Note 1: This is a standalone story that is also a continuation of sorts of Dark Corners, with the same iterations of Watson and Holmes. It's as plotless as almost everything I write, so not really a sequel or a second chapter. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you need to have read Dark Corners first.
"What was his awareness of you?"
No matter how he put the pieces together, the solution remained the same: Watson would be the next target. Perhaps not a direct hit, but their connection had already been tested once with what he suspected would have been unexpected results. They had a thorough and meticulous adversary who would want to confirm any hypothesis, so the next attack would approach from a different direction but with the same purpose: determining how she fit into the picture, and more to the point, how to remove her if the experiment's conclusion indicated removal would cause sufficient suffering. The question was, how good was his information? What did he know about them? They'd find out once it happened, but it would be preferable to have some way to prepare.
He'd been stalling on raising the topic for weeks when she brought it up. They had never discussed his investigation into Moriarty, but he knew she had been studying the wall herself and noticed when he added or moved items.
"That article on the Dominican cartel you put up last week," she said one afternoon when they were walking to the subway. "You think he orchestrated the kidnapping so that Rhys would come to you, as a test of your state of mind, your sobriety."
He glanced over at her as they walked; she was watching her footing as they hurried down the grimy stairs and did not meet his eye. She'd been postponing the conversation too, apparently. He didn't say anything but felt the wash of relief and a cold chaser of dread pass through his gut.
"A test of me," she continued. "He wanted to know about me, and what role I played since you didn't crash and burn as he must have expected when he set you up to catch Moran."
"Watson—"
"It makes sense; I'd want to know about me, too. The timing of Moran was too good, just at the end of my contract; he expected you to go through that without any support. And now he must be wondering 'Why is the addict sitter hanging around so long?' I guess I'm surprised there hasn't been another attempt already. Or— Has there been? Did I miss something?"
"No, I don't think we've crossed his path on any other investigations." He decided to act as if he had some reasonable measure of confidence in that statement.
"Yet." She looked over at him this time, now that they were standing on the platform waiting for the train. "Really? You're not trying to protect me, keep me out of it somehow? You really don't think he's done anything since Rhys?"
"I think he's still gathering information." He didn't want to say what information, didn't want her to have to consider the ramifications. Or worse, consider her options.
"Which do you think is most likely? Coming at me through family? Or the malpractice?"
As usual, he should have known she was already there. She hadn't even hesitated to say "malpractice" although it was the first time she'd referred to it as such to him. "Those are the two most likely avenues, I agree. Which one depends on—"
"No," she said, turning to face him as the train barreled into the station. "There's another way. You. He'll try to get at me through you."
When Watson made a comment that indicated she assumed Moriarty was familiar with "The Deductionist," several threads suddenly lit up in his mind and he turned away from her mid-sentence to begin realigning their nodes on the wall. The weaknesses that harridan had identified included impulsive expressions of anger (check), an over-sensitivity to abandonment and betrayal (check, check), and the use of intellectual prowess as a shield against emotional engagement (check, check, and check), all of which combined to produce a force field that repelled everyone else while allowing data to flow through his brain without interference. Eventually having no way to share what he knew or stop the influx would drive him to seek the annihilation she predicted, having distanced himself from anyone who might be able to intercede.
It was patently obvious how he had been manipulated then. He swallowed, still finding it almost impossible to speak about those events. He stared at the collage on the wall, not seeing it. "When— Two years ago, when— Two years ago."
She watched him, patient, waiting. He wondered how long she was willing to wait.
"We had a fight. I had been planning to move here for a few months; it was something we'd talked about. She had family she actually liked, in New Jersey. Many job prospects. There was nothing explicit discussed, but I had certain expectations. I made assumptions. And then, a month before, she told me she'd bought a flat in London. She was happy; quite excited about it. And I was stunned. I felt betrayed."
He hung his head, remembering the anger he'd used to mask the pain and fear and doubt her announcement uncovered, his sinking humiliation that of course she wouldn't want to be with him.
"I left for New York that night. A week later I wrote, apologizing and asking to talk even though she hated the phone. A week after that I texted her to ask if she'd received the letter; she responded with just 'No' and I didn't know if that was an answer to my question or a response to the letter. Now I wonder if perhaps the letter was intercepted? Certainly he must have facilitated her acquisition of the flat, given the London real estate market. Because the implementation of her murder was perfect. A perfect storm to destroy me, as it nearly did."
The kettle whistled, and she got up from the couch to tend to it. He turned away from the wall and walked slowly over to the chair by the library fireplace. He didn't like sitting there anymore since Rhys; he should probably rearrange the room to disarm the trigger. This time he sat there deliberately, as a reminder. No matter how much improvement, how far he'd progressed, the flaws remained. Ignoring them put others at risk.
A few minutes later she came back with the tea tray and set it down on the lock table.
"Why did you decide to move here?" That was not a question he'd expected her to ask, and it startled him into responding more truthfully than he might have wished.
