"If you can't trust anyone..."

Consciousness exploded through him, his left shoulder on fire. He tried to sit up and met an onrush of dizziness that knocked him down again, causing the pain to surge through his back. He rolled onto his right side, grimacing and gasping, and pried open his eyes, only to see Proctor's body on the floor next to him. The rest of the night's events slammed into memory, and he groaned and closed his eyes again.

He attempted to observe the pain dispassionately, noting its particular spectrum of sensations, not get caught up in the mind's narrative about agony and inferno and torment. Assign it simple descriptive terms without judgment like hot and burning cold and throbbing and "Fucking hell!" His voice sounded harsh and hollow under the room's high ceiling. Yelling helped for a moment but he didn't want to rely on it as a long-term pain management strategy. Nor was there much benefit in getting the neighbors involved.

He pushed up onto his knees and managed to crawl one-handed to the doorway, his left hand clenching a fistful of shirt and waistcoat under his right arm. Resting against the jamb, he determined the adrenaline-fueled race up two flights of stairs after being shot and then followed by— Followed by— Well, it all left him too weak to stand at the moment. His options for reaching the main floor seemed to be either falling down the stairs or scooting down a step at a time on his backside. At least there would be no witnesses for that indignity.

He was resting halfway down the first flight when he was stricken with the thought that Watson might already be gone.

She would not want to risk staying here after recognizing the brownstone's security had been compromised and not yet knowing Proctor was dead. She had so few belongings, had never really moved in. She could have come here directly from the station after he left and been packed and out in an hour. Is this why she had settled so lightly in the brownstone? Had she expected this outcome all along?

Despite the thickening haze of pain, his head felt clearer now, brighter. The viscous depression that had bloomed and smothered him the moment he saw the woman in that house was dissolving, and his thoughts were moving faster again, his brain more agile than it'd been in days. "I want to be sure I'm not kidding myself for staying with you," Watson had said, just before the answers he'd been granted obliterated everything else. He remembered now she'd been angry with him, but not surprised. She had been prepared for that betrayal. Maybe already packed, too.

At the bottom of the stairs he pushed up against the wall to stand and stagger to the bathroom for a towel to staunch the blood he could feel seeping down his back. The injury wouldn't allow his neck to turn far enough to see the wound in the mirror, but reflected in it he saw the smears of blood on the wall behind that marked his unsteady trail. He rinsed off his hand and scooped up a little water to drink, noticing with a flare of hope that Watson's toothbrush was still there. He let his head rest on the mirror, hips pressed to the sink, right hand awkwardly pressing the towel against his back. Three more deep breaths pushing through the pain, and then on to the next stage of the journey.

He was rewarded as he shuffled down the hall first by the glimpse of a shoe under Watson's bed, and then the half-full laundry basket sitting at the foot of it. Not knowing where she was would be the next worry, but at least this one could be put to rest. He paused just outside her door, eyes shut, the side of his face resting on the moulding. Once more onto his breeches, he thought, a little giddy perhaps, slumping heavily against the wall to descend the last flight by the same means as the previous.

Fifteen minutes later he was sitting by the fireplace pondering approaches to a conversation about reconnecting the brownstone's landline that wouldn't make him lose face. (There didn't seem to be any.) Even if his phone hadn't been smashed in his struggle with Proctor, he wouldn't have wanted to risk using it; it had most certainly been compromised, days, if not weeks, ago. The box of burners was on the top shelf in the closet two large rooms away. At the moment, that might as well be the moon. He would wait a few hours and if Watson didn't show, he'd... He'd figure something out then.

The pain ebbed and flowed irregularly, sometimes keeping time with heartbeat or breath then suddenly roaring and rearing up to smash through that rhythm. It kept him awake, at least, although shock and continued bleeding fought his consciousness doggedly. He didn't think he was in any immediate danger from the gunshot, but it could be said that his judgment was not performing at its peak.

"Watson, I would find it most helpful if you would return home immediately," he said aloud, wondering if speaking to someone who wasn't there might be considered an indication of mental instability. Surely if he knew the person to whom he spoke wasn't present, there was no problem.

"I don't know about that, darling," said the woman from behind him, pressing her hands on his shoulders as he started to bolt up and then had to growl as his left arm collapsed under him, and he fell half off that side of the chair. "Don't get up on my account," she said, humor in her new voice, and she let one hand trail lightly down his right arm in a caress as she walked around to the front of his chair. When he steeled himself to push upright and face her, there was no one in the room.

He squeezed his eyes tight and ground the heel of his right hand into his forehead and let out a loud groan. Moving his hand back to press his bad shoulder, he blinked forcefully and tried to clear his head. All his senses told him he was alone in the house. That his brain had other ideas was helpful to know, but it did not change the facts. He was alone, and it was imperative that he begin unravelling the tangled snare he'd been too stupid to recognize as such. There was little else he could accomplish in his current state. Already years lost—

Oh god

All of it, wasted. What a fool, how she must have scorned him, his weakness, his pathetic feelings. He told her he liked having a blind spot. He might as well say he got what he deserved, after that bit of willful idiocy. And then what followed, that horrible wailing wilderness of impotent rage and loss, never brought under control but quelled at least by heroin.

All that but the last. That, at least, he could say now, must say, should not be laid at her feet. He was an addict before they met, and she may have pushed him but he was fairly certain he would have found that bottom eventually, without her help. And if she had been real, he would have destroyed what they had then, all on his own.

