
The police officers standing behind Mycroft glanced around for the paper or its object. Imbeciles. Sherlock had already ascertained neither was present in the sitting room and would not be found in the flat.
Mycroft asked, “What was he selling, Sherlock?”
“Not state secrets,” Sherlock said, because that was all Mycroft really cared about: crown and state, the shambling wreckage of England as the waters rose. “Something material and valuable enough to risk his job. Who lives here?”
“His estranged sister,” Mycroft said.
“She’s not sick,” Sherlock said. “Witness the absence of crumpled tissues or ineffective folk remedies. But she asked him for medicine. Begged him. He brought it expecting only her, but there was a third person present. There was a scuffle and the sister and killer fled.”
“How can you be sure?” Mycroft asked.
“I’m always sure,” Sherlock said. “Call me when you have a true mystery. I’ll be busy elsewhere.”
He swept toward the door. No one stopped him. Outside, the chill breeze made him turn up his collar. No traffic in the street, only broken-down or burnt vehicles that would never operate again. Trash piled on sidewalks would never be picked up. No pedestrians, of course. Anyone unfortunate enough to still live in Westminster’s formerly posh streets would be safely tucked behind closed doors and drawn blinds, conserving the batteries in their lanterns. It was a terrible and depressing place, and Sherlock wanted away from it immediately.
“You,” he said to the police officer guarding the cars. “You’re to take me home.”
“Bit busy, sir,” the officer said, one hand gripping the collar of a squirming, filthy child.
“Put me down!” the boy said imperiously. “I’ve got to get help for the doctor!”
The boy kicked at the officer. Sherlock had no tolerance for misbehaved urchins and said, sternly, “You’re not going to persuade anyone to help you that way.”
“He says a friend of his is ill,” the officer said, exasperated. “I told him everyone is ill. Emergency services won’t come down here; he’ll have to take him to the hospital like everyone else.”
Sherlock didn’t point out that the hospitals were no help. Overcrowded, understaffed, undersupplied. The King and royals had their own private facilities, that puppet of a Prime Minister as well, but this child’s friend was just as likely to die in a hallway as he was to die down here in the muck and dark.
The boy snapped, “I can pay for help. I’ve got something!”
A small object fell from the boy’s hand and rolled across the wet pavement. It caught the light of the police cruisers with a peculiar orange glow. Sherlock bent down and plucked it up. An amber pendant with a bee frozen inside it. His fingers went numb and a curious rushing sensation filled his head.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, his voice a distant murmur.
The boy twisted angrily in the officer’s hands. “It’s mine.”
Sherlock strode forward, grabbed the boy by the lapels of his grimy coat, and hauled him up eye-to-eye, Alpha-to-Alpha. He growled, “Tell me where.”
The child blanched, but rallied quickly. “My friend who needs help!”
“Show me,” Sherlock commanded. Then, to the officer, “You, bring your car. If I get lost or murdered it’ll be on your head.”
Free at last, the child sprinted down the street with Sherlock close behind. Navigating the dark, narrow passages was tricky, but Sherlock always carried a small light. He kept the pendant clutched in his right hand and tried not to follow his thoughts to where they wanted to take him – straight into a river of pain and regret, to a place that threatened to drown his heart all over again.
“Here!” the boy called out.
How ridiculous. The child was standing in an alley over a collection of old clothes and rubbish. There was nothing here but the smell of death and decay. But then Sherlock’s light caught a hint of flesh, of beard stubble and closed eyes. He moved closer on shaky legs. He didn’t dare look closely into the face, but he couldn’t stop himself, either.
He went to his knees with the crack of bone on asphalt. Reached with trembling fingers to touch the man’s neck, sure that no breath or pulse would be found.
“He’s a doctor,” said the boy with a trembling voice. “He helps people. Dr. Smith.”
“No,” Sherlock whispered. “His name is John Watson.”
The boy’s tone turned sharp. “Is he yours?”
Sherlock felt a thin thready pulse beneath the fevered skin. His vision turned watery, but there was no time for sentiment or emotional breakdowns. He checked John for broken bones or gaping wounds, then scooped him up in both arms. John was as light as a feather pillow and as heavy as ten years of regret.
“Yes,” Sherlock said fiercely. “He’s my Omega.”
