"Give me a moment, and I'll come with you!"

Just over a year after the ambush, I could not chance warning him beforehand, but a warning had chimed within me when he said something about going to the Yard. The way the weather was changing meant I had been hoping for a quiet evening in my chair, but this took precedence. I would much rather spend a painful afternoon accompanying him on an errand than lose him through my desire to stay inside, and my hesitance at him discovering my secret would not stop me from redirecting his path and delaying him as needed.

He raised an eyebrow but hesitated in the doorway long enough for me to grab my cane, and I followed when he hurried out the door.

"I am just picking up a case file from the Yard," he told me as we dodged through the crowd to hail the slowly passing cab.

I shrugged off his question. "I wanted to get out of the flat. What is the case?"

He frowned at me—probably noting my limp—but answered as the cab bounced down the street, and I listened to the details of one of Lestrade's cold cases while I scanned our surroundings. We had avoided an attempted mugging by taking a cab, but we were not completely in the clear. Something much bigger was looming; I just had to pinpoint it.

Whatever it was, it was not related to the cab, and I relaxed, keeping Holmes talking about the case with several pointed questions. The cabbie came to a stop in front of the Yard after a few minutes, and I followed Holmes into the building, carefully checking our surroundings for anything wrong.

"There you are, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade's voice rang out, and I looked over from scanning the hallways to see him just coming out of his office. "I was just beginning to think you would not make it today."

Holmes answered with something about losing track of time, following Lestrade back to the desk, but I looked down the hall again, more concerned with what the non-uniformed man was doing outside of the superintendent's office.

Lestrade rummaged through the files on his desk, looking for the one Holmes sought, and the man wandered slowly up the now-empty hall, checking doors and keeping one hand near a bulge in his pocket.

The knowledge slammed into me just as the man looked up the hallway. Recognition crossed his face at the same time as a cruel grin, and his wandering stride gained purpose.

Lestrade found his file and started discussing it with Holmes, and I glanced at them, then back to the ruffian quickly growing closer. Holmes was the primary target, and he would say I should alert him. Lestrade was the secondary target, and he would probably say I should lock all three of us in the office and wait for the other officers to handle it. I was manna…and I did not know how either of those options would end.

"Better the devil you know," a commander had once told me.

I closed the office door, locked it, and pocketed the key.

Exclamations of surprise came from the office, but I ignored them, gripping my cane and moving away from the door.

He pulled the revolver from his pocket when he saw me pocket the key, and I lunged forward, unsheathing the sword in my cane as I sought to reach him before he could fire.

The hallway seemed to elongate, the distance between us growing as that barrel slowly brought its focus on me. For a moment, I thought that perhaps I had been wrong, that I had not known how this would end.

Then the weapon clicked, misfiring. The flat of my sword shoved his weapon upwards as he tried to shoot again, and the bullet lodged in the ceiling. I caught the gun against my hilt and twisted, sending the revolver skittering along the floor. Several officers hurried out of the next hallway, and I relaxed out of battle-readiness as the door slammed opened behind me.

"Watson!" Holmes' voice nearly echoed in the hall, rife with panic after hearing the gunshot.

My sword slid into its sheath, and I leaned on the cane as I turned around to see Holmes barrel out of the office, Lestrade barely a step behind him.

"Watson!" he said again, though the name carried a bit less panic as he saw me calmly standing in front of where four officers wrestled the blackguard into a pair of cuffs.

"How many times have you picked that lock, Holmes?" I asked with a smirk. It usually took far longer than ten seconds for him to pick a lock for the first time, and I hoped the comment would distract him from the many questions I could see in his gaze.

I had no such luck, however. He strode closer, checking me for injury. The panic slowly drained from his gaze as he saw I was unhurt, but he rested faintly trembling hands on my shoulders, fighting for words. I had not sought to scare him—them—so badly, but a scare was better than the alternative.

"That was a foolish thing to do, Doctor," Lestrade remonstrated quietly when Holmes remained silent.

"It was the best plan I had at the time," I replied as Holmes slowly relaxed. "He was not after me." They did not need to know that the man would have shot me without the misfire. I had known he would not shoot me, and the man had only aimed at me because I guarded the key.

Holmes had removed his hands from my shoulders as I spoke, but his gaze sharpened, and I cursed myself, thinking quickly.

"How did you know he was not after you?"

"He did not shoot me on sight," I replied simply, and Holmes did not quite smother a shiver. "He saw me from the other end of the hall. He wanted the two of you. He just recognized me." I never enjoyed using his regard for me against him, but I had long ago learned that, if I could not deflect the question, the best way to change a subject that had captured Holmes' attention was to make it too uncomfortable to continue.

He frowned at me, possibly recognizing what I was trying to do. "You should have said something."

I shrugged. "It ended well enough, and you got to practice picking the lock on Lestrade's door. Did you get the file you wanted?"

His frown deepened, but he made no reply until we left the Yard a few minutes later.

"Do not do that again," he said seriously, staring through the sidewalk though he refused to go further than arm's length from me. I said nothing.

"Watson?"

"I can't promise that, Holmes, and you know it. I was in no danger."

He scowled. "He had a gun, and you were alone and unarmed. How can you say you were not in danger?"

"I was not unarmed, and I was only alone for a few seconds." He finally looked up at me, and I could see the memory of panic lingering in his gaze. He had barreled out of that office expecting to find me bleeding on the floor.

"You have said many times that a sword against a gun creates a corpse with a sword. Those few seconds were all it would have taken."

I hesitated, weighing my words and how I wanted to answer. "I was not referring to the sword," I finally replied. "I was armed. Maybe one day I will tell you with what."

He tried many times over the next several hours to get me to elaborate, but I refused, and he eventually dropped the topic—though I heavily suspected he knew something was up and was just waiting for a clue as to what it was.

Don't forget to review! :)