To Make Us Relics

by Gater101

Each time Watson leaves, a little part of him stays behind in Baker Street. It's part of the reason he keeps coming back. Companion to Knew Not What We Loved, Nor Why.

Title: To Make Us Relics
Summary: Each time Watson leaves, a little part of him stays behind in Baker Street. It's part of the reason he keeps coming back. Companion to Knew Not What We Loved, Nor Why
Characters: Watson, Holmes, Mary, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade
Pairing: Watson/Holmes, Watson/Mary
Rating: T+

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Each time Watson leaves, a little part of him stays behind in Baker Street. It's part of the reason he keeps coming back. The first time he had left had been a product of his fear that he had become too dependent on his companionship with Holmes, his fear from Holmes' safety and Holmes' decision to celebrate their first anniversary by getting so high that he could barely remember his own name. He'd checked into a hotel, using a combination of an Afghani name and a derivation of Holmes' surname (he thinks it might have been Anoushirvan House, or something of the like) and when he'd eventually cooled down (and lost a week's pension at the card tables) he returned to Baker Street. Holmes had promised to try and cut down on his cocaine use and get more sleep.

He lasted four days before Watson found him with the syringe dangling from his limp finger tips, the remnants of his almost manic scratching littering the walls.

When Holmes had disappeared for three months, Watson had thought he would lose his mind. He scoured the continent, the newspapers – anything he could get his hands on for any word on Holmes' whereabouts, waiting each morning for a ransom note or, more gory, a severed limb to arrive in the post. Not once did he consider that Holmes had simply forgotten about him. So when he returns to Baker Street from another futile interview with Lestrade, he's both shocked and appalled to find Holmes sprawled out on the floor, his ratty housecoat draped over his shoulders, weeks worth of newspapers scattered around him, the Morocco case lying with its lid flipped open, hidden half under the sofa.

"Watson! Can you believe that Nestings is only coming trial? After three and a half months after we caught him!"

Watson stared for a moment at the sight of Holmes (fit and hale, if high as a kite) for a long moment before he pivoted on his heel and picked up his cane from where it had fallen against the wall in his initial shock. He'd made it as far as Lestrade's home on the other side of town before he'd given in to the pain rushing through his leg. The Inspector had been surprised but understanding and had taken Watson in with nary a question and Watson is sure the Inspector enjoyed being in possession of knowledge that Holmes was not.

It had taken him over a week to return to Baker Street, and even then it was only after he'd met Holmes in the Punchbowl and enjoyed a round or two of boxing with him. They'd barely made it up the back stairs to Holmes' burrow before they'd been tearing clothes from one another and Watson had taken Holmes roughly and quickly against the grimy wall.

"You won't put me through that again, Holmes, do you hear me?"

Holmes hadn't made much sense when he'd replied but Watson knew the point had gotten across. They'd been sharing a bed again the next night and Watson had only questioned his mental stability a few times before he'd decided that he would most likely always come back to Holmes, simply because Holmes had his heart and he kind of needed that to survive.

So when Holmes begins abusing the blasted drug again, using it almost every night for two months solid, he begins to feel like he is fraying around the edges. He can see the man he loves slipping away from him little by little as the cocaine takes another piece of him. Holmes no longer crawls into Watson's bed at night because he doesn't sleep and wanders around the sitting room for hours on end; he no longer tries to reach out and touch Watson as much as he possibly can because he is too busy trying to hide the shakes of his withdrawal.

Watson watches him degenerate but he cannot bring himself to admit to even himself that he was just another one of Holmes' addictions. That when the cocaine had him in its grips, nothing outside of Holmes' mind mattered to him; that when the high wore off, Holmes sought another distraction from the genius of his mind.

It's why Watson has silently cursed the drug for years – he knows it to be the only other source of Holmes' pacification. Even if it's not right.

But that night, when he comes home from seeing to Colonel Taylor and finds Holmes unresponsive on the floor, the syringe still nestled in the vein of his arm, he snaps. He pulls the syringe from Holmes' elbow, hauls the man up onto the sofa and makes sure he's breathing before he tells him he can't live like this anymore.