-.-.-.-.-

The blare of a car alarm jerked him awake, to his relief. In his dream, the woman dipped her paintbrush into the pool of blood on the floor before applying it to his back where it burned like acid and a thousand tattoo needles. She wouldn't tell him what she was creating there, only warned him that if he didn't trust her, once he figured it out he better not use it to go looking for her.

He rubbed his face with one hand, licking his dry lips and wishing he'd consumed a lot more water when he was standing at the bathroom sink. Along with increasing thirst, there was rising nausea from the pain, which was also making him sweat, a positive feedback loop unlikely to resolve itself. It was just as well he couldn't fathom standing up again, as the side effects, as if the pain itself weren't enough, were triggering memories of heroin withdrawal.

He'd attempted it on his own once, when he got his first warning from Scotland Yard; he lasted eight hours. At Hemdale, the crescendo of anxiety, nausea, fever, sensory sensitivity, and unmediated guilt and grief reached its peak after 27.5 hours, at which point he believed he needed either the drug or a gun to end the agony. He took the only valuable item he had been allowed to keep with him, and after slipping through security he went to a pawn shop and sold his violin.

The first time Watson had granted him two hours on his own, he'd gone to retrieve it. He paced outside the shop for ten minutes, fearing he might be too late. Once he had it back, he couldn't bring himself to open the case, because he was no longer trustworthy. She found it in the closet a few days later, and although he allowed himself to be persuaded by her to take it up again, penance was still owed.

He'd brought himself to confess his relapse and was freed from the guilt of that transgression, to a point. After several months carefully rebuilding his relationship with the violin, his joy in creating music was more or less restored as well. But he still couldn't forgive himself for that deeper corruption, and defiling the violin remained a shameful secret.

He wished everything about his relationship with the woman could be another one. It was small consolation that they'd all been fooled at first, considering his entire professional reputation and personal identity rested on his supposed ability to observe things others didn't. And even when he did, finally, recognize the anomaly that brought into focus the other discrepancies he hadn't wanted to see, he still was woefully limited in the conclusions he drew. In retrospect, he thought she might have been insulted that he hadn't immediately realized who she was. Another small consolation.

However, the instant the woman had referred to trust, he saw Watson, clearly.

Watson rolling her eyes; Watson pulling down his lock display; Watson asking questions; Watson wanting to know. Watson trying to sleep in but not trying too hard, wearing the shirt he'd thrown on her bed inside-out until she noticed some time after the second cup of coffee, swearing under her breath on her way to change in the only women's room at the station which was two floors down. "Accidentally" tipping his coffee cup into his lap as she slid back to her seat and muttering again when she saw he'd emptied it prophylactically while she switched her shirt around. Sharing the same gleam in his eyes when the suspect's sister-in-law inadvertently revealed the name of the victim, arriving there with him half a beat before the suspect's lawyer cleared her throat.

Watson dodging his efforts to frighten her off, herding him through the obstacle course of post-rehab frustrations, backhanding his insincere disrespect, accepting his apologies, appreciating his frequently unspoken appreciation. Deceiving him in order to stay, deceiving herself in order to stay.

Staying.

"I don't make meaningful connections," he'd told her, just that one, only, ever. It was even more true, now. That one was— Well, it wasn't, more to the point, and never had been. He released a ragged sigh, the pain in his shoulder seeming simultaneously to expand in a searing burst and contract hard enough to crush the bone.

As for Watson... He'd no more made that connection than he'd made the breath in his lungs. It happened; it was given to him, and he gave it, reflexively. That was the mystery. He hadn't observed it happening and it had so far resisted any attempt to discern how or why.

-.-.-.-.-

He sat up, letting the hot poker of pain be the point of balance, eyes closed, swaying slightly in the chair, and trying to imagine what Watson was doing. She would have told Gregson and Bell he'd gone, although probably not that he'd been at the station that evening. She would have assembled the few documents they had on Proctor as the strongest lead. She would eventually tire of trying to see everything on the surface of the conference room table and decide to go elsewhere. But where? Possibly a hotel room, which she would pay for in cash. There she would tack up the materials on the wall and continue to look for links and missing pieces.

He knew now that whatever she'd find would come to a dead end, literally, upstairs in the brownstone. So where else might she go? She'd return to the connection Proctor had with the empty house and try to go over the little evidence they had there. Gregson would have requested more financial information, but that would take time. So Watson would turn to the woman and try to find out more about how she had been taken, how the crime scene had been staged, how the blood had been produced. More dead ends, more wasted time. Just come home, Watson.

Now the pain was laced with a deep hot itch and he squirmed, gingerly shifting his left arm to ease the tension. A mistake that made him gasp as the monster in his back tried to tear its way out of his skin again. Obviously Watson had wisely decided to spend the night somewhere else. It had been several hours now, and he would have to make a decision soon. He wasn't sure he could control his breath sufficiently to use his whistle to call a cab, but collapsing into the street in front of one might get its attention.

He thought he was hallucinating again when he heard the key in the lock, but when she stepped through the inner door to hang up her coat he was sure and happiness spontaneously combusted in his chest.

Note: title from

"I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life"
The Truro Bear and Other Adventures, 2008
by Mary Oliver

Love, love, love, says Percy
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.