"You already deduced it, months ago. Because of 'M'."
"Ah." She nodded, and he appreciated the fact that she refrained from being smug about it.
"I determined he might be American or had ties here, and there were certain indications in his letters and victims that made me suspect he would shift his focus. It was closer to a hunch than a true deduction, so I didn't share it with the police. Or with anyone; I didn't even tell Irene that was why I planned to move. But the fact that he chose to act once I was already here and she there tells me, now, that I was right and he felt threatened by that. So he hit back, targeting all Drummond's clearly delineated flaws. At the time, I responded exactly as he must have intended, self-confidence stripped away along with the rest. I believed I was wrong in every way imaginable and sought solutions elsewhere because I could no longer trust myself."
"Rhys."
"Rhys, yes, but others too. He had been my recreational contact in London, but I quickly required much more variety and quantity than he generally handled, and of course I sought out suppliers who could help me here."
"Here. You came back then? Wait. This happened two years ago. You had just moved here, then went back when M killed her. When did you return to New York after that?"
This was not how he wanted her to find out. The deception had started out as a defense against her questions, letting mistaken assumptions lie, mostly. Later, it didn't seem to matter, and then honestly he forgot she didn't know, that he hadn't admitted his pettiness.
"Soon. Soon after. Does it matter? I took the first steps toward the edge of the abyss from there. I was already on the way down when I got back."
"Why did you want me to think you had bottomed out in London?"
"At first I didn't want you to know anything."
She set his empty mug down on the side table hard enough to make the spoon inside it clatter and turned away to get the teapot. He could tell she was trying to keep him from seeing the pained expression on her face.
"You made certain assumptions, and I let them slide. As did you, with me, as I recall. About your eligibility to return to medical practice. We were neither of us particularly forthcoming. With good reasons on both sides; I'm not criticizing."
She brought the teapot over and filled his mug without sloshing it, a good sign, he hoped.
"Since our new arrangement, it's not been something I've often thought about. That is to say, I have not been consciously and deliberately concealing from you the details of my whereabouts over that year by design. If there's reason to address that time, I contact Alfredo for that now, not you."
She pinched her lips tightly together and stared into her mug. "All right," she said. He could tell it was not. By invoking Alfredo, he had inadvertently brought up her own checkered past, her career changes, her personal ethical stance to respect confidentiality and not pry.
"No — I don't mean you and I can't discuss it now." He took a deep breath and tried to let the exasperation over being misunderstood dissipate.
"I was back here by the end of May, when Rhys came through on his way to Thailand with his stolen funds. I don't remember much about his stay; I don't expect he does, either. My contacts at Scotland Yard had previously overlooked my occasional drug use, but after she— within a month I was high or unconscious more often than not and they cut me out. Not that they had anything I hadn't already examined; when I could focus long enough to process anything, it was clear that staying was pointless. So I picked up the original thread I'd found and came back here. And proceeded directly down the rabbit hole until I landed at Hemdale."
"Yes, okay. I understand all that. I don't understand why you didn't want me to know."
He couldn't explain. He couldn't bring himself to say his pathetic fantasy out loud, I wanted to pretend that I was a wrecked man in London, but here I was recovered. Redeemed. That was the story I wanted to believe. That's the story I wanted you to have, and Captain Gregson. That the mess was not only behind me but all traces of it were buried 3000 miles away as if it had never happened. When, in fact, I'm a fuck-up wherever I go.
There was a long pause. He had the uncomfortable feeling that his face had revealed more than he'd like, as he watched her expression shift from frustration to something closer to compassion. He looked away, at the cold ashes in the fireplace.
"I didn't want anyone to know," he managed.
"Mine was the opposite." He looked up in surprise when she spoke, once more not expecting the direction she took the conversation.
"I want people to think I can't be a doctor again because I can't be a doctor again. If I admit that there's an option, a choice, then I have to face my responsibility to choose. The last time I did that as a doctor, someone died."
"I have no idea what he might do with it, but he'll know you're self-conscious about your height." He had pulled everything off the middle two shelves of the bookcase next to the lock display and was separating the biological specimens from the geologic ones. He couldn't decide where to put the fossils. Watson had just come back from a run and was chugging a glass of water between hamstring stretches on the library floor.
"What?"
"Your ridiculous choice of footwear, Watson. It's obscenely impractical except for the purpose of making you appear taller. Not sufficiently taller to make any appreciable difference in the perception of your stature by others, however; therefore it is entirely for your own benefit."
"You might consider the intellectual exercise of trying to imagine what's it's like being literally looked down upon by almost every adult you meet."
"I'm sure it's very tedious. Nevertheless, you put yourself at risk every day because of it. If not because you wouldn't be able to react easily to an attack, then by falling and spraining or breaking an ankle, not to mention the chronic physiological problems that usually develop. I can't help but find that utterly foolish. It's as bad as avoiding self-defense training. Worse, actually, since you're deliberately handicapping yourself."
"Whatever. Fine. Put 'being short' on the weakness list."
