A/N: Hello all, thank you for the reviews! The quotes at the end are from the song "Help Is Round the Corner" by Coldplay. Sorry for drawing these chapters out a bit (probably should have made it one-shot as originally intended), but I do hope to wrap things up soon! Thanks again : )
II: A Desperate Urgency
"Do you know, Watson," said Holmes as we sat together in the gathering darkness, "I have really some scruples as to taking you to-night. There is a distinct element of danger."
"Can I be of assistance?"
"Your presence might be invaluable."
"Then I shall certainly come."
~ the adventure of the speckled band
Rolling himself over to his knees, Holmes deliberately planted his hands on the ground for balance. How long had he been lying there? An explosion, nightmarish and surreal as the memory already seemed, there had been an explosion. Watson shouting his name with a desperate urgency, holding up his hand, an impossibly bright conflagration igniting the night behind him as Holmes came to a sliding stop. Watson's form being catapulted into the air to make some unseen landing just as he himself was spun round by another fiery blast. Falling to the ground and hauling himself back up and away, finding Irene . . .
Holmes glanced about as though suddenly made aware there was a reality occurring in his immediate vicinity.
"Irene? Irene!"
Spotting Miss Adler several yards off, Holmes scrambled to where she lay. She had a few scratches and bruises, nothing ostensibly grave, but the dread that had taken hold of him was steadily rising with each passing minute.
You led your lamb to slaughter.
He knelt in close, placing a tentative hand on her ash-covered shoulder.
"Irene."
Stirring at the voice, she opened her eyes and met his expectant gaze with a look of confusion. "Sherlock?"
Holmes exhaled heavily. "Oh, thank heaven."
Irene sat up with a start. "Sherlock," she repeated, taking in the demolished landscape before returning her eyes to his. "Are you all right?"
"Yes. Are you?"
"You're hurt," Irene contested, her hand going to the left side of Holmes's face, only to be brushed away.
"I'm fine."
Realisation suddenly dawned on Irene's face. "Watson?"
Holmes gave a brisk shake of the head. "I have to go find him."
"I'll help you."
"No, Irene, I think you should leave at once. Blackwood may have escaped, but either the men who helped plant this device or the police, in their own due time, will surely be along to sort through the pieces." Holmes's lip curled infinitesimally on the word 'pieces'—a reaction Irene decided Holmes was scarcely aware he'd allowed.
She returned Holmes's gaze, debate evident in her expression. "Will you be able to manage on your own?"
"I should hope so," Holmes responded, his look of feigned, or perhaps not-so-feigned, offence mitigated somewhat by the grime and blood smeared about his face.
Irene was still clearly shaken, but she moved to stand, Holmes close behind her.
"I'm sorry," she said, rather unexpectedly.
If any surprise was met by this apology, Sherlock did well to conceal it. "Be safe," he chose to mumble in response.
Miss Adler's features wrinkled and lifted at the same time, the effect ruefully appreciative. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"And thank Watson again for me."
"Of course."
Irene smiled, but her eyes shimmered a bit in the dim light. She nodded quickly in an apparent act of recovery. "I hope he's all right."
Holmes nodded back. "Yes. Yes, I'm sure he will be."
The plaintive curve of Irene's lips stretched broader still, and she turned to go. Holmes let his eyes linger on her as she disappeared into the gloom, finally bringing them to rest on the smouldering ruins that surrounded him. The knot in his stomach had only worsened, and he allowed himself a brief moment to collect himself, hands on knees as he surveyed the devastation.
Well, then. Time to locate.
No sooner than he began to move, Holmes knew he had lied to Irene. Any of the blows recently bestowed upon him in the ring could hardly compare to the reeling state in which he found himself at present. Concussed, most likely, after hitting the ground in the face of the explosion he last recalled seeing. Irene had noticed something straight away, though, and putting his own hand to where hers had been, he brought it forth for inspection and peered at the wet darkness that shone there on the sooty fingertips.
A few bumps and scratches, no matter—the friend who'd ensured his injuries were in fact limited to those would almost certainly be found with more.
"Wat-SON?" Holmes put a hand to his throat as if to quell the pitiable excuse for a shout he'd somehow let slip. "Wat—" a cough interrupted him, the smoke-filled air threatening to steal his breath completely.
Three more will die, and there is nothing you can do to save them.
While not intended to include Watson, surely (moreover, the three already had), the latter half of Blackwood's prediction mocked Holmes directly as he pressed on through the rubble. Failure now, in this instance above all others, was too unbearable a result to even consider.