#
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Mycroft said severely as the police car carried them toward Upper Baker Street. “You’re neither a physician nor a nurse, and you’ll likely kill him.”
“You already took him from me once,” Sherlock snapped. “I’ll kill you if you try again.”
This was no idle threat. Crammed in the back seat with John awkwardly tugged close, Sherlock’s blood sang with the urge to protect and defend. He would reach into the front seat and throttle Mycroft and the driver both if they didn’t take him home where he could nest and care for his mate. Or perhaps he’d snap their necks. He knew how. He would do it without regret. The rational part of his brain recognized that he should make no rash decisions, but he was an Alpha and this was the Omega he’d pledged himself to so many years ago. Frail and insensate, John breathed raggedly against Sherlock’s coat.
“Your accusation is misplaced,” Mycroft said, sounding almost sullen.
“You stole him,” Sherlock replied. “For mother. Because you deemed him beneath our family status. How is that status now, brother mine?”
Mycroft’s gaze flickered to the officer at the steering wheel. “This conversation can wait.”
Sherlock’s tart reply to that was forestalled by John coughing against his chest. The wet hacking was weak, ragged. His eyes fluttered open and Sherlock shifted him minutely to help him see his surroundings better.
“John.” Sherlock’s voice cracked on the word. “Can you hear me? You’re with me, John.”
For a moment John only stared at him. His expression was disoriented, disbelieving. Finally he said, “Dead.”
“Neither of us is deceased,” Sherlock said firmly. “I’m taking you home.”
Dirty fingers reached up to touch Sherlock’s jaw. The movement was clumsy but it made Sherlock’s breath catch. So many years lost between them. Such a yawning chasm of emptiness and loss. He would not permit anything ever separate them again.
“Not dead?” John asked faintly.
“Pay attention, John,” Sherlock said. “I’m taking you home and you’re going to receive medical attention. I forbid you to die.”
John’s eyes closed, but he flattened his dirty hand against Sherlock’s chest and left it there until they reached Baker Street. The police officer, who had wisely not said a word the entire way, opened Sherlock’s door and said, “Can I help you carry him?”
Sherlock bared his teeth. “No.”
The sidewalk was slick, and it was awkward extracting John from the back seat, but finally Sherlock was able to carry him up the seventeen steps, get the door open, and tuck him into his unmade bed in the corner bedroom. John looked very small against the dark sheets. Sherlock stripped off his awful clothing and tossed them into a pile that could be burned later. Beneath the garments, John’s body was brittle and thin. Bruises marked his legs and arms. Sherlock pulled off his own coat and kicked off his shoes and then climbed into the bed as well, tucking John against his side and pulling the blankets up into a cocoon.
The officer, hovering in the doorway, asked, “Should I call a doctor?”
“He is a doctor,” Sherlock said tartly.
“But I don’t think – “ the man started.
Mycroft appeared, and with an imperial gesture cut short the officer’s meddling. “Your concern is appreciated. A physician is on the way, as is my car. You may return to your duties.”
Sherlock’s nose was full of John’s smell – awful, metallic, all wrong. Nothing like the scent he remembered from so long ago. Nevertheless he dug deeper against him and inhaled as deeply as he could. Nothing about John’s current condition could stop the primal need to memorize him and shield him from the world that had done so much wrong to him.
Mycroft stared down at them both disapprovingly. “Sherlock, Dr. Watson needs to be seen to. Not smothered.”
Sherlock ignored him. All that mattered were John’s raspy breaths, and the tired circulation of blood in his body, and the bruised looks of his eyelids. Sherlock silently begged him to open his eyes again and speak any words at all.
“You are quite hopeless in this state,” Mycroft muttered, and turned away.
He must have gone for the landlady, Mrs. Hudson. She arrived several moments later with a tea tray and a concerned look. She was an elderly Omega who had suffered Sherlock’s eccentricities years, for which he was grudgingly grateful.
“Your brother says you need – oh,” she said, flustered. “You took a mate.”
“He has always been my mate,” Sherlock replied.
“He looks like he needs more than hot tea,” Mrs. Hudson replied.
“The tea is for me,” Mycroft said, returning with a short, dark-skinned physician in tow. “Sherlock, this is Dr. Barrington, and he’s to see to Dr. Watson. Will you move aside?”
