From Wordwielder - Revenge

A/N: A 3GAR AU, so technically a response to bcbdrums' old challenge..!

There are a few blurry attempts he will come to forget.

"Mr Holmes? Was that- did his hand-?"

"Watson? Watson! Are you- yes! Yes that's it! Mrs Hudson fetch a doctor!"

But they are important, for it is through these that his mind slowly coalesces.

"It will take time, Mr Holmes, and we cannot promise anything. With a head wound of this magnitude..."

"I understand, Doctor. Thank you."

Broken snatches of his favourite violin pieces and a few familiar voices swirl in and out.

"What is that you're reading to him?"

"Treasure Island." There is something strange about that, but it escapes him. "He read it to the Irregulars a few years back. Of course I do not perform it quite so compellingly."

"I am sure it will help nevertheless."

Eventually, with great effort, there comes light.

"Watson?"

"Doctor Watson?"

Shining grey eyes above him and the weathered hand of his landlady reaching out to grasp at where his fingers twitch upon a hospital-white coverlet.

"It is good to see you old fellow."

Watson stares at Holmes, long and hard; a promise. Then his eyes slip closed, for he is exhausted. They open many more times after that, a little longer each time until eventually-

"What happened?"

Holmes looks up from Treasure Island, stopping mid-sentence. "You are awake! I should fetch Mrs Hudson..."

"I have been awake before." Watson is fairly sure of that. He remembers several instances, though they all blur into a series of questions about his name, the year, and the current prime minister.

"Never with such coherence," Holmes replies with a wry smile, but drops back into his chair for the time being. "How do you feel?"

Watson mulls this over. There is pain, but it is distant. He has been drugged then. Otherwise...

"Confused," he says, slowly. "There was a case? G- Garrideb?"

Holmes's expression darkens. "Over a month and a half ago now. We weren't sure if you... well, never mind that now. John Garrideb was a false identity contrived by James Winter."

"Killer Evans... Morecroft..." The words arrive with painstaking slowness and Watson is not entirely sure from where he has dredged them.

"Quite so. What else can you remember?"

Watson is struck suddenly by the image of John Garrideb's - James Winter's - face, peering out from above a trapdoor. "We found him? At Nathan Garrideb's house. We found him and..."

"He shot you." Holmes raises a long finger and, ever so gently, he traces the trajectory across Watson's skull to demonstrate. "One bullet winged your temporal bone. The other grazed your thigh."

"I don't remember that."

"It is just as well. When I saw what he had done to you..." He breathes in, deep, and offers Watson a stiff attempt at reassurance. "No need to dwell now. I will go a moment to get Mrs Hudson."

Then he is up on his feet and making for the door, but there is still something on Watson's mind. "Holmes, what happened to Winter?"

"Dead," Holmes throws carelessly over one shoulder. "Good riddens."

"Are you... alright?"

Holmes whirls back from the door with a faintly incredulous expression. "Am I alright? You are the one who has been laid up in hospital for nearly two months!"

"Did you kill him?"

There is a pause. It is only half a second, but even with his still-healing mind, Watson catches it. He has always seen more of Holmes than anyone else bothers to look for.

"I shot him in the heart. Lestrade has written in his report that it was self defence."

"And was it?"

Mrs Hudson chooses that moment to enter. Watson has always felt she serves as a kind of surrogate mother to Holmes, but as she bursts promptly into tears of happiness and relief he knows for certain that the feeling extends to his own person as well. She sits with him while Holmes slips out to wire the Yard the good news and holds his hand tight in hers as though to convince herself he is really there.

As Watson recovers over the next few weeks, he tries desperately to remember the events of his shooting. There are occasions he thinks he might remember a distorted, shaking version of Holmes's voice.

"You've killed him!"

Or perhaps that is only his imagination; for he does not need to remember what happened to know that James's Winter's death was not carried out in the name of self-defence, but of revenge.