"Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night; / What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
―William Blake, from The Songs of Experience Collection
July 2014
Despite their former comrade's incredulous joy at seeing two of his favorite but most notoriously asocial superior officers in attendance at his awards ceremony, John and James resisted all efforts to get them to linger at BM's reception. They might have been more inclined had the affair been made up solely of members of their old regiment, but there were enough openly curious civilians present, gawking at their scars and whispering indiscreetly behind their hands at these two reluctant tabloid frequenters, to make both men feel distinctly uncomfortable and on display; they made their apologies – and their escape – as soon as they felt it was polite.
Though James seemed more comfortable in his skin than he had been, John figured he wouldn't be up for the tube and had sprung for a cab back to Baker Street. It being a fine day, though, the major did agree to get out at Regent's Park and walk the rest of the way back. It reminded them both of the healing rambles they had taken together across the moor in Yorkshire, and the quiet talks they had enjoyed. It did John's heart good to see and hear how much brighter, more mobile, and more hopeful for the future his friend was.
"How does it feel – being back in uniform?" John ventured to ask as they meandered past the Open Air Theatre. Despite the fact that he had, like John, been invalided out rather than retired, Sholto had been given special permission to don the uniform for formal occasions, and he had chosen to do so for BM's ceremony.
"Bit…surreal," James admitted, looking straight ahead.
"Doesn't feel natural anymore?"
"Oh no, it feels natural, all right," Sholto declared. "Too natural, is the trouble. Despite all the time that's passed I still have difficulty admitting to myself that I'm never going back."
John understood. "I can imagine."
James looked at him sidelong. "Yes, I rather imagine you can."
They sauntered on in a pensive silence for a moment; then, with the air of forced cheerfulness common to one endeavoring to change the subject, Sholto asked, "We've talked a lot about me, but what have you been up to these days, John? Any interesting cases with your Mr. Holmes? I notice you haven't updated your blog since he returned."
John looked out over the expanse of grass toward the boat lake; it really was turning out to be a lovely day. "Well, I haven't really been going out with him much…rebuilding my life in London has been occupying a lot of my time," he said evasively.
"And solving cases with Holmes is just a hobby, is it?" Sholto asked shrewdly. "Didn't strike me that way before."
For a moment John didn't answer. Then he said, slowly, "Well…I have a bad habit of putting all my eggs in one basket, as it were. Surgery, the army, Sherlock…hasn't always worked out so well for me, has it?" He gave a sardonic laugh. "In fact, you could say it's always come back to bite me in the end."
He stopped a moment and stared at the boats bobbing along on the surface of the lake. Sholto paused and looked as well.
"I'm trying to be a bit more…cautious, this time around," John said finally.
Sholto smiled grimly. "No one who knows you could name 'an abundance of caution' as one of your defining characteristics."
"Yes, and look where it's got me, time and again," John said, unable to hide the bitterness in his voice.
"You always manage to land on your feet in the end, though."
John began moving along the path again; Sholto fell into step beside him. "So it would seem. But, if we're talking in clichés, I'd say it's more like I always manage to keep my head above water – or, maybe, come up for air one more time just before I drown. Maybe I'm thinking I'd like the latter half of my life to be a little less dramatic."
James glanced at him. "And yet you came back to London."
John quirked his lips. "I would have been hard put to find a job as a doctor in your remote little village, James."
"But that's not why you came back," the major insisted.
Before he could stop himself, John huffed out his breath in frustration. He wasn't well known by many, but those who did, he sometimes felt, knew him too well.
James laughed. "I'm not trying to exasperate you, John, I assure you. Just trying to figure out where your head is, that's all."
John gave in and laughed, too. "I'm afraid I don't really know myself. But I do think maybe it wouldn't hurt me to…spread my interests around a bit."
Sholto grew serious again. "It's not in your nature to give only part of yourself to something, John. You're one of those people who can't live with a divided heart. You must know this about yourself."
John did know it, but that didn't mean he had to like it.
"You were asking about cases," John reminded Sholto, aware that his own attempt to change the subject was far less graceful than his friend's had been. "There is an ongoing one, as it happens – in fact, I popped my bum shoulder out last month while helping Sherlock on it."
One thing about James Sholto, John thought gratefully as he began filling the other man in on some of the details of the case…he never pushed an issue once he'd had his say. He'd made his point; now he would step back and let John figure out the rest, listening if that was what John required, leaving it alone if John didn't wish to speak of it. He was a restful person to be around, the doctor reflected.
"So this serial killer takes down his marks with a crossbow," Sholto remarked as they approached 221 Baker Street. "I've been following the case in the media, of course, but that's one detail they left out."
"Yeah," John replied, pausing on the pavement outside 221 to fish through his pockets for his keys. (He wasn't used to wearing a suit anymore; he missed his Haversack, but it was too warm for it now.) "They wanted to keep that detail quiet while they ruled out false leads." He felt safe enough sharing information with Sholto who was, of course, well accustomed to the concept of non-disclosure. "Definitely related to Moriarty….all the targets had something to do with him, if only in a peripheral way, and nothing, apparently, at all to do with one another. No one around here is a big believer in coincidence. Damn!"