Sherlock tugged John tighter. “No.”
Dr. Barrington stepped forward and said, calmly, “I mean your Omega no harm, sir. I have medicine to help him.”
Mrs. Hudson put the tray down. “He does sound wheezy.”
Sherlock clenched his jaw as he worked to separate his Alpha instincts from his intellect. “Touch him inappropriately and I will bite your hand off.”
Dr. Barrington nodded and carefully examined John with a stethoscope and other instruments. John woke under the deft handling and went tense as if to fight him off, but Sherlock wrapped a quick arm around him.
“Easy, John,” Sherlock said. “He means well enough.”
John blinked at Sherlock. “You’re not here.”
“I most certainly am.”
“Then I’m not here.”
“You are here and never leaving,” Sherlock vowed.
John continued to look skeptical, but he relaxed enough in Sherlock’s arms that Dr. Barrington was able to continue the examination. The prognosis was no less than what Sherlock expected – the bacterial lung infection often referred to as the Crud, with all of its accompanying symptoms, was too common to mistake for anything else. Treatment at home could be arranged, but Dr. Barrington suggested hospitalization.
“No,” Sherlock said immediately. “Bring the medicine here. The nurses, the supplies, whatever’s necessary. Make it happen, Mycroft.”
“You can not simply bend the world to your will,” Mycroft said darkly.
“I can bend this corner of it,” Sherlock retorted.
Mycroft stared at him. Sherlock stared back. Although his pulse pounded erratically in his veins, Sherlock made sure that his expression reflected his resolution. He would do anything, absolutely anything, if it meant the difference between John’s life and death. He would wreck London if need be. Trample over any obstacle in his path, including Mycroft himself.
Eventually Mycroft gave a pained sigh and retreat into the sitting room with the physician. Mrs. Hudson brought more tea, then introduced herself to John and persuaded him to lift his head to drink some of it. Sherlock had to support him and when John reached for the cup his trembled too violently to hold it. John drank thirstily while his gaze darted from Sherlock’s face to Mrs. Hudson to the furnishings and back again.
“Not too much, dear,” Mrs. Hudson warned. “You’ll be sick all over the bed. I’ll get you some warm wet cloths, and you can clean up a bit.”
Sherlock took the cloths. He wiped away the dirt and grime with meticulous attention, memorizing every small scar and change since the last time they had been naked together. John watched him with heavy lidded eyes, obviously fighting off exhaustion.
“Real?” he asked, catching Sherlock’s hand.
“Utterly, completely real,” Sherlock promised. He squeezed his fingers. “You’re home, John. You came back to me.”
John looked stricken instead of reassured. “It’s too late.”
Sherlock lowered his mouth to John’s ear and promised, “As I breathe, you breathe.”
When he drew back, John’s eyes were wet. “We can’t be together. Your brother . . . “
“Will pay for what he did,” Sherlock vowed. “He separated us with lies and deception at the behest of my mother. She confessed it on her deathbed, John.”
John closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Sherlock kissed each eyelid. “Never apologize again.”
The medicine and equipment arrived in spurts: oxygen tanks, small vials of antibiotics whose contents had to be extracted and injected into bags of saline, needles and cannulas for the crook of John’s arm. A visiting nurse arrived to supervise the infusions. Mrs. Hudson brought up some old but clean pajamas that had been her husband’s before he died. John drifted in and out of awareness, fretting if Sherlock wasn’t within easy reach. The bedroom was chilly, and the heat hadn’t worked for a month now, but Mycroft brought in a man who got the old furnace working and the radiators rattling.
Except for quick dashes to the bathroom, Sherlock stayed in bed with John through the night, the next morning and all the afternoon, sharply noting each and every medical procedure. Whenever John was awake, Sherlock urged him to drink soup or juice or tea. John asked some of the same questions repeatedly, but the doctor assured Sherlock that confusion was probably the result of exhaustion and illness, not brain damage.
"Although nothing is certain until you take him to hospital and test him," Mycroft suggested pointedly.
Sherlock scowled. "You're not getting your hands on him."
