Holmes had taken the realization that he was a storybook character well, but that didn't mean it wasn't weighing on him. He couldn't let himself dwell on it when Watson was around, and so whenever he did contemplate it he found it a very lonely, depressing pass-time. Watson had never unsympathetic towards him; on the contrary, he was a mild mannered man and a good friend, and Holmes knew Watson didn't approve of it when he spent too much in his own head. If Watson knew about the hours he spent contemplating his realization, he would ask him about it and worry about him when he would, inevitably, fail to answer him any kind of honestly. And then being lied to and dismissed so brusquely would make Watson upset. Not only upset, but the kind of upset where he wouldn't admit to being upset and he would get quiet and avoid him until he stopped doing what was upsetting him. Holmes hated that kind of upset more than any other kind.

He actually liked keeping Watson close, because when Watson was away, he couldn't help but think about all the ways being a storybook character made his life complicated like why did he have consciousness if he wasn't real? Is he the creation of someone besides the good Lord above? And was his world real? What about Watson and Mrs. Hudson and everyone he knew? Were any of them real? Did anything matter? Was he simply real and just mad? Did he belong in Bedlam with all the others who couldn't see truth from fiction?

He wondered, and sometimes he wandered. He couldn't find Scrooge and Cratchit's business anymore no matter where he looked, and he didn't know where the line between his reality and another story's reality was. He began to worry that he would somehow find himself in a world that wasn't his, that somehow all stories were real, even the crazy ones. And in all his wondering and wandering and worrying, he came to a few conclusions.

The first conclusion was that he wasn't crazy, he really was a storybook character. It was an inescapable conclusion, and he ceased to debate it within himself, partly because he was certain of it and partly because he very much disliked the alternative that he was mad. So, he decided, he was fiction. That was all there was to it.

The second conclusion came quickly on the heels of the first: his reality was closely tied to the Author's reality. It had to be, for if the real reality was something terribly different from what he was experiencing, then why would so many other books like A Christmas Carol exist in a reality just like his? If what was real was happening on a different planet far into the future, then most other books would be set there, too. So, the Author lived on Earth, and lived not too far into the future. Holmes was fairly sure of it. His reality was close to the Author's reality, whoever that was.

Holmes simply called him 'the Author' in his mind, but he supposed the real Author may have a different title altogether or may even be a woman; he had no way to know. After all, he was fiction and so most of what he thought he knew had been thrown out the window. He was, however, confident he shared a reality close to the Authors.

But how much was the same? Surely a majority of it had to be, for the Author wouldn't have crafted an entire Earth for him to live in. Surely the Author had simply created him, Sherlock Holmes, to exist in his world, the Author's world. He'd created a cast of characters around him, but certainly he couldn't have possibly imagined every single aspect of his life or every single person he'd ever met. He only dictated parts of his life, not all of it. It was simply impossible for him to just like it would be impossible for any author to try to imagine every part a fantasy world even if it was of their own design. They might create the bare bones of a world, but in the end the day-to-day goings on of it would govern themselves and the author would be confined within that. Holmes decided he was created, yes, but his everyday goings-on was governed by himself.

That was Holmes' third conclusion: that he did, in fact, have agency outside of the Author. After all, he had a family, a childhood, and a life all outside of his cases. The Author certainly couldn't have thought up all of that, not every moment of his life. All the mundane, boring, ridiculously everyday things? Certainly not. It couldn't be that the Author scripted all of it. So, he did, in fact, have some agency, some freedom. In between those stories the Author dictated for him, he could do as he liked. And certainly even when the Author dictated his life, he had free agency within that as well. The Author, he had a feeling, was using Watson's same stories, and Watson hardly wrote down every single thing he did. Like in the Baskerville case, Watson hadn't seen him investigating on his own. That meant that there was more like a rough outline for his life, but he got to fill most of the blanks.

While he wondered about the stories, he had to also wonder why Watson? Was Watson also created and controlled by the Author? He must be, he was too much of a constant in Holmes' life to not be part of the larger stories. And if he was right, then the Author was using Watson as the point of view for all the stories. Did that mean Watson was actually created first? Holmes didn't know.

And why harm Watson? That line of thought made Holmes angry. Why, if Watson was simply the mouthpiece for the Author, send him to war to get shot and nearly killed? Was Watson put through that just so he could meet Holmes and write the stories? It made Holmes feel guilty to think about every time Watson's old wounds pained him. Still, Holmes was grateful to the Author, whoever he was, for giving him a friend. He didn't know where he would be without Watson.

