Note: Sorry, guys, for the long wait. Travels prevented me from writing this for a month, and when I got home, the Olympics started, so I was (and still am) glued to the TV about, oh, six hours every day. But I still found time to write, so gather up your reading glasses, and "on with the motley, or whatever that means!" (Props to the person who knows who the quote's from.)

HEADLIGHTS
By Hallospacegirl

Chapter Eight

I wake from my senseless reoccurring nightmare by the quiet sound of crying. In the deathly still of a winter's midnight, I can hear the sobs and jagged breaths float in clearly through the walls, and it's not long before I've gained enough alertness to realize where the sound is coming from.

I bolt up in the bed, forgetting about the pain in my back and ankles as a cold sweat breaks over me and I'm consumed by a sickening dread. Because, impossibly, the cries are coming from Sherlock Holmes's room.

I don't move for a long time, just listening to the heart wrenching sound. I'm reminded of the first time I heard my mother cry, and of the time my professor broke down in front of the classroom when he learned of his favorite student's death. I was more frightened and self=conscious than sympathetic as I watched him, almost refusing to believe that the display of raw emotion from someone you always thought could never be touched by pain was real. And then, inside my stricken mind, I was on my knees and pleading to him, oh God, stop it. Just stop. Stop this and we can both forget about it and we can go back to the cold impersonality where we were before. Once I comfort you and admit your weaknesses, then we can never be the same again...

But – something – drags me from my bed and to my feet, and as if in a dream, I limp across the cold, blackened study and pause shivering at Holmes's door. Through the tiny open sliver, the choked sobs drift out even louder, and this time I think I can detect almost a hint of physical pain in the sound.

My head is swimming in so many different emotions I don't even know what I'm feeling anymore, and I push open the door with a hesitant hand.

Holmes's curtains are undrawn, and through the windowpanes, naked, cold blue moonlight floods into the room. The icy glow illuminates the figure huddled on the bed, whose covers are in a tangle about him and whose body is wracked in uncontrollable shivers.

The next thing I know, I'm kneeling at the detective's bedside, grabbing his arm and shaking him. "Holmes? Holmes? Are you okay?"

He's asleep, and struggling inside of a private hell. He rolls unsteadily toward me, and I can see the beads of sweat over his forehead, cheeks, and tightly closed eyes. His dark hair is wet and matted like black tendrils onto the pillow. When I reach out to touch his face, his flushed, damp skin scorches my fingertips.

"God, Holmes, wake up!" I give him another firm shake, and he groans, his eyelids fluttering open. He stares at me deliriously in the dim moonlight, still shivering violently. "Who – Ada?" he manages brokenly between his gasping breaths. "Ada, it's – cold. I need—"

"You're ill, Holmes. You have a fever. Hold on a minute, let me get you some more blankets—"

"No." He traps my wrist within his thin, burning fingers and pulls me close. I don't think that in his sick and half-awake condition he realizes what he's doing, but I wrap my arms about him anyway, and now his shivers are coursing through me as he gathers me into his trembling, hot embrace. "No," he whispers into my ear. "No, it is not that... not that..."

"Not what?"

"The fever – the fever. The woman – I saw the woman – in my dreams."

"Irene?"

"No, no – ah, God, it's cold..." He holds me so tightly that I must be suffocating. I run my hand down his back, feeling through the thin velvet of his robe the ridges of his spine, made pronounced after years of regularly skipped meals and nightly vigils. His fluttering heartbeat reverberates through my palm, and right then I want to stay with him forever in this breathless moment.

"Holmes, it'll be okay. You're sick and you had a nightmare."

"She was not Irene and yet she was… that woman in my dream," he mumbles incomprehensibly, his mouth pressed into my hair. "I – do not remember her name – strange, foreign name. Perhaps it is Madame... Madame – something. Ada, I do not remember – please. I need my seven percent – oh, forgive me. Forgive me – for everything... I can't... the name..."