His keys seemed determined not to make an appearance.
"Sounds like he was particularly interested in firing a shot off at Holmes."
"Greg and I noticed," John grunted, patting his front trouser pockets. No luck. "He took that shot at Sherlock in the Mill on the fly, and gave away his position doing it. The risk for such an iffy shot seemed big enough to indicate it being personal."
"A crossbow," Sholto mused. "That's impressive shooting. I'm not sure even you could pull that off, John."
"You don't know the half of it," John said distractedly. "Ah ha!" He had finally located the keys in his inside jacket pocket. "The shooter uses feather fletching on the bolts instead of vanes, which Sherlock tells me makes keeping the bolt on target even more challenging. Odd choice of feathers, too…handmade from the tail of an African helmeted guinea fowl. Remember those birds, James? No shortage of them during our tours." Extracting his keys from his jacket pocket (they hid, that was the only explanation, surely), John started towards the steps of 221.
But Sholto remained rooted to the spot, staring at him. "Feather fletching from an African helmeted guinea fowl?"
The sharpness in his tone arrested John in his tracks; puzzled, he turned back to face his old CO. James's scarred face wore the intense expression he knew so well.
"Does that mean something to you?"
"It might," James said tersely. "Tell me – did the tips happen to be dyed blue?"
John gaped at him. "James…how the hell can you know that?" he demanded, recovering himself.
"John, I think I know who your shooter might be," Sholto said urgently. "My commanding officer when I was with the First Bangalore Pioneers, 'Tiger Jack' Moran…a spotless career up until–"
He broke off, thinking hard; John, impatient to hear more, forced himself to wait silently – he could almost see the wheels turning in his old friend's mind and didn't want to disrupt the process. Finally James met his eyes again, his expression hard.
"It can't be a coincidence," he finally declared. "Let's go in…I'll tell you everything, and then I think we'll want to speak to the officer in charge of the – John!"
The unexpected shout was so uncharacteristic of James's usual calm that John hardly had a chance to register it before the other man had tackled him to the ground, temporarily winding him.
"James, what the hell–" John gasped, then froze when the larger man rolled off him, coming to rest flat on his back on the pavement. The late-morning sunlight glinted off the buttons on his uniform, and something else – the shaft of a metal bolt protruding from the man's chest, the blue-tipped feathers still quivering from their recent flight.
"James!"
At that precise moment, the door to 221 opened and Mrs. Hudson stepped out.
"I thought I heard you boys coming back. I put the kettle on–" She broke off when she saw the major lying on the ground with John kneeling over him. "Oh, my – John, what happened?!" she gasped.
"Mrs. Hudson, ring for an ambulance," John commanded, pulling off his jacket. "Quickly!" he barked, when she stood frozen and staring.
"Yes–yes–" Hand at her throat (but strong and determined for all that), she vanished back indoors, much to John's relief – she was now out of the line of fire and help would soon be on the way. He turned back to his patient.
"Stay with me, James, I'll get you sorted." John wadded up his jacket and pressed it to the wound. In seconds it was saturated…the blood was coming fast. Too fast.
John felt as though a bucket of ice had suddenly flooded his stomach when he realized the bolt had hit James's pulmonary artery. There was nothing he could do, nothing a full team of paramedics could do even if they were to arrive at this very moment. Unless an operating theatre staffed by a team of trauma surgeons prepped to go were to materialize magically around them, the major didn't stand a chance.
No. No. He would not accept this. He couldn't. He was Captain John bloody Watson, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, three years in Afghanistan, a veteran of Kandahar, Helmand, and Bart's bloody Hospital, for God's sake. There was no way, no way he was going to just sit here and watch helplessly while another friend died in front of him. Shifting his suit jacket to find the driest side, John repositioned it around the wound, pressing down hard, careful to leave the bolt in place even though, oh God, it didn't fucking matter, he might as well pull the damn thing out for all the good leaving it was doing because blood was pulsing up around it, soaking into James's uniform, drenching John's suit jacket and turning it into a sodden, spongy mass, seeping between the doctor's fingers–
No…no, God, no!
"John." It came out garbled; Sholto choked on the blood that was already rising in his throat and began coughing.
"No," John tried to rap it out in his "captain" voice of old, but it came out in a gasp. "No, don't talk…James, just…just…"
"No." James coughed; blood sprayed over John's shirt, face, hair. "No…you–" The major choked helplessly.
Tears rose in John's eyes, but he wasn't aware of them as he stared down at his friend, trying desperately to hold the blood – the life – in his body. "James," he said shakily, "stay with me, yeah? Please. You'll make it. You'll make it."
James, his face already waxy from the blood loss, shook his head slightly. His fierce green eyes bore into John's. "No. You...okay," he whispered.
Then, incredibly, he smiled.
"It's…okay." He coughed again, then nodded once. "Good…death."
"No," John pleaded, though he knew it was useless. "James, no."
But Sholto did not speak again.
Special thanks to englishtutor for her editing skills.