Distractions

by fourleggedfish

For a prompt on LiveJournal: Holmes being the victim of rape with Watson finding out and as usual having to deal with the aftermath. EXPLICIT non-con, violence, NC-17. May be triggering. There is plot involved yes, that's also a warning .

5. Chapter 5

Holmes barely spoke for several days after the sitting room incident. The scattering of faded bruises and marks all over his body stood out in fresh relief where his clothes did not hide them, yellow and green against the lingering sickly, almost translucent cast that his skin had taken on during his illness, like the white face paint that Holmes kept in his disguise kit to use as an undercoating when he needed to change his complexion. He took to smiling at Watson at odd intervals, too, but only as if he thought that he was supposed to. It made little sense that he would do such a thing, since Holmes had never been known for doing what he was supposed to in a polite construct. He would offer the expression and then stare expectantly at Watson, waiting for a favorable reaction. Watson couldn't give him what he wanted in that respect. If anything, the incongruity of Holmes' careless smile – that languidly pleased, boneless one that he often adopted right after solving a particularly harrowing case – set against his stubble-shadowed, chalky cheeks and interspersed with half-healed cuts and the dim vestiges of bruises shaped like other men's hands proved unnaturally disturbing to Watson. He dropped his eyes every time, just to avoid seeing any more of it than necessary. As a consequence, he also missed Holmes' reactions to his lacking responses, and he was glad of it; he couldn't bear to see any more disappointment on that old familiar face.

Contrary to Watson's expectations, Holmes did not take up the needle in earnest. That did not stop Watson from hiding the Morocco case whenever he saw it laying about, and neither did it prevent Holmes from deducing its new whereabouts with his usual degree of uncanny accuracy. It would disappear from Watson's possession and reappear on the table next to Holmes' chair, only to be pilfered and squirreled away in a new hole, but the amount of solution in the cocaine bottle wavered only slightly – one dose, perhaps two total. Watson could not claim that this relieved him of his direst concern. All it meant was that Holmes had firmly grounded himself in limbo and was no longer even making an effort to process through events. If he was not staving off a black fit, then he was neither bored nor bothered, nor confused and overwhelmed and in need of escape from it. He did seem to be pondering things, but he did so in the same objective if fervent manner that he bestowed upon his cases. It was an unnatural drive, however, and devoid of either inquiry or progress. Holmes had mastered the motions of introspection, and yet for all Watson could tell, there were no concerted thoughts in his head as he obsessed over his pipe in silence, or shredded newspapers in his habitual scouring of the agony columns.

Watson's nerves grated to see Holmes fluttering about their rooms like a specter of himself, glancing through the mail accumulating into drifts on the mantle without opening a single piece of it, his voice soft and rich and absent when he spoke at all. Too gentle. In fact, everything he did was too gentle. When he played his violin, the bow only whispered tunelessly across the strings as if the sound of it were haunting the wood. When he took his meals – and he did not skip a single one, as if the prospect of starting an argument with Watson were too much to contemplate – he picked at his food with dainty fingers, slow to consume it all though he kept steadily placing bits of it in his mouth until it was all gone. When he folded the newspaper to a new page, it was nearly silent, and he had long since given up commenting with scorn on the petty headlines and announcements to be found therein - missing jewelry and smashed windows, lost dogs and parasols, engagements, the schedules of various society types, gossip about the royal family... Watson tried to entice him with a few prospective clients who came to their door, mostly poorer folk scraping out their last hope on Holmes' doorstep. But each time Watson asked him if he would consent to an interview, Holmes would grow nervous and drum his fingers on the arm of his chair, or scuttle from the room with his dressing gown closed tight about him to hide the marks that persisted in discoloring the delicate skin of his throat. In the end, Watson turned them all away, and though he offered his warmest apologies, a courtesy was not what they had come for.

