Title: Understand One's Part
Author: Felicia Angel
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock Holmes or Doctor Watson, they belong to ACD (who in my opinion didn't torture them enough and thus it's his fault for all this). The poem belongs to Leonard Cohen.
Notes: I almost got out of doing SH/JW slash on a large-scale version (not just mentions), but then the Slash fairy found some good ones and I had to oblige when she and the Torture Muse got together and picked on me. Then at random I picked up the Selected Poems 1956-1968 by Leonard Cohen (because I can't get a ticket to see him live unless someone wants to help me by adding in $300 per ticket…it's worth it for a Monday or Tuesday night, I swear it is!) and found a poem that kinda went with what the two muses has tossed at me, so…here it is.
And I'll put up the poem if you want me to…it might not seem like it goes with the story but I swear it kinda does! It will, anyway.
-Watson-
It was shortly after Mary's death that the notes appeared. My fragile hold on sanity had been tested earlier, when I investigated the goings-on at Wisteria Lodge and believed, as I did, that all of it was with Holmes. After that and with help from both Mary, Lestrade, and even Hopkins, I was able to recover enough, only to fall back towards despair when she got sick again, this time fatally. Lestrade had quickly engaged me as a police surgeon and did what he could to keep me busy, while my neighbor that I had, before, placed more of my patients with while out, now took every chance to call me on even common cases or to push them my way in return. This, along with some of the published stories that I had written about the adventures Holmes and I had investigated, helped a little.
Then the notes came, and I found myself hard-pressed to take the advice I had once given Holmes about taking care of himself.
The first was simply a few words, stating that it knew what I had done in India. I was uncertain what it was talking about, since most of the time I had been sick and the rest of the time I had moved about a little too much and tried to stay a little active so as to be sent back with a new group, or with Murray, but instead was discharged and sent back to England. As there was no return address with the note, I tossed it into the fire and forgot about it, instead working through a problem of a dead man in a locked room that Lestrade was having problems with, as well as attempting to pen down one of Holmes' cases before realizing I had run out of cases to get permission to write, other then one in particular.
I did not want to write that case.
The second came after I saw Colonel Moriarty's letters proclaiming his brother's innocence, as well as blaming Holmes for many things, including slander. Slander! Holmes would never do such a thing! He would never resort to such things unless he was certain! Hadn't he shown that during the Culverton Smith case, where instead he had lured the man into a confession? Hadn't he shown it time and time again, to me and others, where he would never pick out the wrong person but instead search and search, until he collapsed both mentally and physically but the people responsible for the case was caught? He threw himself into danger, so long as a type of justice was served!
As I started the story, almost waving off lunch as I had breakfast, I saw the note and read it, freezing as I read it. The one name was enough for me to burn it and scatter the ashes thoroughly before, with a heavy hand for many reason, I took up my pen and wrote, sending the story and others off to the publisher the next day before once more throwing myself into work, not noticing the change of days until Lestrade forced me home and my neighbor ordered me rest and food.
How could anyone know that name? We were so careful, so very careful! Both of us knew the dangers involved if we were found out in our inverted, deviant care for one another that most took as friendship, and while I was discharged he had been sent back to another division, taking care of people there and, I learned shortly after I joined Holmes in our shared lodgings of 221b, dying in battle. But neither of us had breathed a word of it to anyone!
I had known, for a long time, that I was a deviant and I hated fate for giving me such a damning secret. I did enjoy the company of women, but it was with men that I always found more pleasure, always enjoyed more, and I hated myself for it. In the army, while it was frowned upon in some cases it was also viewed as something that, so long as it was never brought before a court could be done. Units held a few that would be together and stay together throughout battle, fighting harder and longer if they knew it could help the other. Murray, I believed for a time, was like that but I never found the courage to ask him, and Maiwand took that from me rather quickly. I had met one person, while I recovered, who also felt like me and who had pushed me into it, realizing my feelings beyond friendship and offering to relieve some of it before I left. I had been grateful for it and hurt by his death. Then Holmes had invited me along on a case, on our first, and then another, and another. I had written it up and he had scoffed at it, stating I was too romantic and it should've been a study for logic, not a story. I had always argued the point with him, for he wrote the monographs and I wrote stories, and challenged him more then once to write his own. But he never took it up, instead taking up cases and then introducing me to my Mary, the one woman I had met that I cared for as much as I cared for the other companionship. I was happy to have her, but then when I moved away from Baker Street and Holmes, when he had left me alone for a few weeks, I found myself wishing for him, wishing to take up another case, and growing sick from it. She had understood and allowed me the time to go with Holmes, though had she known that she was actually starting to cause a strange and unnatural affection to grow in me for Holmes…
I should have been tossed out of the association I cherished so much, and she would have looked at me with disgust.