What he says stirs something unsettling in me, but I hush him gently, and softly stroke the base of his neck with my fingers. "Remember when I had a nightmare and you came into my room and stayed the whole evening? You said that nightmares were nothing, really, so whatever name you heard in your dream doesn't matter, Holmes." I murmur to him. He seems to be calmed somewhat by my voice, so I continue on. "You don't need to remember. Just sleep, and tomorrow, when Watson comes, he'll get you some medicine and your fever will be better. I'll stay here if you want. Or I can go. Holmes. Holmes?"

He is either asleep, or lost again inside his feverish delirium. But he is still holding me in that awkward embrace, and I gingerly and almost reluctantly detach myself from him. But I don't leave. Instead, I kneel beside the bed, leaning against it and resting my head on the corner of the soft down pillow that partly extends over the edge.

And I simply gaze into his face for what seems like hours, feeling his breaths and fluttering heartbeats as if they are pressed close to me, and it's only when the pain has passed through his features that I slowly allow my eyelids to relax. And somewhere in that ethereal state between consciousness and sleep the smallest ghost of a memory comes fluttering up – Tony, I mutter in confusion, the name weightless and grey like smoke – and evaporates into the foggy air.

..........

In my mist-filled dream I am attacking him with furious words. "How did you know her name, Sherlock? How!"

"Please." He is crouched in a corner, his palms pressed to his ears. "Please, this was not supposed to happen. Forget everything, Ada, my love, I beg of you."

"But how did you know her? It's not... it's not logical!"

"If she is revealed to us the world will unravel... and all will be lost. I am begging you. Close your eyes and forget all that you've learned. Ignorance... ignorance is bliss."

Unreal city.

"Sherlock, this isn't you talking! You would never say such a thing."

"Your ignorance will allow me to live for another day," he strains behind clenched teeth. And it is as if a waterfall has escaped from him and he roars out, sobbing, "God, Ada, if you have any heart in you!"

"No, it's not you, Sherlock! It's not you!"

He stares at me from the depths of his twin, fiery gray coronas. All is wrapped in silence. Then, smiling wanly, he says, "You are right."

And it is not he anymore. It is the woman with the red lips. Her smile is frozen for a moment in frigid sneering contempt, but the hard edges melt away like ice from a sculpture on a warm day, and I'm left staring into a pitying, understanding, condescending, and ethereally beautiful face.

"You know, Ada," she says, her voice echoing volumeless through all corners of my mind, "I am not... evil. I know you automatically think so because he almost began to love me, so many months ago." I can almost hear the haughty stress on the word "me," or is it merely my own imagination? "Yes, I can see through your jealousy like a laser through a glass prism. You can deny it, but you know that it is true."

I should be slapping this demoness, this sorcerer, but I'm forced to listen.

She continues more soothingly, "We women share this protective instinct of our men, Ada – and especially when they are hurt and in need of our help. You can think about it however you like... you may believe in Freud's theories, for example, or you may believe the maternal instinct, if you remember the textbook you read in biology class in sophomore year. Or you may believe in... love." She smiles again. "Regardless, you want to protect him. And so do I. Ada, do not worry, I do not love him in the way that a woman loves a man. You must know that there are many, many ways to love, and my feelings for him – which are more like feelings of fascination than anything else – does not in any way compete with yours. Naturally I did not want to become romantically involved with him, so that is why I left him before his romantic love for me could take root and blossom into a million different complications that could seriously harm us both. So, please, Ada, do not search for me within yourself, do not search for me within him."

"But I am on the verge—"

"Verge of discovery, yes," she finishes for me. A distant part of me tells me that we are one, that this is my own dream, but she feels so real. "Yes, I told Doctor Jack that three milligrams were not enough for you, but you know how these men are..."

I can see the headlights, and the man in the white surgeon's coat, and the body of Mary Kelly all at once pushing me away and beckoning to me. Somewhere, the blinding glint of the business end of a syringe cuts through the swirling gloom like a double-edged sword.

"I want to know," I say to Irene Adler. "I want to know what has happened to me."

She shakes her head. "It is complicated now. It is not only about you now, is it? What about the man lying next to you? Can you bear to do that to him, Ada? Can you rip away all of the pitifully few things in life he holds dear? I told him to fear death by water, but he refused to listen to me and he continued to inject the vile substance into his veins, and he continued to leave the bottles lying indiscreetly about the house. And now that you have discovered the bottle of poisoned water and taken it away from him... it will lead to his death. Or it will lead to a fate worse than death, Ada. Separation."