He was also angry at the Author for his own shortcomings. He didn't like falling into black moods, didn't like the way his brain stagnated when he didn't have work, didn't like his tendency to drive people away with his abrasiveness. How much of that was him and how much was the Author? Was the Author responsible for his use of morphine and cocaine? Was that the reason why he couldn't kick the habit no matter how hard he tried, no matter how Watson tried to help him? It wasn't right, but there was no use fighting it. It came, he supposed, with the territory of being a storybook character: he didn't get to choose his own vices. Or perhaps he did for some of them, he would simply never know.

But how many storybook characters were real? They all weren't, they couldn't be. That would be far too many, and the list would get weird quickly. Little aliens from another planet? Sea monsters? All the cheap, ridiculous characters from yellowback novels written to be mindless entertainment? Surely they couldn't all be real, not even in their own little universes. Could they? He may never know, but it seemed improbable. But then again, so did his own existence and consciousness. He suspected that no one in the Author's world would ever imagine that he had a consciousness, yet here he was deciding books in his world couldn't come true… it all made his head spin, but he still thought it unlikely all stories were real.

Scrooge. Scrooge was real, in his own way. Did Scrooge know he was a storybook character? Holmes doubted it. He'd read A Christmas Carol, he knew Scrooge had only ever cared for money at the beginning of his book. At the end, he'd cared for humanity. He'd never, throughout the entire thing, been terribly smart. He probably lived in blissful ignorance that he existed because of a tiny volume with a red cover and gold lettering. A Christmas Carol, Holmes determined, must be a real book, and that threw more questions into consideration.

A Christmas Carol was written by Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens was a real person in Holmes' reality. And his story was real in its own way. And so, Holmes reasoned, Charles Dickens was real in the author's reality as well as his reality. It fit in with his theory that he lived in a world very close to the Author's. He read the same books the Author read. He knew some of the same famous people the Author knew. Queen Victoria was likely the queen in the Author's world, too. And so, the difference was that in the Author's world he was in a book and in his world the Author didn't exist. Charles Dickens and Ebeneezer Scrooge couldn't exist in the same world, but he, Sherlock Holmes, could exist in a world with Charles Dickens. Just not the real Charles Dickens, because that man existed in the Author's world. Thinking about that too much usually made Holmes' head hurt.

He also wondered if he had ever lived his life before and just didn't know it. He was experiencing his own life normally, but the Author didn't know he was alive, and so had no reason to write his adventures in any kind of linear manner. It was possible he'd lived the end of his life already and didn't know it. Or maybe it was more like a map: whatever the Author wrote was simply destined to happen and he'd get there when he got there.

That was why Reichenbach bothered him. Was that actually his doing, or was that preordained for him? Did he have a choice? In the moment he was sure that he had, he had known that he was making the right choice no matter how badly it hurt to do so. But could he have made a different choice? Could he have gone back to London? Not offended Watson with his actions? Could he have had those three years of his life back? He may never know, and he hated it. He didn't like to think about what would happen when he died for real; he'd contemplate that later.

It all led to his final, inevitable conclusion: he was in a book, and yet his actions still mattered. He had a consciousness, a life, and not all of it could be a lie. His friendship with Watson wasn't fake, it couldn't be. The people he'd helped: it all mattered. It had to. And even if he never knew what exactly was strictly his choice or not, he knew he had to keep living as if it was all his life, because in a way it was, and by then he knew better than to take it for granted. Whatever life was, he would live it.

"Holmes?" Watson's voice broke though his mind's wanderings one day. "Is something wrong?"

"Hmm?" Holmes said focusing on his friend. He'd been caught delving too deep, and he knew it.

"I called to you, Holmes. You didn't hear me, you were far into your own head and it was beginning to worry me."

"It's nothing," Holmes said.

"I…"

"I said it's nothing," Holmes snapped more forcefully than was strictly necessary, and he immediately regretted it when Watson got that look on his face he only ever got when he was upset with Holmes but Holmes didn't want to see it on his face.

Holmes was debating if he should apologize, but if he did then Watson might push to know what was going on and he really couldn't tell him. He was still debating it when Watson left him, marching up to his room, and Holmes cringed when he heard the door shut. That didn't go well, but he really couldn't tell Watson. His friend would let it go eventually, he always did. Just as long as he never found out. But if he could never talk with Watson, would he ever make amends? He wished he could talk about it with Watson. He wished he could have someone understand, wished he could meet someone who also knew they weren't quite real. He had no way of knowing it, but he would soon get his wish, just not in the way he expected.