"Your height is not the weakness, Watson! Having a lower center of gravity can be enormously beneficial in hand-to-hand combat. Even the fact that some people may think less of you for being short can be used to advantage. Your belief that it is, is the weakness."
She pulled a face, then frowned, and kept frowning. He decided it would be better not to inquire but wait to see if she spoke. He returned to his task, still unable to decide if he preferred his fossils with rocks or with bones. She finished stretching in silence and then trudged upstairs. A few minutes later he heard the shower start.
She remained subdued for the rest of the afternoon, but just after he decided to make a third grouping of fossils on their own she pulled the stool over to the lock table and sat down.
"I let it get to me," she said, voice low and a little strained. "I'm not as good as you. I know I'm just starting out, and I have a lot to learn, and I've made a lot of progress. But no matter how many squats I do, I'm not going to be valedictorian this time. And sometimes that discourages me and I feel like giving up. That's the weakness. My weakness."
"Well, we don't need two of me."
"No, one is plenty. Sometimes more than enough."
"And let's not forget you're very, very short."
"Shut up," she said, laughing. "My center of gravity could beat yours any day."
You are my center of gravity, he thought, glancing up at her as he inclined his head in acquiescence.
After putting the collections back on the shelves, after she'd gone to bed, he sat on the floor in front of the fire. You are my center of gravity. It was a troubling thought. Not because of any dependence it might imply; as he had told her, he was better with her, and the months since she'd decided to stay on only confirmed it. The additional ballast of the relationship may well be part of the explanation; no need to examine the reasons now. But it echoed her observation that he was an area of vulnerability for her, too. Obviously Moriarty could best attack by separating them somehow, undermining their partnership. Their strength was their weakness, that weakness their strength. It was all very poetic, but what to do about it?
She came into the study the next morning while he was having breakfast with his scanner and sat down in the wingback chair, hands cradling her coffee cup. "I want to ask you something, and I don't think you're going to like it."
"Wonderful." He turned down the volume but kept watching the frequency graphs on the monitor.
"It's about Irene. And the two of you. Ah. Together."
"Why do you want to ask this rather vaguely defined but not yet stated question?" He jammed a dripping spoonful of cereal into his mouth, expecting he wouldn't feel like eating much more, shortly.
"Because of Moriarty. Because I imagine he, like everyone else we know, will assume, or at least consider the possibility, that you and I are a couple. Romantically involved."
His eyebrows shot up. "Everyone else we know? That's a bit of an exaggeration. Captain Gregson—"
"Has already asked me about it. Twice. Bell referred to an office pool. Emily sort-of believes me but claims it's inevitable."
"Hmm. Alfredo did make some odd comments a while back." Another spoonful.
"Yes. So, my question is, how did you behave in public when you were together? If she was targeted because of her connection to you, how did they know about the connection? By reading letters or hacking your email? Or because it was clear to observers that you were in—"
"Involved. Yes, all right, I see your point. We were not... demonstrative. But body language would probably have made— I suppose it would have been clear to a skilled surveillant." He set the bowl down. No more breakfast today.
"And did she work with you on cases, like I do? Were you also partners like that?"
"No." He had to get up then to pace a bit and fight the urge to cut off her line of inquiry. Rationally, he knew it was valuable. But the crouching shattered remnant inside wanted to hide or flee. He realized the fingers of both his hands were dancing against his legs and he clenched them into fists.
"No, we were not partners in any sense. Perhaps— I don't know what we might have become. I suspect we were not headed in this direction," and he gestured with his whole arm to include her and what was now their shared study. "At this point I've spent far more hours in your company than I had with her." He let his arm fall to his side. "I don't know..."
She started to speak again, then stopped. After a moment she said softly, "I'm so sorry for your loss."
The words dropped through him like an anvil. Someone must have said that to him at the time; such a commonplace, meaningless phrase, but he'd never heard it spoken with sincerity. Not that he'd been in any condition, then, to perceive it. He could barely keep from staggering under its weight now.
"Don't—" He surrendered and bolted downstairs.
The sound of her boots coming down the stairs, just a little louder than usual, roused him from where he lay, face wedged into the crevice of the couch.
"Hey," she called out quietly, low enough to give him the option to pretend not to hear, if he chose. "I'm going to go get bagels, any requests?"
His neck was stiff. He felt tight and brittle; moving a bit would probably help. "I'll come with you."
"Oh! That'd be nice." She sounded pleased, and when he came through the door to the kitchen, she looked pleased and a little surprised but trying to downplay it. She opened the fridge and pulled out a white plastic container. "Do you remember when we got this cream cheese?"
His mind shuttled back, scenes of bagel-shopping flipping by like slides on a carousel. "Three weeks."
"Huh." She flipped off the lid and sniffed it. "No mold or funky smell, wanna live dangerously?"
"Always, Watson," he said.
END
Note 2: Sherlock's statement that Watson had already figured out why he moved to New York refers to my post-"M" story Almost a Science.