"What are you talking about?"

She ignores me. "You have two choices now. You may go on your little mental road to discovery – alone, or you may allow yourself to immerse yourself into him and allow him to immerse himself into you."

"I want to do both, Madame Sosostris."

"Then both of you will suffer, and separation will destroy you all." In her hands are a pack of cards, the wickedest pack of cards in Europe, and when she fans them out, all I can see is doom. "Choose," she demands like an icicle piercing into my heart. "You or him?"

From the outer reaches of my subconscious I hear a pained cry, and I feel a trembling hand finding my fingers, and feverish shudders that are not mine are breaking into the boundaries of my sleep... and I choose without words.

I wake up to daybreak, and Sherlock Holmes on the bed beside me.

..........

I have already been waiting for Dr. Watson's arrival for what seems like days when he comes knocking a few hours after sunrise. I practically rip off the bolt and fling open the front door.

"Watson, he's sick."

"Wha – excuse me?" The doctor's slightly drowsy and thoroughly shocked face greets me from the hallway. I grab his arm and pull him inside before he can even find his bearings.

"Sick," I repeat hoarsely, kicking the door shut with my injured foot and receiving a protesting surge of pain in reply. "Holmes is sick. I think he has a fever. It's pretty bad, and it got better during the night but it's worse now."

"Sick! Holmes? Surely not!" Simultaneously we rush to the detective's room, Watson stopping in the doorway as I hurry to Holmes' side and take his pale, clenched and wiry hand within my own. "Look at him," I demand to the doctor. "Tell me what's wrong."

"In all my years with him I have never seen him like this," Watson replies tightly.

The confession sears though me so painfully I barely even notice the doctor's peculiar stare on me as I smooth the damp hair away from Holmes' forehead and stroke his stubbled cheek. Low, hoarse breaths escape him as he trembles thinly under the tangled blankets.

Watson moves next to me and quickly parts Holmes' eyelid with two fingers. He peers into the black, dilated pupil that has almost swallowed up the entire gray iris, and leans back with a short sigh. Then abruptly, a thought seems to strike him and he runs to the cluttered table nearby, rummaging through the papers and books with great swipes. "Where in God's earth did he put that infernal substance?"

"What are you looking for?"

"Miss Cooper—" He turns to me, panting beneath his ruffled mustache. "Have you happened to notice, by any chance, a small glass bottle—"

"The cocaine," I interrupt.

"The – Miss Cooper! But how did you know?"

"I found the bottle yesterday. He tried to stop me, but I threw it into the fireplace anyway."

"Then it is true!" Watson runs his hands roughly through his thick hair and glares at me in a mixture of exasperation and annoyance bordering on anger. "Holmes tried to stop you because he knew that the effects of sudden deprivation from the drug could be truly wretched. And now he is grievously sick from the lack of it, Miss Cooper."

The ghost of my most recent dream stirs my stomach. "Oh, my God." And suddenly I feel hot liquid spilling from my eyes and streaking down my cheeks. "Will he die?"

Watson must have seen my expression because now the anger visibly deflates from him, and gives way to a more tolerant tone. "No, no, Miss Cooper, the chance of actual death is negligible. But, of Sherlock Holmes' vices, this seven percent solution is unarguably the worst. He has become dependent on it, despite his hatred and loathing of the drug, and to deprive him of it without gradual weaning means that he will be gravely ill for days if not weeks. Do you understand now?"

"I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry." I don't know whom I'm apologizing to: Holmes, or Watson. I squeeze the detective's hand tighter in my grasp. "If I had known," I repeat to the man standing beside me.

Nodding once, Watson tucks a stray side of Holmes' blanket into place around the detective's body. Then he reaches for a chair and sinks into it gracelessly and a little wearily, all the while peering into me as though searching me for a satisfying answer to a private question. "I would travel to the local grocery for another bottle of the seven percent solution, Miss Cooper," he concludes at last, shaking off his momentary daze "but the act of bringing home yet another new supply of misery does not appeal to me. Perhaps it is better that he is cured of his addiction the more difficult way. He will less likely want to revert back to his former habit."

