Title: Whatever Remains (1/3)
Characters: Holmes, Watson (but not as we know them)
Rating: K+ for some vague blood and violence, etc.
Word Count: 2937 (this bit)
Warnings: AU. Odd AU. Probably many cliches, including the old "eliminate the impossible" line.
Summary: Written for Challenge 010 at the LJ community watsons_woes, the challenge being to create and entire AU. I first created elements of this AU in my crossover novel (also on this site), However Improbable, back in November of 2009; if you've read it, then you no doubt will see where I'm going with this. For the rest...let's just say I didn't have time to do the two ideas I had that I really loved for this challenge, and so had to fall back on very familiar territory - in two universes. More than a crossover, but less than an entire AU. Written in a hurry because I've been writing on a Haiti charity fic and waited until the last second (almost literally) for this. Not really a part of However Improbable, but spun-off from it.


My friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, as readers of the Strand magazine and Beeton's Christmas Annual will know, is an extraordinary person. His immense strength of mind and body, coupled with his almost inhuman intelligence and unswerving instinct, propelled him into fame at an alarming rate in the mid to late 1880s, and by the time of his miraculous resurrection (of sorts) in the year 1894 he had become a household word across our nation and the Continent.

However, at the time and date in which I met the man, he was no more than a struggling amateur in the field, rooming in a dilapidated tenement in Montague Street, and fighting valiantly against the constraints of finances and society to find his place in the world. As I was myself a weak, crippled Afghan veteran with strange gifts which I could share with no one and resources that came short of meeting my wishes for a state of living, when we were introduced in January of the year 1881 we both naturally found it amenable to combine forces, and thereby lodgings. A week later found us both safely ensconced in a comfortable flat in Baker Street, a considerable improvement upon both our separate dwellings previously, and soon thereafter we settled into a fairly stable custom of existence.

My friend was punctual, fastidious, brilliant, mysterious – all the traits that might attract the attention of a house-bound, bored, retired army surgeon. While he was withdrawn and inscrutable, barely giving any response save what courtesy demanded of him, he was both kind and considerate in his own oddly unemotional way, and before long our enforced acquaintanceship flourished into a friendship that neither of us ever mentioned but both knew existed. He never spoke of his emotions, but I needed not the words in order to see his compassion and gentleness toward me and his clients.

Though I was greatly pleased to discover such a friend in the cesspool that is this wicked city of London, due to the secrets I harboured I found myself unwilling to pursue an intimate relationship with anyone, despite my need for attachment to another. This was nothing new to me; I had grown up with many friends as a small child due to my abilities but then realized as I matured how very different I truly was compared against those around me. I had learnt at a very young age how to keep my own secrets, and not even the world's only private consulting detective could pry them from me even had he wished to.

Which he did not; never have I seen a man more pleased with his own thoughts rather than interested in the business of others. Sherlock Holmes was, to all he met, an extraordinary man with extraordinary talents and perceptions; and yet he spoke of himself in an oddly self-deprecating fashion, as if he were not himself responsible for his brilliance and as if it were of absolutely no consequence. He shrugged off all compliments regarding his intelligence, did not flaunt his superior physical strength even when given deserved opportunity, nor did he seek to draw attention to himself in any way. He required no credit for solving his cases, nor did he ever even do more than offer me a quirky half-smile when I protested the Yard or the papers taking the glory for his accomplishments.

"The work is its own reward, Doctor," he would say with that twist of the lips, "and I neither require nor desire public acclaim for my pursuits."

This I found it difficult to grasp, though I knew for fact that the man was speaking the truth; he was as eager to remain out of the public gaze as it was possible to be, though I could not for the life of me tell why such a talented man had not an ego to match his brilliance.

Little did I know at that time, in those blessedly innocent early days, that Mr. Sherlock Holmes harbored as deep and incredible a secret as I did myself.


The first year of our acquaintance passed relatively uneventfully. Though thoroughly unaccustomed to pain of all kinds, the intense, never-subsiding agony that radiated from a permanently damaged shoulder and Achilles tendon was a new experience to learn to live with, and my frustration with my inability to heal myself grated on my nerves more than any oddity of my fellow lodger's ever could. Minor injuries I had seen and dealt with upon plentiful occasions; but this…this weakness, and inability to do for myself what I had been previously able to do due to my damaged condition, was no less than maddening. The knowledge that this physician could not – would never be able to – heal himself as he did and had done others, galled me; and my condition, and the pitying looks that accompanied it as I walked, was thoroughly distasteful.