You must accept that this is beyond your control. Or by the time you realise you made all of this possible, it'll be the last sane thought in your head.
The notion that he should be angry with Watson for running off so impetuously might have presented itself to Holmes, were it not so very like his dear friend to try and help in whatever capacity he could. His eyes darted in every direction, seeking the visual cues he'd committed to memory upon seeing Watson disappear amidst a fiery tableau: painted 'QUEENSHITHE' to the left, hand-trolley roughly fifteen paces past.
Painted 'QUEENSHITHE,' easily spotted, although rather newly black, there on its canvas of brick. Hand-trolley, less than easily spotted, seeing as most everything round this spot had been blown to bits—but given where it should have been relative to the former, Holmes identified a few broken remnants ahead of him as having once belonged to it. Which was mere steps from where Watson should have been. Heaven willing, not so broken.
"Watson? Watson, if you can hear me, I'm coming to dig you out."
Holmes was in the thick of scattered debris now, trying to forge a path made all the more difficult by his own considerably disoriented state. He caught the edge of a hitching post with his elbow and bit back a curse. Wincing, he cradled his arm as he surveyed his proximate surroundings once more. A stack of large crates, more or less undisturbed, caught his eye, only to catch his eye further still when, upon another look, Holmes realised they weren't quite so undisturbed after all.
A sickly dark, glistening something smeared on their collective face, trailing haphazardly downward.
Connection, high velocity impact. Blood expelled upon collision or else transferred from surface already carrying it. Victim felled against impasse; crates left to bear evidence of said victim's unplanned descent to the ground below.
Holmes's head floated in the wake of what he instantly knew to be true. He suddenly dreaded finding the one thing he hoped to find most.
Drawing closer, Holmes forced his eyes to the street's level. There at the foot of the stack, lying facedown away from it, was, indeed, Watson—from the looks of it, at this distance, all in one piece.
Holmes tore ahead, nearly tripping in his haste to close the short gap between them. Scanning the motionless figure upon arrival, he stepped over Watson to be on the side his face was turned.
"Watson?" he tested, taking care not to kneel on the pale fingers half curled against the ground.
Watson's eyes were closed, but there was a heaviness to his brow that suggested a far from peaceful state. More readily alarming was the stain that presently soaked the upper portion of Watson's jacket, and what appeared to be embedded debris about his jaw and ear. Even with the unequivocal gravity weighing every detail of the situation at hand, Holmes was struck by the rather curious hope that the right side of Watson's face, when revealed, would not be so afflicted.
"Watson! Watson, it's Holmes."
Holmes looked up at the façade of boxes again, taking in the blood marring its surface and down once more to the corresponding span of coat beneath him. The absence of anything visibly matting Watson's hair was of some comfort, but not much. He swallowed, absurdly afraid to reach out and touch him somehow.
"Watson." He laid his hand over the still fingers. They were not entirely cold, and Holmes allowed himself a small measure of relief. It then occurred to him that if his own state of hearing was so presently altered then Watson's was likely far worse, and he leant forward, fairly shouting at the unresponsive doctor.
"Can you hear me, Watson? Please, Watson, it's Holmes."
Dead.
Dead.
Dead . . .
Watson's voice came to him from not three weeks ago, murmured over a petty thief who had run directly into the path of a cab as the two of them looked on. The doctor's inflection, when the pronouncement was finally made, had been light—almost uncharacteristically so, the meaning behind it essentially: 'Dead. Of course he's dead. What else would he be?' Now the breezy assessment echoed mercilessly in Holmes's head, and he gave Watson a beleaguered squint as though the old boy were saying it just to spite him.
But Watson moved not a muscle.
A queer sense of irrevocable loss settled round Sherlock's heart as he knelt back, grasping Watson's hand with his own now and staring at the silent face before him. To think they just had survived the insanity of the band saw with Irene, only to find themselves—that is, Watson's self—in such a state.
The whispered "Watson" that fell next from his lips was so quiet that Holmes himself did not discern it.
And then there was a tepid brushing of fingers from within the detective's hand, prompting him to glance down and swiftly back to see Watson's eyes were now half open, and apparently fixed on him.
Holmes's look of disbelief lapsed into an immediate, grateful smile. He brought his other hand to close round the one he already held.
"Hello, Watson."
END 2/3
Oh, my head just won't stop aching
And I'm sat here, licking my wounds
And I'm shattered
But it really doesn't matter
'Cause my rescue is gonna be here soon
. . .