"And what can we do now?"

Watson inhales deeply and his eyes drop to his hands, which are laced together and resting between his knees. "We let him sleep, and when he wakes, we will make him drink plenty of fluids, despite his pleas to be left alone – and we are both sure to receive them, Miss Cooper – and I will request that Mrs. Hudson concoct for him meals of thin rice gruel and steamed vegetables for at least three days. He will certainly be in a foul mood, and perhaps even delirious. We will need to try our best to keep him comfortable, while at the same time keeping our nerves more or less intact."

"All – all right. I thank you, Doctor Watson."

He doesn't reply for a long time, and when he does, it's with a small growl of frustration that I have never before witnessed from the pleasant English gentleman. "By God, how he infuriates me, Miss Cooper!"

"Doctor Watson?"

"Sherlock Holmes is a singular man, a most singular man. While his intelligence and skills of deduction are beyond parallel, not once does he stop to think of the effects his actions may have upon others. Here we sit at his bedside, Miss Cooper, wringing ourselves dry with worry over how he has polluted his body, and in a week's time we will receive but a pat on the back, and he will once again be immersed in cases in which he will willingly deprive himself of both food and sleep for days. Not once does he show to us any sort of – any sort of – does England's greatest detective not realize anything?"

My heart has either started to beat very rapidly, or it's only now that I've noticed it. I look to Holmes, his proud and stubborn mouth, his closed eyes registering no sign of having been awakened from his tumultuous sleep. But with Holmes you could never be sure. "He might be listening," I say to Watson. "Last time we talked alone, Holmes was eavesdropping."

"Let him! The man is too deeply enveloped inside his own tobacco cloud to know others' opinions of his atrocious ways, nor care, for that matter. Miss Cooper, it is time he knew. It is time he knew how we despise him."

I glance up at the doctor's gloomy frown. And it takes less than half a second for me to see the respect, admiration, and undying love for his friend, glistening in his worried eyes. The words from my dream tumble from me unimpeded. "There are many ways to love, Dr. Watson. Holmes' way is just... different from the rest of the world's. But it doesn't mean that he doesn't love—"

"Love!" Watson scoffs lightly, shaking his head. "I am a married man, and I married for love. I know firsthand of its joys and sacrifices. To what, or whom, has Holmes given sacrifice?"

"He gave it for me."

Silence.

After what must be an eternity on pause, the doctor cuts in as I'm still trying to organize my thoughts. His question, asked in a tone as if he were standing on fragile ice, mirrors my own. "What exactly do you mean, Miss Cooper?"

"I mean... I don't want to sound like a damsel in distress, but he saved me that day when I was being attacked, Dr. Watson. He could have been killed. I think that counts as sacrifice."

Watson nods slowly. His pensive, questioning gaze doesn't leave me, but gradually his eyebrows lift up in what seems like dawning realization. And suddenly we are both looking at my small and smooth hand entangled in Holmes' large, spidery, chiseled hand.

Almost alarmingly I yank my hand away. For a second it hovers in the air, cold and awkward, before I run it through my tangle of dark hair. "Dr. Watson, I'm tired," I say, more loudly than I wanted to. "I think I'll just go to my room."

"What do you feel for Sherlock Holmes, Ada?" Watson asks instead. It is the most difficult question he has ever uttered, and I can hear it. Memories of the first night I spoke with Watson come sifting into my ears. "I pray you do not drag such a harmless stranger into your web," he said. Funny how that the doctor's words sound like a prophecy now, a sort of strange prophecy that I can only think of as having been fulfilled.

"I feel... I don't know what I feel for him, but I know that you weren't exactly right, Dr. Watson."

"What do you refer to?"

I'm no longer answering him. I'm answering myself. Staring at the closed and lightly quivering eyelids of the detective lying on the bed, I whisper, "You see, he didn't drag me in. I think I walked in on my own."

..........

To be continued...

Note: The next chapter will contain some new revelations, I promise you.