Then Moriarty, and our race across Europe to keep Holmes safe, and his letter and—my heart ached too much, and my head hurt as I had pushed my dinner away before looking at the third note. Yet another mention of my deviant lapse that I burned, and from it I had such a horrid dream! I wanted nothing more then to find this tormenter and ask for peace.
Holmes, who has returned from the dead, who has asked me to return to Baker Street with him! Oh, how I wish he knew how much that washed away some of the pain that had become a daily thing, like I was decaying from the inside-out, from me! I would tell him if he wouldn't laugh at me, or if not laughing then he would dismiss it, or even gain from it some knowledge of my true feeling for him, feelings I cannot afford to tell him or else all will be lost.
Instead, I put out a small request to sell my practice, glaring at the two notes there to receive me before instead considering starting to move and handing over my patients to the new doctor that might come in. I throw myself back into work, not realizing my exhausted state until someone is shaking me awake, causing me to blink as I see Holmes has arrived to take me to dinner as Simpson's, something he had promised me shortly after his testimony and giving the VonHerder's air-gun to Scotland Yard.
"You don't look well, my dear Watson," he stated, putting a hand to my forehead as I sat up, looking at the report that I had half-finished, as well as the two glaring notes that I knew could end up in Holmes' hands, if his curiosity was the same as before.
"I'm fine," I muttered, standing and waving him off, "I was just tired."
"Perhaps we should put this off for a few days," he suggested, looking at me with a worried expression, mirroring the same one I had seen when I awoke after his abrupt appearance in my consulting room that had caused me to faint for the first time in my life.
"No, no," I said, ensuring I was presentable before getting my coat and hat, "I'm fine now, I'm sorry if I worried you."
Despite the look, he seemed to accept it, or not want to deal with my arguments, and so we took a cab there, having a pleasant dinner before returning, I bidding him a good-night and returning, after he was gone, to work and fixing the last few records.
It was well past two in the morning when I finally finished and, knowing I couldn't put it off, I opened the two notes.
The fire was out, so instead I tore them up and left them there to be burned in the morning.
I had wondered, after Holmes returned, if I shouldn't just tell him the truth and ask him to help me find the origin of the notes, but my cowardice and need for his company always stayed the words, as my mind easily conjured up the various ways he could toss me out or hurt me, none of which I cared to become reality.
And I wouldn't have, had the cursed things not followed me to Baker Street.
I had slept late, as a nightmare had plagued me during the earlier part of the night and I had to go downstairs for something to help me sleep, and as a consequence was late for breakfast, though it was still warm enough to eat. Holmes was looking through the post, handing me some of my correspondence after he opened it for me, and asking if I was feeling better. I was not in the mood to ask how he knew that I had been feeling poorly when he handed over yet another of those accursed notes. I didn't realize my reaction was so visible, but then again Holmes was good at reading people and, before I could stop him, picked it up and opened it.
I lost all appetite, looking down at the rest of the pack and shifting through it before Holmes' voice made me start, it was so full of anger. "How long have these…things…been coming to you, Watson?"
I looked up, surprised his anger was at the note and not me. Perhaps he thought it was simply slander upon my person. "Since Mary's death."
"You didn't tell Scotland Yard that someone was harassing you?"
"They don't come frequently, or at least not so frequently, and most were just…it's nothing, Holmes, someone just dislikes my writing."
He looked at me, his grey eyes demanding me to be serious about it. "Watson, this states some damning things about your…past associations. It even insinuates that you are a deviant."
I look down, not wishing to meet his eyes. "I know what they say, Holmes."
"And you never told anyone? Never attempted to find out who it was that is sending you these notes?"
I shook my head, standing and walking over to my seat. "What can I tell someone? That a person who leaves me a note with my post believes I'm a deviant? That the paper is a common source and has no other marks then block letters? I dislike them but I can use some of your methods, and I know that the person sending me these notes are taking care to cover their tracks." I did not wish for him to keep asking me questions. I didn't want him to realize I was a deviant, that this note was telling the truth about me and that, had he not been able to read me so well then he might have never known…
Holmes frowned, instead rising and saying, "Be that as it may, I am going to find the person responsible and deal with them."
"Holmes," I started, but he waved me off, and I realize that, despite his resurrection, he was still trying to work and, without such a case, a black mood might start.
I resigned myself to it, going to change before he started on more questions. When I returned, he only asked me about the notes and their contents. I omitted the full truth of my association with the mentioned man, and prayed silently that Holmes would not push the issue before going to writing up the account of our capture of Moran and Holmes' return. Holmes stopped his questions and instead turned to analyzing the note, leaving once during the day and returning with a mild look of triumph on his face, though it diminished when I didn't ask what he'd found, but instead held out a second note, this one the first real threat I had received.
Holmes will drop the case, or else you shall suffer even more
He looked at me as I looked out the window, and I saw from the reflection that he was more then a little worried for me. "Watson…I cannot drop it."
"I know," I told him, "and Mrs. Hudson saw no one, I already asked her."
Holmes went to ask anyway.