Awareness comes to him in snatches, like air to a drowning man, with thick cloying swathes of darkness in between. There are voices, words spoken low or called as desperate imperatives; it makes no odds, both are equally incomprehensible to him.

He slips away further; only to have a semblance of consciousness forced unpleasantly upon him: his head is tilted back and something like an iron pipe is trying to destroy his throat from the inside. He struggles to move, to close his mouth: his teeth jar and the thing in his throat feels like it is trying to tear its way out. A hand holds his jaw and something is poured down into his stomach. He coughs as the torturous pipe is pulled from his throat and scant seconds later he is retching up what tastes like bile and ashes.

There are words in his head and he has no clue where they've come from, but they fit his current punishment very well.

For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten and withered like grass... My bones cleave to my skin for I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping… My days are like a shadow that declineth...

He wished they'd decline faster.

Darkness descends again and he is infinitely grateful. Its mercy is slim however; it bestows cold upon him, a frigidness set in his limbs and in his lungs like ice, and then spits him back into the waking world without ceremony.

He feels like a sycamore leaf, spinning in lazy circles and falling, falling forever downwards. Time stretches and snaps unpleasantly. His mouth is full of something that tastes dark and grainy as if someone had brewed stout from coal.

For a few infinite moments he ponders the possibility of a drink distilled from coal, cheap and rough no doubt, and all the mouths daily oiled with gin would be stained with an obsidian sheen instead, making teeth look like pieces of carved jet. The upper classes would drink it at funerals to show how the colour of their grief traversed the spectrum past the anger of red, the confusion of orange, the shock of yellow and adriftness of green, the unhappiness of blue and the dejection of indigo (violet – violet is a lie, Newton never saw it but thought six an insignificant number for the weighty task of pillaring the fragments of light {and how heavy they must be!}) to the smothering anguish of black.

He should ask what hue was worn at his funeral (orange, like the monks at Palkhor in Shigatse – they must have known he was dead...) He opens his mouth to enquire and discovers he is choking on liquid coal. Perhaps his heart is a cinder and has burst in his chest; it feels like it might have. He is chilled, hollowed out, there is pain hovering above him like a bird of prey, diving down at intervals to plunge its beak into him and tear out gory globbets of flesh. This must be Hades.

He chokes: swallowing black bile and coughing it out in equal measure but more is always in his mouth. He bears his torment for as many years as he is able, until at last he succeeds in unpicking his soul from the carcass of his body (who sewed it there with such neat stitches? The Almighty must be a very deft seamsmistress) and drags himself away from it in disgust.

His triumph is short-lived. The birds of prey descend with a scream loud enough to shake the sky, stabbing his soul back into its corpse, bringing true darkness and an uneasy peace in their wake.


"You shouldn't be here," he slurs.

Watson isn't supposed to be dead and certainly isn't supposed to be in hell. He thinks it most unjust that hell should have the appearance of his old rooms, a place so familiar to him and so longed for. As he watches the walls began to bow, the structure of the room warping like glass blown on the end of a metal rod, stretching and fragmenting into non-Euclidean shapes.

Yes, he thinks, uncertain whether to be relieved or terrified. That's more like it.

"G-go away." It is a weak growl, forced out between sodden breathes and bouts of coughing and retching that follow so fast on one another it is impossible to tell whether it's his stomach or lungs that his body is trying to purge.

"Lie still," Watson commands for the thousandth time, wondering whether to risk forcing him to drink more of the activated charcoal and whether to pour it down his throat with or without the aid of a feeding funnel. "Stay on your side – Holmes! – lie still!" His words have no effect, as they've had none for the past hour of delirium. He knows the detective hears him, would be tempted to say Holmes didn't know who he was (neither the doctor nor himself) but that would be a falsehood, and a foolish one at that.

When they open and gaze upon him the eyes show recognition, and a sorrow bordering on hate. Holmes struggles onto his back and tries to push himself away.

"For god's sake!" He's at the end of his tether, has been so from the start. There are only so many times he can pull the detective back onto his side, pin him as he struggles through his dreams and try to ensure he doesn't choke on the fluid his body is expelling.

Holmes makes a keening noise and thrashes harder, not wanting to be touched, not wanting his nightmares to wear Watson's face.

"Damn you, lie still!"

He shudders and his body seems to collapse into itself, all fight evaporating in an instant, leaving him corpse-hued and as animate, his eyes half-lidded and glassy.

The doctor watches, relief ebbing as he realises this is it – Sherlock Holmes, the man who's unflinchingly stepped up to the mark against brawlers, murderers and criminals, has just given up.

He closes his eyes and utters a very quiet and heartfelt, "Fuck." He sits down, legs and hands shaking: this has just ceased to be an emergency and become a death-watch. He masks his face in his hands.

In the midst of his anguish there is a memory: a scrap of paper pressed into his hand – you'll need this to call him back. He reaches for his jacket, tossed on the floor as he entered – and pulls the paper from his pocket. He has already had one miracle tonight, he knows it is impossible to expect another. He rubs a hand across his moustache as he scans the list, then he clears his throat and starts to read.

