Story beta'd by the very patient BrokenKestral
Fulfills Whumptober #6, #7, #8, #13, #16, #23, & Alt 10
6. Stop, please
7. Support
8. Isolation
16. Hallucinations
13. Breathe in breathe out.
23. Exhaustion
Alt 10. Nightmares
He ducked into the alcove, taking barely a moment to glance back before hurrying through the door.
Someone was following him.
He had been going to check the mail, wondering if Mycroft had finally sent an update, when he noticed the strange man dogging his steps. He had detoured twice, casually changing his path down various alleys and side streets, but the man had stayed behind him, and he gave up on the mail to lose the tail. He had apparently stayed here for too long, and he hoped only to lose the man long enough to reach his rooms. He would have to leave today.
The doors passed quickly as he limped down the breezeway between buildings, searching for the one he needed. It was awkward to constrain himself to his disguise while fleeing, but he did not believe the man following him knew exactly who he was following, and it would not do to announce it now. He hurried toward one building that had an excellent layout for losing a tail.
Finding the door, he expertly navigated the labyrinthine laboratory building, and a tall Frenchman strode out the opposite side of the same building a Norwegian cripple had just entered, leaving his tail wandering the maze. He allowed himself a small smirk. Whoever had designed that building had been rather lacking in basic design skills, but the layout was useful for losing someone. He would not be able to stay here even a day longer, but he did not want to leave the lab without informing his fellow workers if he did not have to, and losing his tail meant he would be able to return to his rooms once more before disappearing. He started planning what he would need to do to move cities again without either leaving his work at the lab in jeopardy or creating a trail to his next hideaway.
He stayed alert all the way back to his rooms but saw no indication that anyone paid him undue notice, and he breathed a faint sigh of relief as he bolted the door behind him. He would head north. The next train left in an hour, and, grateful for the luxury of time to leave, he started packing a bag, quickly sending a note to his fellow workers and gathering the few things he had left in his rooms that he would prefer not to leave behind.
He was nearly done when footsteps sounded in the hall, and he glanced up, tensing as he noted the easiest exits. The footsteps belonged to an overweight Englishman, and no one here fit that description. Had the man tailing him found him after all?
A heavy fist pounded on his door.
"Monsieur Monet! Monsieur!"
The French words belied both the heavily accented voice and the footsteps they accompanied, and Holmes hurried away from the door, rushing into the depths of his rooms as he made for the closest emergency exit. The pounding fist changed to a kicking foot, and the door gave with a crunch as Holmes sprinted for the window. Would he even have time to deploy the ladder he had made to hang from the second-floor bedroom?
He doubted it. He should have fought harder for ground floor accommodations.
Heavy footsteps hurried through the front room. Swinging his bag's straps over his shoulders, he opened the window with ease as a large man appeared in his doorway.
"Sherlock!" the man hissed just before he took his chances and dove over the sill.
He froze. That sounded like—
Releasing his grip on the frame, he turned to see his brother striding quickly across the room, relief mixing with something else in his gaze.
"Mycroft?" he replied, stunned. "What are you doing here?"
His brother's large hand landed on his shoulder, nearly dragging him away from the window in Mycroft's version of a relieved embrace.
"Come," he said instead of answering Holmes' question. "We have just enough time to catch the next train."
The days passed in a haze of routine.
I got up, I did my rounds, and I answered the occasional call from the Yard. Then, I stared blankly through the fire in my empty house for hours, unable to read, with nothing to write, unable to do anything but think. Sometime around midnight, I roused myself from the chair to move to my bedroom, where I waited for dawn, only to do it all again. Time did not matter. The worried looks Lestrade gave me did not matter. Nothing mattered.
Why would anything matter? I was alone.
I was floating in darkness, lost in a fog. I didn't want to be here, but I had nowhere to go. The only thing that had kept me around thus far was a lack of another place to be.
Memories of years long past dominated my thoughts. Mary seemed to peer at me from around every corner of our empty house, waving at me to join her on the settee, cooking supper in the kitchen, reading on the bed. Some days, I could almost feel her hand on my shoulder as I sat at my desk, and I would turn, expecting to see her coaxing me away from my work.
She was never there, of course, and another piece of me crumbled away each time it happened.
I could not even escape the memories by going for a walk, for the streets of London were just as haunted as my silent house. Holmes lived in every alley, every intersection, every place we had ever gone, and I had stopped being surprised when he appeared next to me, walking with me down the street for several blocks in silence before just as quietly disappearing. Just like with Mary, I felt myself break a little more each time, torn between wanting the hallucinations to stop and desperately wishing he would stay, hallucination or no.
I did not have many pieces left to crumble.
The changing weather aggravated my old injuries, and the resultant throbbing brought memories of Maiwand forward. War fought for dominance with peaceful domesticity and adventuresome cases, and regressions hit almost regularly, sending me into the past either to the happier days that I dearly missed or to the blood, war, and horror that I tried to forget. Sometimes they melded, resulting in waking nightmares where I saw one or both of them killed on the battlefield in a variety of ways. More than once, I had wandered from my house in the midst of a regression, usually waking a block or so away, but it was only after I woke on the riverbank that I knew something needed to change.
I had put my house and practice on the market the next day, planning to move out of London when they sold, but weeks had passed, and I was beginning to doubt they would ever sell. Various other practices and buildings around town were selling almost faster than the owner could put up the sign, but no one had shown any interest even after I placed several ads in the papers.
I could not bring myself to be surprised. I was alone in everything else. Why not invisible, too?
My original plan had been to wait until the house sold and use the money to start over, but I forced myself to acknowledge that my options had changed the night before, when I had blinked out of yet another memory to find myself within sight of the river again. I was not the three steps away that I had been the first time—or even the fifty feet I had been from it the previous week—but that did not change the fact that I had been less than a hundred feet from suicide for the second time in a week. I had a choice to make.
I could continue as I was, waiting for the regression that would be the last, or I could leave immediately, taking only what I could carry on the next train out of town.
Did I want to leave early?
Or did I want to let nature take its course?
For the first time in years, I wasn't sure. I had no reason to stay, but I also had no reason to leave, no reason to start over. No reason to continue living the farce of a life that had been my existence for the months since Mary had died. Who would miss me? My wife was dead; I hadn't been able to save her. My dearest friend was dead through my own negligence, and I had no family left. I dared not grow close to anyone; they would just end up dead, too.
I would never take my own life, but I could no longer deny that perhaps I would be better off dead.
Should I stay in London, waiting for a regression to kill me? It would be a simple way to go, and rather fitting, considering the casualty numbers from the battle of Maiwand. I could join them on a ten-year delay, for is it not a battle casualty if the battle forces its way to the present to kill me? It was no longer a matter of if I cared—I had stopped caring long ago. It was a matter of if I had a reason not to let it happen.
A recent police report crossed my mind, accompanied by Lestrade's expression when I had announced that the man had died without ever waking from the sleepwalking during which he had fallen into the river. The horror and fear that had crossed the inspector's face, followed by a brief glance at me, was ingrained in my memory. I could not do that to him. I could not let that report come across his desk.
That settled it. I could not claim to care if a regression carried me to the next life, but if one did, it would not be in London.
I needed to pack.
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