A/N: Again, my thanks for the lovely reviews! We writers always love to have our egos stroked...heh.

For you Sherlock Holmes fans out there, if you are not familiar with Laurie R. King's excellent Mary Russel series, become so! The first of them is The Beekeeper's Apprentice, and if you ever wondered whether or not there was a woman out there who was Holmes' intellectual equal...well, all your hopes have been answered. Next to Doyle himself, it was her writing style (she does excellent well with a tone similar to Conan Doyle's) that I drew on the most when I wrote this story. And now on the bit that you're really here for...

I swam up out of heavy fog, my head throbbing worse than a bout of cholera. For a brief, disoriented moment I was back in the wastelands of Afghanistan, battling the illness even as I fought to save the lives of my battalion. I remembered little of that month, save that too many had died before the supply train had arrived with the proper medicine. I sat up, sweating, panicked, before I realized that my surrounds were cold stone and mildew, not sun-stained canvas and dust.

I attempted to rise, only to discover that my muscles were flaccid and unresponsive. The last few–minutes? hours? days?–were a black void. How had I gotten here? My thoughts were a sluggish as my limbs, but I recalled the discovery of Ben, the meeting with MacEiver, the battle in Whitechapel, and most of the discussion immediately afterwards. After that events became fuzzy and uncertain. I dimly recalled walking down a crowded street. Then...nothing.

"Ah, Doctor. You're awake. Excellent."

I had not heard the door open, and this disturbed me greatly. I have not Holmes' powers of observation, but I had been a soldier, and not a bad one. Holmes was one of the only people who could sneak up on me. The pure Oxford accent, breaking my thoughts like glass, was the first indication I had that I was no longer alone.

Raising my eyes I saw a man who might have been tall, were it not for the stooped shoulders that gave the vague impression of a hunchback. This effect was further exaggerated by an overlarge head set upon an emaciated neck. Sunken eyes glittered with a terrifying intelligence. I was put in mind of Holmes' keen grey gaze, but this man's eyes held no warmth, no compassion. Holmes, for all his presentation of a calculating thinking machine, was still an approachable human being. Intimidating, perhaps, but in him existed both warmth and compassion. No such thing existed in the icy blue eyes that held mine.

"I feared we had given you too much sedative," the newcomer continued, moving away from the door. It closed as silently as it had opened. There was no rattle of a lock. The man moving toward me had a peculiar way of moving his head back and forth in an almost hypnotic fashion. I was put in mind of the mouse confronted by a cobra–and I think it goes without saying who was the mouse. "You are suffering no ill effects?"

"No more than expected from having been rendered unconscious and kidnaped," I replied with as much cool as I could muster. "Professor James Moriarty, I presume?" It could only be he. I had never laid eyes on the man, but Holmes could be powerfully descriptive. It is rare that a person resembles one's mental picture, but in this case Moriarty matched perfectly the image I had built of him., though I had never imagined a man's eyes could be so cold...

He half-smiled and acknowledged my identification with a little nod. "I have heard much about you, Doctor Watson. And of course I have read your colorful articles in the Strand magazine. You have a certain talent for writing. No doubt your friend appreciates your enthusiastic documentation of his work."

"He often claims otherwise," I responded shortly. "But I do not believe him displeased."

Again Moriarty's lips drew back into a thin-lipped smile. "A man such as Sherlock Holmes thrives on praise. Without it, he is nothing."

This was patently untrue. Holmes did not truly mind my writing up of some of his more interesting cases. It was good advertising, and good for his reputation, but I could not number the times he had allowed Scotland Yard or some other agency take credit for a case he had solved. He was not the most modest man I had ever met, but a glory hound he was not by any definition of the world. I opened my mouth to protest this injustice, remembered to whom I was speaking, and closed it again, the protest unvoiced. Moriarty's chilling smile grew a little wider.

"What is it you want with me?" I demanded. "I know nothing that is of use."

"A truer statement I never heard," Moriarty agreed, rather insultingly. "But it is not your brains I desire, Doctor Watson. Rather your pleasant company."

"To trap Holmes?" I guessed. It was the most obvious reason, after all. "Ridiculous. He will not walk into so blatant a trap."

