Dec. 1st: From Hades Lord of the Dead: Addiction

Thanks for running things Hades Lord of the Dead. I'm excited to read all of your wonderful stories this year.

Watson ducked under the eave of a residence for a momentary retreat out of the freezing rain threatening to drown him. He checked his pocket watch in the glow provided by dying embers of a fireplace eking flickering light out through curtain windows. High winds aimed the undeterred rainfall at Watson, spitting in the face of his attempt to find respite. With the dim light available and squinted eyes warding off the element's prize-hunter worthy marksmanship at pelting his eyes with cold hard water droplets, he could only guess at it being around two in the middle of the godforsaken night. The sun had gone down no less than ten hours ago.

Soon, he was inside 221b, shivering off his heavy coat. There wasn't a dry bit of him anywhere. He tossed over his shoulders the quilt he'd readied before leaving in the morning, for just such an emergency. As he approached his own near-extinct remnants of a fire, he was startled by a log flying out of the darkness. Sparks jumped within the fireplace and snuffed out as the log began simmering where it landed amongst the ashes.

"Sherlock!" Watson exclaimed. "There are more reasonable ways of announcing yourself."

"Do you know the hour, old boy?" Sherlock, in his pyjamas, quilt over his own shoulders, leaned forward, the growing firelight introducing the edges of his sharp facial features.

"Some unwholesome hour for a night like this. I say, Holmes, what are you still doing here, awake? Don't say you were expecting me earlier…"

"Expecting? Not in the least, my dear Watson. I tend only to expect the unexpected at the times it is most expected to happen. Hoping, I should say, is what kept me waiting up for you."

Watson harrumphed. "There's still plenty left to be done. If anything, I feel like I left too early tonight. There's many at the lab who are still burning the midnight oil, even now."

Sherlock stood and set an additional log into the fireplace, more gingerly this time. "Would be a cruel twist of fate, Watson, to wile away all these countless hours at the microbiology lab, only to catch some deadly germ due to lack of sleep and galavanting around in arctic conditions at all hours."

"Technically Holmes," Watson waddled over to the fire, adding his own squat log to the, now, pile. "That's a bit of superstition you just spouted. Cold and a deficiency of rest lower the immune system; they are not themselves the carriers of pathogens."

Sherlock crashed moodily back into his chair, crossing his legs and steepling his fingers. "You should know you've missed the last four cases. Most of them exciting. Many of them amongst my most singular and exciting cases to date. You, sir, have been depriving your readers some of the greatest adventures that would have ever been recorded."

"I was under the impression you cared little for our readership."

"The latest case contained an organ grinder monkey; prominently."

Watson fell into his own chair, bundling himself up tighter within his quilt. "If there's something you want to tell me, then just tell me."

"Tell you?" Sherlock sounded affronted. "If you had kept up with your practicing of the deductive arts-,"

"Holmes. I'm tired. I know for you, reading into everything and divining the true nature of a person's every deepest whim and darkest foible based on the way they tie their shoes revitalizes you, but I'm not put together that way. Please, this time, just tell me."

Sherlock thrummed his fingertips together for a momentary silence filled by the roaring of rain buffeting against the roof, before answering, "I fear you spend too much time dawdling with this microbiology obsession you're going through."

"Wha- dawdling? Obsession? There are lives on the line."

"Bah," Sherlock shook his head. "It isn't your field, old man. Besides, the good bits have already been solved. Vibrio cholerae, If I remember correctly, is the culprit. This has already been well established. There. Case closed. What more is there to know about cholera? Your energies, I assure you, would be much better spent here, trading in a microscope for a proper magnifying glass and unearthing yet to be named murderers."

"We know what cholera is. The scientific community. The stuffed shirts, the toppers, they know how to prevent the disease. They also benefit the least from the knowledge. The same people victimized by the plagues are the same one's who are still most ignorant of the scientific, rational knowledge that would go a long way in preventing it. We're working on a campaign of education for the slums; for legislation of reforms to make these living conditions more sanitary. That's what we're working on at the lab. If only it were as easy as locking up cholera in a cell to remove it from society.

"If anything, Sherlock, you're the one who could better spend his energy. You 'dawdle' away all your time with intriguing riddles, big organ-grinder-monkey-containing whodunits neatly wrapping themselves up with succinct conclusions. A mind like yours would prove invaluable if set to the task of how to reform society, preventing those crimes you're addicted to solving, rather than allowing them to germinate within the hearts of the men that commit them in the first place."

More silence ensued Sherlock, more pounding of the relentless rain down upon the much-abused Baker Street residence exterior filling that silence. This time, the detective remained still, his fingers unusually inactive. In an abrupt movement, Sherlock leaped out his chair and hurried into the shadows toward his bedroom, with a professionally intoned, "goodnight Watson," left behind him.

Watson felt spent enough to fall asleep the next moment in his armchair but ended up rolling off and trundling back to his own bed. Muttering, as he went, "…shouldn't've said all that… Well, 't's a problem for a later day…"

—-

Watson stared at the heavy bags under the dark ringed eyes of his reflection as he adjusted his collar in the mirror. Perhaps Sherlock was onto something. The detective was, after all, the most brilliant mind by a mile that Watson had yet stumbled across. Not that he was infallible, but Watson found it prudent to take anything Sherlock said under the most serious of consideration at all times, even if he ended up disagreeing.

Making eye-contact with a more haggard visage of himself than he had been expected made him ponder, how long could he keep pushing himself this hard? At what point would he hit diminishing returns in his efforts? Especially if he was only one man?

As Watson did his best to sneak to the front door and exit without waking his roommate, he was startled by a being far too energetic for the early hour.

"Watson! At last, you're up," a fully dressed and apparently breakfasted and coffeed Sherlock greeted him with that unnerving boundless energy the detective typically presented before trouncing out the door on the heels of his next big case. "Shall we be off?"

"You- you're coming with me?"

"Quite right Watson. With the pace I've been cracking murders, burglaries, forgeries, and diabolically masterminded plots extending beyond our sovereign borders these past weeks, I figure I may be a full step ahead of the criminals for once. What say you we show the underworld of disease what they're in for against the full complement of both Holmes and Watson."