It was a small mystery to Sherlock as to why Mycroft had apparently established a temporary office in the sitting room, complete with computer monitors and an assistant, Anthea, who obeyed his every whim. John certainly wasn't fit to travel anywhere, and Sherlock wasn't going anywhere without him, so why the constant vigilance? Usually Mycroft delegated some minion or other when he wanted to keep a close eye on Sherlock. It wasn't as if Mycroft cared about John's health, so there was no reason he shouldn't return to his office and ruin the lives of other people.
"Perhaps I feel guilt," Mycroft said after Sherlock poked at the matter.
Sherlock stroked John's forehead and frowned at the persistent fever. "The floodwaters of the earth would recede before that happened."
“I did what mother asked.”
“It’s no less despicable that you did it on orders, Mycroft.”
"I am capable of mistakes," Mycroft admitted, although his voice was heavily laced with the unlikelihood of such. "I've reconstructed Dr. Watson's last ten years. After an admirable stint in the army -- "
"Which you forced him into," Sherlock said venomously.
" -- which he entered voluntarily, he returned here and has been treating the poor ever since. His patients held him in high regard and he saved innumerable lives with medicine no doubt obtained from the black market. He escaped my notice only because he worked under an alias."
"He escaped your notice because you assumed he'd always be cowed by you," Sherlock said.
"It would have been prudent for him to remain overseas," Mycroft said. "Yet you’ve walked these streets for years and never sensed him nearby."
Sherlock had been agonizing over that very failure since the moment he scooped John up in his arms. The second worst day of his life had been Mycroft dragging him off to treatment for his misadvised addiction to cocaine. He remembered playing the violin while John went to the store for crisps. It was the very last day he’d seen John. The worst day was two weeks later, when Mycroft announced John had been so thoroughly disgusted by Sherlock's chemical weakness that he'd broken off their relationship and moved away to the company of a former lover, Jim Moriarty, in a region of Scotland safe from the rising waters.
"He specifically asked that you make no attempt to contact him," Mycroft had said. "Even the most patient man can snap given your misbehaviors, Sherlock. He'll be in touch about his things at a later date. If you care anything for him, leave him to his happiness."
He'd been a fool for believing Mycroft. A damned imbecile. He'd waited, heartbroken but hopeful that John would indeed call and they'd fumble their way to a new beginning. But the phone had remained silent. All that had come Sherlock's way were the muddy waters of the Thames and the dissolution of the city under crises.
Now he had a hundred promises to make and keep, but even under Sherlock’s constant vigilance, John grew no better. His skin remained papery thin with a gray tinge to it, and his lungs sounded like they were underwater, and by the fourth day he was no more capable of rising than he'd been on the first day. Sherlock's temper worsened in the absence of improvement. He snapped at Dr. Barrington and the nurse and Mycroft. He found himself reluctant to leave the bed for even a moment, in case John blinked his eyes open and found himself alone. He demanded a tablet from Mycroft so that he could research Omega medicine on the fractured remains of the internet, and when that proved insufficient he had the assistant send out for books from the few remaining sellers in the city.
"John, John," he would murmur into his Omega's ear. "We have decades to live out together and I forbid any premature departures."
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, John hummed notes from an old song. He would open his eyes and stared at Sherlock as if memorizing the new lines in his face. He wouldn't speak, but he laced his fingers between Sherlock's and held with a grasp that was weak and clammy.
When John's oxygen saturation rate began to fall, Dr. Barrington switched him from a nasal cannula to a full mask. Sherlock hated the mask for hiding more of John's features. Although John had been eating small morsels of bread or pudding, his interest in food waned until he would take nothing. He drank tea that Mrs. Hudson brought him but soup made him vomit on the blankets.
Mycroft's sharp gaze grew ever sharper. "Sherlock, he needs hospitalization."
"Needles and tests and strangers," Sherlock scoffed. "The mortality rate is atrocious. Ask me to take a knife to this throat instead."
The seventh day started badly. John had a very restless night, tossing his head in agitation and speaking to people that Sherlock didn't know. One of them was named Sam. Mycroft's eager assistant identified him as the child that had brought Sherlock to John in the alley. Sherlock had nearly forgotten the child entirely, and couldn't see any significance to him.
"You should send for him," Mrs. Hudson said.
Sherlock didn't look up from the medical textbook he was devouring. Beside him, John was quiet except for his raspy breathing. "Whatever for?"
