Story beta'd by BrokenKestral

I tried to hide it from him.

"I want to stop in that shop for a moment. It won't take long."

"Someone has been behind us for a while. We should turn to make sure he is not following us."

"Have you not tried this shortcut?"

These and other perfectly logical excuses served to deflect his forming question, diverting his curiosity about why I wanted to change what he had been planning, and the event usually passed unnoticed. There was nothing to catch his attention when he was so accustomed to me browsing bookstores or needing supplies for my medical bag, and some of it may even have been written off to something that had changed during the years he had been away.

"How can you need more bandages already? You have had barely any patients this week."

Alright, so maybe it occasionally caught his attention, but what else could I do? He would send me to Bedlam if I told him the real reason I sometimes changed our—his—path.

"Holmes?" He glanced at me on his way out the door, and I limped across the room to hand him some bills. "Would you stop at the luthier on your way home and get a couple of strings? I am nearly out of spares, and it is not far off your route."

Confusion crossed his face as he wondered why my spares were running low—he had not heard me play in a while—but he merely nodded. I concealed my sigh of relief until he was safely out of the flat.

He commented that night about a page missing from the paper, but seemed to accept my shrug of indifference. He need not know about the omnibus accident that had injured several and killed one, nor did I see a reason for him to discover that it had occurred just where he would have been standing…if I had not sent him to the luthier for extra viola strings.

It did not happen often, but I knew to listen when it did: a niggling, undefinable knowing that he should not be in a certain place at a certain time. A more concrete version of the inducing I had been able to do my entire life, the results of that wish had saved him or both of us from inconvenience or worse many times, and I had no plans to ignore whenever it chimed.

I also had no plans to tell Holmes exactly why I did the things I occasionally did, though that got harder as time wore on.

"I think he's lying, Holmes."

My friend's gaze snapped up to look at me, and I hid most of my expression in my journal. He glanced at the door, then back at me, frowning.

"What gives you that impression?"

I hesitated, trying to find a valid reason—or at least one he would accept as valid—but shook my head as I came up empty.

"I don't know," I replied. I can't tell you, I meant. "Just…I think he's lying. He has not turned his back on the gang. He is going to double cross you."

His frown deepened as he processed my words. I had induced a few hazardous situations over the years when he had lacked the data to note the danger, but before now, I had never told him from the safety of our flat. I would not have this time, but he had left me no choice when he announced the intention to leave the flat without me.

"At least let me come with you," I added when I saw that he could not turn down the information the man had offered.

He hesitated, considering. He had wanted to go alone, as that had a better chance at remaining unnoticed, but I knew he trusted me enough to take my word when I said something was off. He also knew that now that I had said something, I would likely come rather he agreed or not—and whether he ever saw me or not. There had been many occasions when he had refused to let me accompany him and I had quietly followed, not showing myself unless and until something went wrong.

It was probably this and not my words that made him agree, but it made no difference to me. If he would not avoid the alley like the trap it was, I would at least be there to guard his back.

And I was glad I had done so, even when he continued looking at me curiously a few hours later. His contact had indeed staged an ambush, and it had only been my refusal to go more than a couple of steps into the alley that had made the ambush fail.

"How did you know?" he asked me when we were back in our rooms, settled in our chairs before the fire.

I barely glanced up from my novel. "I already told you. I didn't."

Silence fell, and I could feel him staring at me. I kept my gaze on the page, affecting an air of disinterest.

"What are you hiding from me?"

I looked up as I let a chuckle escape, hoping he could not tell that it was faked. "You have said many times that I can hide nothing from you. I told you, I have no idea what about it made me cautious. It just did. Maybe it had to do with his insistence on meeting in that particular alley."

He frowned at me but let it go, and while he studied me for a few days, another case captured his attention soon enough. I carefully avoided his notice for months, waiting for the incident to fade from memory.

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