Surprisingly enough, it was my morose companion who was the kindest of all those with whom I came into contact. Holmes was incredible in his knowledge of what to say and when, when I needed silence and when an offer of assistance would be completely mortifying. He anticipated my needs, physically and emotionally, and he was more compassionate without pitying than any other of my acquaintance. Had I not known the man better, I should have thought that he spent an inordinate amount of time studying my moods and habits, so attuned did he seem to be with my very thoughts.

Naturally, this pleasant quality more than made up for his oddities; some of which were quite bizarre in nature. His fascination with weaponry, for instance, and the way he seemed to know a good deal about chemistry and physics but absolutely nothing about basic childhood astronomy; his knowledge was immense, vast, and yet about very simple things he appeared to be entirely clueless. I caught him one day doing intrinsic trigonometry problems in his head, and yet the next he quite embarrassedly asked me what the devil was I talking about – what was a gramophone?

These quirks were quite endearing, and afforded us quite a bit of amusement at his expense over various meals and walks through the city. Holmes had an insatiable thirst for exact knowledge, and a memory unrivalled by any I have ever heard of; and he seemed to be never happier than when he was exercising his formidable brain. He seemed to need little sleep or food, eating irregularly or when I insisted, and preferred to sit silently and contemplate before the fire rather than take to his bed.

And so it was that many were the nights when, unable to dream because of my own pain or else the phantom of his, I would descend the steps silently from my bedroom, and find him with the window of our sitting room open, gazing silently up at the smog-brushed skies, and I could feel the sadness hanging about the room in a lingering malaise. On these occasions, he always turned before I had entered the room, and while he said nothing nor attempted any expression whatsoever, we would spend the rest of the night talking by the dwindling fire. When I asked him once why he seemed so…sad, there was no other word for the feeling, he only offered me a quick smile and reminded me that he was prone to fits of depression, and that I did much to help stave off those despairing hours of the night.

And so, in this desirable fashion, a year passed. We renewed the lease on the apartments, Holmes's business began to pick up slightly, and I started to grow accustomed to the idea that my main career might possibly be over, but that I might still be of good to those around me. I began volunteering at charity hospitals, and though the work was draining, to the point where one night Holmes insisted I cut back or risk losing my health, I was more satisfied with using my abilities in the intent they were supposed to be employed. I followed his request, and began to pace myself accordingly, though I of course never had an idea when I was as close to collapse as he seemed to believe I was. Holmes began taking me along on a few of his cases, the less dangerous ones, and together we began to form what I sensed was a close partnership if both of us could drop the barriers we had carefully placed up to protect ourselves.

As the weeks passed, I began to relax in the belief that my secret was safe from Holmes. Even his abilities could never know the knowledge I hid deep within my soul, for there was no conceivable way they could locate and extract that information. There were times when he suspected, I know he suspected – but I knew too that he could have no idea of what he was attempting to deduce, as it was not something that he or anyone else in this world would have ever encountered. Only one other man suspected what I truly was, and he had been unconscious when I betrayed myself to save his life; no one in the world knew, and no one ever would know.

Until that night in late 1882, when I not only betrayed my own secrets, but discovered that the man I had been living with for nearly two years held one of his own, deeper even than mine, and darker.

The case itself was of no great importance. A smuggling gang – Indian spices, perfumes, and silks; lucrative enough to make them dangerous, but not enough that they wished to kill outright. They were armed only with daggers of varying lengths, none so large as the khukri I had faced in the East. Holmes had somehow sensed their approach to our hiding place, and I knew they were intent upon drawing blood; together we were ready, and we fought them off in short order before calling the police.

To my surprise, Sherlock Holmes bolted soon after the constables arrived, with a hurried request that I explain matters to them. The nervousness fairly radiating off the young men preoccupied me enough that I did not notice much else save that my friend's face had washed to a sickly shade of pale green before he scurried off into the nearest alley, and so I reported to the best of my abilities and then took a cab back to Baker Street as soon as I was in a more populated district.

Holmes had warned me never to traverse the East End alone, but I had and did when necessary to see to a patient; I had no difficulty sensing malevolence, evil, lust when they approached, and was always fully armed. Only once did someone make the mistake of attempting to jump me in a side street, and he regretted both that movement, and most of his movements, for the next few days after.

But this time, I dared not linger; something was wrong, and though I knew somehow that it was not life-threatening it was yet a threat. The drive to our flat seemed interminably lengthy, but at last we did arrive. Tossing a half-crown to the cabbie, I bolted up the steps and into the hall as fast as my bad leg would permit, and after reassuring a twice-worried Mrs. Hudson that I was simply in a hurry to discuss the situation with Holmes I started up the seventeen steps.

His increasing unease which lingered in the hall suddenly cut itself off as I opened the door and hurried in, worried about what I might find.