"He's a friend," Mrs. Hudson said. She'd taken to the corner armchair of Sherlock's room, content to knit away the hours and be of occasional good use. "Every invalid needs a friend."
"He's not an invalid!" Sherlock snapped, although certainly John was. It was utterly ridiculous how John's condition was forcing Sherlock to illogic and nonsense.
"Is he John's child?"
"No," Sherlock said grimly. He was sure John would not have done something as stupid as to give birth to a child in this dire day and age. Surely he'd never fallen in love or affection during their time apart. Because Sherlock certainly had not. There'd been no one, absolutely no one, to fill the ripped hole in Sherlock's heart after John's departure.
But the prospect of John having a child wormed its way through Sherlock's suspicions. He asked the eager assistant to round up the urchin. He arrived a few hours later in her company, and it was immediately obvious she'd bribed him with a new pair of waterproof boots.
Sherlock had no patience for subtlety. "Is this your father?"
"My da's dead," Sam sat himself on John's side of the bed. He seemed unconcerned that Sherlock was curled up on John's other side, or that they had an audience in Anthea and Mrs. Hudson. Sam shook John's arm. "Dr. Smith! Dr. Smith, sir, time to wake up."
John did wake, though his gaze remained dull and voice barely audible. “Sam. I told you to tend to your mother.”
“You’re supposed to get better,” the child said. “What’s medicine for, if it doesn’t get you better?”
Seized with a terrible suspicion, Sherlock accused Mycroft and Dr. Barrington of providing placebos. Mycroft said, “Don’t be delusional,” and Dr. Barrington said, “I would never!” and there was a scathing row about it, leaving Sherlock unconvinced. He said to Mycroft, “You know what will happen if he dies,” and left the threat implicit.
“We all die,” Mycroft said, looking and sounding weary. “Don’t hasten yours or mine to augment the tragedy.”
On the night of the seventh day John wouldn’t rouse, and Sherlock grew frantic, and Mycroft said that a hospital would only be a cruelty now. Sherlock demanded that Mycroft leave the bedroom. The nurse, too. Even Mrs. Hudson. He curled up next to John and whispered in his ear, stroked his skin, kissed the corner of the plastic mask. He hung the amber bee around John's neck. John didn't stir.
The intolerable pain of it drove Sherlock to his feet. He paced the room, grabbed his violin from its stand, and screeched the bow across the strings. He almost smashed the thing against the wall. But the saner part of him found the worn initials carved into the back, a reminder that John had given it to him their last Christmas together. He lifted its small, precious weight and tried to play something angry, but his fingers were trembling too much.
He blew out a breath, closed his eyes, tried something calmer. His control was still unsteady, but he managed the first few notes and more after that. He didn't even know what he was playing – some old song, sad and forlorn, a lament for himself and John and for the years they could have filled with nights of passion and days of companionship. John deserved so much more than what Mycroft and Mother and Fate had dealt him. He deserved to live and grow old in his measured, methodical way, helping others with a small smile and sure hands. He deserved a better ending than being discarded like rubbish in some alley, victim of the same ailment he’d healed in so many.
The song jerked its way out of Sherlock’s heart and fingers. His face was wet, but he wasn’t actually aware of crying. After the last note, he forced his eyes open.
John was propped up one elbow, his eyes sharp and aware for the first time in days. He’d pulled away the oxygen mask and his breathing was raspy.
“I never,” he said, and mumbled the rest.
Sherlock took the violin to the bed and crawled almost on top of John. “What did you never, John?”
“The end of it,” John said. His free hand covered Sherlock’s on the neck of the instrument. His fingers squeezed strongly. “I never heard the end before.”
Sherlock blinked his vision clear. “This is not our end, John.”
“I didn’t think you were real.” John abruptly eased back down to the pillow and blinked at Sherlock. “Really not dead?”
“No.” Sherlock bent and kissed him to prove it. John’s lips were dry and cool but he returned the kiss, and Sherlock felt John’s mouth curve into a smile. Not a smile of surrender or final peace, but a smile that promised heat and wickedness to come. When Sherlock pulled back to look closely at him, John’s eyes were clear and warm for the first time.
John said, “Keep playing,” and Sherlock did.
The end