"Sir Benjamin Marlowe, George Ellis, James Langton, Anne Mayhew and daughter, Henry Swift, Dr Tobias Fairchilde, Charlotte Royce, the Griffiths brothers, Alice Mackintosh... Dr John Watson." He looks to see what effect his words have had, and seeing none he does the only thing he can do. He steadies his voice and reads the list again.

"Sir Benjamin Marlowe, George Ellis, James Langton..." He reads it until he no longer needs the list, can recite it from memory as if it is a mantra that keeps Holmes breathing. "Anne Mayhew and daughter, Henry Swift, Dr Tobias Fairchilde, Charlotte Royce..." He recites it until the names are seared in his mind, his throat is dry and the dawn outside is breaking. "The Griffiths brothers, Alice Mackintosh... Dr John Watson."

And then he says it again.


Watson sinks into the chair, his eyes dull with worry. He reaches out and lays a hand on Holmes' brow, as if he could smooth away the drawn lines of pain etched there. But even in sleep the detective is frowning; Watson fervently hopes that it is the darkness of unconscious delirium his friend finds so displeasing and not the fact that he exists to experience it.

Holmes twitches and then sighs, an infinitely soft sound of resignation. The doctor feels a spike of panic at the thought his efforts have been for nothing, but beneath his fingertips the blood still beats at the man's temples and his chest still rises and falls beneath the blankets if one keeps a sharp eye to perceive it – Watson has spent countless hours doing little else.

When a patient is in danger, their pulse febrile and their body venting blood or fluid with every second breath then time is not only of the essence but an enemy. When the immediate emergency is past and all that can be has been cauterized, bandaged, purged or dosed, then time relents, handing out seconds as if they were hours instead of flinging them away like sand into a desert storm. Both states play havoc with a medico's nerves; but for his part Watson has always detested waiting the most. Because it means there is nothing else he can do.

He scrubs at his eyes and twists at the hip to glance at the clock on the mantelpiece, his eyes taking a moment to focus on the numerals. It has been five long hours of hell and two of worry. For the rest of London it is time to wake and dress, time to breakfast and go about their business. But here is still a limbo, and will remain so until Holmes is out of danger.

It is curious to be back in Baker Street. He's avoided it with an almost superstitious dread for nigh on three years, and yet here he is again, as if he is bound to the place by a tether the length of which he has reached and now it's snapped him back. Curious too to view the place so neat. Holmes' room is still filled with an alarming mix of books, chemicals, weaponry, sheet music and random accoutrements; but there is a template to the disorder, a tidiness that had not been present previously. Piles of papers have not spilt, teacups have not been left, there is no boot in the coal scuttle or pots of open greasepaint on the mantle.

He didn't spare much of a thought for it beyond pure gratitude when Mrs Hudson opened the front door immediately despite the hour. She'd asked no questions at all but directed the men to carry Holmes up to his old room, where Watson found both the fire and the gas lit, a fresh pitcher of water on the washstand and the bed turned down in readiness.

It occurs to him to wonder about such things now. He remembers vaguely, after the memorial service had been held, Mrs Hudson had mentioned something about Mycroft Holmes paying for the upkeep of the rooms. At the time he had been too caught up in his own grief, had accepted it as an eccentricity or a convenience – somewhere for Mycroft to store his sibling's possessions so the matter didn't have to be dealt with immediately. The third option, that Mycroft had reason to believe his younger brother would return, had not occurred to him – although it seemed sickeningly obvious viewed in the light of recent events.

As for Mrs Hudson's lack of surprise, he supposed word had been sent to her just as it had been sent to him, via a bunch of Street Arabs. Wrapped in her shawl, with her hair still pinned and her face tight with expectation she had the look of a woman who'd been waiting at the fireside for an hour or more.

The one piece of the puzzle that has yet to resolve itself is how Holmes' rag-tag saviours had known he was in need of aid. Constable Clark had left almost as soon as the detective was secured in his rooms, and Watson, having far more pressing matters to worry about, had let him.

He rubs a hand across his face wearily, exhaustion tugging at his sleeve. He knows he ought to sleep while he can; likely in another two or three hours Holmes will wake and there will be another episode of coughing and vomiting as his body strives to rid itself of the fluid in his lungs and any remnants of the poison still in his stomach.

He leans back in the chair and cushions his head against his palm, but sleep does not come. Fidgeting and then sitting straight once more he reaches out and clasps the bony wrist which lies outside the covers, his fingers curling around the delicate skin where tendon and veins lie so close to the surface, the pulse beating beneath his fingertips. Some of the tension drains from him at that small reassurance.

This is ridiculous, he thinks to himself, but cannot bring himself to let go. He shifts the chair a little closer, relaxes as best he can and, after a moment hooks his feet up onto the lower edge of the mattress. Only then, slumped in the chair with his legs stretched out and with that unsteady beat against his touch is he able to relax enough and close his eyes, dozing fitfully.


NOTES

"For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten and withered like grass... My bones cleave to my skin for I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping… My days are like a shadow that declineth..." - taken from Psalm 102