"I cannot stand by and watch you kill yourself any longer. And you will not stop; you cannot, even if you wished it. Which you don't. And I cannot live like that Holmes; I cannot sit back and watch the man I love destroy himself so... I-you..."

He can't think of anything else to say so he pushes himself to his feet and gathers his hat from where he tossed it on the floor in a rush, places it on his head and walks slowly and steadily down the seventeen steps to the bottom floor where Mrs Hudson is standing grasping the railing, her eyes wide as she waits for Watson's news.

"He will be fine in a few days. I..." Mrs Hudson only nods. "Could you have one of the boys bring around a suitcase of things for me? I will be at The Royal Eagle, I think. I shall send details."

"Oh, doctor. Surely it's not so bad?"

"I simply need some space, Mrs Hudson. You know how he can be."

Mrs Hudson looks ready to argue but Watson mollifies her with a hand on her forearm before he excuses himself. He cannot stay in the house for very much longer without doing further damage to Holmes' body.

He actually met Miss Mary Morstan around about the second time he'd left Holmes. He'd been in Regent's Park, reading a newspaper on the bench when the young boy she had been governing had chased the puppy's ball under the bench he was seated on. At the time, she had been engaged to be married but he had come to understand that the man in question had died in Switzerland of consumption. It was a sad story but she was a strong willed young woman who had bounced back quickly.

And he supposed that she was attractive, in that way that he could appreciate any fine piece of work. He was sure she knew of his inverted nature, especially in the way she tried to understand why Holmes' actions bothered him so much.

But on that day when he had bumped into her at the market, he had felt the rekindling of that natural attraction that had been dormant for the eight years he had known Holmes. It was surprising but not entirely unpleasant – for he had been sure that Holmes had ruined him for anyone else.

And it was then that Watson made his decision, as they walked between the market sellers and the gypsy fortune tellers; he had to leave Holmes, for good. His life had become too centred around the eccentric detective, his dependency almost as destructive as Holmes' dependency on the cocaine.

He had known that Holmes hadn't truly understood what he'd been saying. Certainly, Holmes had understood in that abstract sense that he understood anything and Watson will admit that he was both hurt and more than a little frustrated by Holmes' lack of emotional reaction to his leaving. He was sure Holmes had rationalised it in his mind, that he was hiding behind that rationality but what Watson wouldn't have given in that moment for a flicker of hurt, of devastation...

But Holmes was Holmes and Watson should have known better.

So when he figures out Holmes' schedule for paying the hotel room and dropping off just enough money for Watson to get by, Watson makes sure he is out so he doesn't need to see his former lover. It is simply easier that way. He knows that the staff murmur about the situation – about a man paying for another man to stay in a hotel room but Watson doesn't really have it in him to take any of them aside and explain that he simply cannot be trusted with the money, or that they didn't know how impossible Sherlock Holmes was to live with.

So when he meets Mary in Regent's Park again for the seventh time in five weeks, he cannot help but agree with her hinted at proposal of marriage. He knows it will hurt Holmes; that he is hurting himself but he has come to feel affection for Mary Morstan and he knows he can make her happy. He knows she will love him, consistently and as a man should be loved.

He makes provisions to move back into Baker Street, to reopen his usual practicing hours in an attempt to save money for their new life together.

Holmes hurts him as soon as he steps through the door; not by his words but by the fact that his pupils are blown, that his face is pale and he has lost at least half a stone, if not more, in weight. The sitting room walls are covered in his scrawl – the one particular to his moments of deepest darkness. Then his mouth opens and loquacious shards of the sharpest metal pierce at Watson's heart. Holmes' casual dismissal of Watson's words, of his confession of his intention to marry, cut him to the core.

He leaves before he says something he will regret; before he threatens to administer a lethal dose of Morphia to Holmes, just to end both of their suffering.

When he re-enters the sitting room the next morning, the glass has been cleaned up. The mail has been opened. There is a pot of cold coffee on the table along with Holmes' half eaten breakfast. On the table there is a note and Watson calls for breakfast before he reads it.

Coming and going we
Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals ;
Our hands ne'er touch'd the seals,
Which nature, injured by late law, sets free.

My dear fellow, another young woman has gone missing. I shall await you at the Yard.

Yours,

S.

Watson should have known Holmes would not make it easy to leave a fourth time.