"Holmes, are you all right?"

"Ah, Watson," came his voice from the depths of his armchair, turned toward the fire. "You really should not hurry so up those stairs, my dear fellow. And yes, I am perfectly well, thank you."

"Then what the deuce was that all about?" I growled, allowing the door to slam behind me in my irritation; he wished me to believe that he was perfectly all right and I would have none of it.

"I needed to ascertain that no others of that gang were making off with their smuggled goods, my dear fellow; I hope you did not mind my asking you to wrap up the case for me? You are quite capable."

By this time I had rounded the settee and was settling gingerly into my own chair. Holmes, across from me, was offering me another one of those half, almost hesitant, grins of impertinence that usually served to disarm my instincts.

Now, however, I would not be dissuaded.

"Suppose you stop trying to fabricate a story for me and actually tell me the truth?" I suggested quietly.

He gave no reaction, true to his nature, but blinked slowly at me. "Why would you think I am lying to you, Doctor?" was the reply, toneless save for curiosity.

"I do not have to think; I know you are," I retorted. "The same way I know you are also lying about being uninjured," I added for good measure when he would have protested.

This earned me a startled look. "I know for fact that I have given you absolutely no indications that I am anything but fully functional, Doctor." His eyes suddenly narrowed, pinning me to the chair in sudden dismay. "You could not possibly know that."

"Call it physician's instinct," I hedged, but with less bluffing force than I attempted to have. "Let me see your arm."

"No." The answer was cold, almost frigid – no tone like he had ever addressed me before in, and it froze me in my tracks for a moment. But only a moment.

"Holmes, you are hurt. I am a doctor. Let me look at it; those knives were filthy," I remonstrated, and reached for the neat bandage that I could now see peeked out from under his bedraggled sleeve.

"I said no, Doctor!" he snapped, and with the whip-like crack of his voice came his hand around my wrist, clenching it in a grip more painful than a vise; I actually felt a bone grind against another and could not block the burn of pain that shot up my arm.

I had made no sound, no grimace (for I was fully capable of dealing with more agonizing sensations than that without reaction), and yet his eyes suddenly widened in horror, and he dropped my wrist as if it had set his fingers alight.

"I am sorry, Watson," said he in a low tone, his eyes darkening as I stared at him, completely puzzled. "I did not intend…you merely took me by surprise."

His stumbling over words, with his reluctance to admit my assistance…and his unaccountable realization that he was injuring me (I could already see bruises forming, the imprints of fingers around my wrist)…something was not quite right here, though now he was obviously controlling his actions and thoughts as I could not truly sense anything but unease from him and the pain from his arm.

"Holmes." He looked up at me, warily and obviously about to bolt if I made the wrong move. "Let me see it; I assure you I have seen – and possibly done – far worst in the East."

"It is not that I doubt your skill, Doctor," he replied instantly, with a disarming smile that did not take me in for a moment, "merely that I have already cared for it. It will be nothing but a memory by morning, provided I am able to sleep undisturbed."

"Holmes." I placed a cautious hand on his bandaged arm, and this time he did not attempt to either resist nor prevent me.

The wound was a deep slash, but he had bandaged it well enough that I could see no bleeding on the white linen below my fingers. It had not quite stopped bleeding, however, and so I spared a moment to induce clotting from the throbbing area – it no doubt would become infected if not kept sterilized properly.

But when I tried to remove some of the pain from the injury, I found an iron grip again around my wrist and I was hauled roughly to my feet before the fire. Holmes's stormy grey eyes bore into mine in unspoken accusation – and that alone should have given me my answer to the question that took my breath away.

No man should have been able to know what I had tried to do.

No human should have known.

"Well?" I managed through my clenched jaw. "Are you going to break my arm, or simply try to for the next few minutes?"

He released my wrist, slowly, cautiously, and I saw reason light back into his eyes. The accusation was still pouring from him in waves, but now it was tinged with curiosity…and something else, something I had never thought to see or sense from my sad friend.

Hope?

"Watson…" His throat worked for a moment, and I watched with fascination as he brought himself back under the iron control he wielded as a defensive weapon.

"You should not have been able to tell," I stated shortly, wary of any further outbursts. "Tell me how you could."

To my surprise, he did not attempt to lie to me again; possibly because he knew it would not work, possibly because whatever his secrets, he was tired of keeping them. I could not tell which, unless he lowered his defenses as he had a moment ago.

Holmes looked at me, and bringing his thin fingers together pressed their fingertips against the opposing ones in a gesture I had observed signified unease. "I shall," he finally spoke, fixing me motionless with that almost hypnotic dark gaze, "…if you will tell me what you are."