"Won't he? I think otherwise. Sherlock Holmes' great failing is that he allows himself to rely too much upon others. He becomes dependent, and thus creates weakness. His concern for you, his friend, will lead him to make foolish decisions. I have no such weaknesses–which is why, my good doctor, I will defeat Holmes despite his tiring persistence in foiling my plans." The professor began a slow circuit around me, his head swaying. "Relationships, emotion...weakness. They only render one vulnerable."

"You have a bleak view of the world," I said. "I should not wish to walk in your shoes."

"That is because you are a weak romantic. I will give credit to your friend, he avoids entanglements with women–the greatest of weaknesses–but he cannot break his addiction to...friendship." He sneered slightly.

As to women...well, Holmes had a very low opinion of romance, it is true. I am of the private opinion that, rather than a genuine hatred of the female sex, it was because he could not imagine entering a deep emotional relationship with a woman who was not his intellectual equal. In his mind, such an unequal bond would never thrive. Indeed, it probably would not, for a man like my friend. He threw his whole heart into whatever he pursued, and a romance destined to wither would only be fatally destructive. A woman who could not keep up with him would be doomed to shrink in his presence, and that, to Holmes, would not be tolerable. Even in our friendship, he has never allowed me to settle back and be content with things as they are. He has always pushed, driven, dragged me to become better. It is a gift, to those who can stomach it. Those who come into his circle and refuse to change inevitably wind up despising and resenting him. Lestrade has trod that perilous line many times, but even he has become better for knowing Sherlock Holmes. Holmes never spoke of it, but I knew that his gift, or curse, whatever you might name it, had brought more pain into his life than he liked to admit. Looking at Moriarty, I suddenly realized that this man–cold, perhaps even more brilliant that Holmes–could never understand what it was my friend held. He saw it as a weakness, but to my mind it was a strength that Moriarty could never realize though he take control of all the world.

All this passed through my mind in a heartbeat, followed by the realization that, though he was fundamentally and morally wrong about Holmes' character, the sinister professor was perfectly right in one thing: Holmes would almost certainly try to find me and rescue me, and so walk into a trap.

Surely not. Surely Holmes is smart enough to know it will be a trap, and he will outwit Moriarty at his own game.

Maybe. The uncertainty was crippling. Holmes was not perfect, as I knew only too well. He had been foiled, many times, including by Moriarty, and made stupid mistakes or foolish decisions. The image I built of Holmes in the Strand was that of a man who almost never failed, who was virtually unbeatable. The bane and nightmare of the criminal minded. It served his business well, and the nearly overwhelming confidence Holmes usually exuded only strengthened the image.

But he was as human as I, and just as capable of making a botch of things.

It was not a revelation I found pleasant. Even I, who knew him better than perhaps anyone save his brother, forgot about his failings. Looking into the dead eyes of his archnemesis I suddenly feared that this human frailty was exactly what Moriarty was counting on.

In which case, I would be better served getting myself out of this as soon as possible. I had the sudden impression that Moriarty viewed me as hardly more intelligent than a bug a child had trapped in a box, helpless and unable to escape. It was a more exaggerated version of the way I had noticed certain readers of the Strand saw me. (My own fault, I suppose, in giving such an impression in my writings...although it might also be blamed on Conan Doyle, who edited them.)

"Holmes will come to the bait as surely as a bee to honey," Moriarty continued with overweening arrogance. "And he will be mine to dispose of, to trouble me no more."

"I'm surprised," I said blandly, "that you see him as such a threat, considering how 'weak' you consider him. Hardly worth your effort, I should say."

Moriarty seemed to find this comment vastly amusing, for he gave voice to a chuckle that set my spine crawling. "Eight years ago I might have agreed," he said amiably. "When he first fouled up a plan of mine. Blind amateur luck, from a young puppy too smart for his own good. However," he continued, his voice returning to its former crispness, "his streak of 'luck' has proved remarkable. That I am smarter than he I know, but I never," Moriarty fixed me with his chilling stare, "I never make the mistake of underestimating an enemy."

Was that a warning to me? Perhaps. It was depressingly possible that this evil man did not see me as a helpless bug after all. Perhaps he could guess my every thought, my every intent.

Would that stop me from trying?

Hardly.