The slamming of doors now made Holmes jump and look around, wild and startled for a bare instant before he smiled – gentle, sheepish smile – and settled back with a murmured apology more like Watson in the odd days following his return from Afghanistan than like himself, back when Watson had discovered with no small degree of embarrassment that Maiwand had left him gun shy. Knowing what that feels like - how the powerlessness of an etched fear in a safe place could leave a man ashamed to be skittish in his own home - Watson gentled his own manner to match Holmes' quieter one, and he caught at doors so that they snicked shut with only a faint click to betray the settling of the tumblers. Holmes stayed away from his chemical table for so long that the colored stains patching his hands and fingers faded entirely away. Watson could not recall having ever seen Holmes' hands unblemished, sans split knuckles and sticking plaster, his cuticles devoid of ink stains, pristine and pale as the rest of him; it was eerie.

Holmes drifted silently out of bed in the mornings, pulling off nightclothes and slipping on shirts and trousers as if the cloth were made of water, elegant in a way that Holmes had never been. It was not that Holmes was normally an ungainly fellow; in Watson's mind, he had always possessed a sort of grace that came from confidence and agility, honed in the boxing ring and practiced on street thugs - that brilliance that extended beyond his mind into something far less tangible, that in other men was dark. And it was that natural intensity, the jittery and irrepressible, nearly turbulent energy that used to characterize his every breath, that had all but bled out of him. The absence expressed itself as elegance, and that wholly different kind of grace that only came at the price of knowing terrible truths. Holmes had become subdued to the point that Watson spent an entire afternoon searching the house for evidence that Holmes had gotten his hands on morphine or laudanum or chloral, convinced that he was tranquilizing himself rather than indulging in cocaine because cocaine let him think with alarming clarity, and the other drugs could have perhaps shut his mind down. There was nothing, however.

What Watson gradually came to understand was that he was witnessing the loss of that unique sort of innocence that most people shed in childhood. Good and bad things, to the young, could be clearly delineated and rigorously kept separate; there was no gray, and so no confusion about blame or forgiveness or moving on when bad things happened. It had not occurred to Watson that Holmes still possessed that sort of moral compass - that blatant simplicity in deciding who was right and who was wrong, who should be punished and who has been punished enough already. Holmes was not naive - he had witnessed first hand, as had Watson, that bad things often happened to good people for no reason. A man can know many things without understanding them, however. No one notices the loss of such innocence in a child, obscured as the transition is by natural maturation and age. To see such a thing destroyed in a grown man, however, was an offense grievous enough to rend even the bystanders in two. The worst part for Watson was that he hadn't even known that the innocence was there until he noticed the systematic dismantling of it and knew that he could never give that back to his friend.

Although Watson knew this, that some things could not be undone, he could not believe that this state would be permanent. His life had narrowed when Mary died, first to case notes and fading memories and an empty house, and then to the preservation of Holmes himself. He needed Holmes to remind him how to live, to make his heart race and his mind tie itself in knots...to let him care about someone other than himself. Watson had a self-destructive streak too, embodied in a tendency to gamble and a bloodline of men brought low by drink. Holmes kept him from dwelling on those impulses, from ruining himself under a false impression that no one would notice if he went down the same path as his brother, alone. For now, Watson could allow that Holmes required a respite. It reminded Watson of those first few months after Maiwand when he had himself wafted aimlessly about in the mess of his own life trying to simply stay afloat, too tired and thinly drawn to devote time or energy or thought to being traumatized by what he had been through. Eventually, the knowledge and reality had crashed down on him, but when it had finally happened, he had already been living at Baker Street, and Holmes had been, for lack of a better term, supportive. It would not have been obvious to anyone else, but even after a mere two months of sharing space with the man, Watson had been able to discern the care in Holmes' demeanor. It had been enough, and Watson had survived his past well. He needed Holmes to do the same, but the quiet terror that he might not come back from this gnawed at Watson during every idle moment. He could see Holmes slipping away from him, and while Watson fought tooth and nail not to lose his grip on his oldest and dearest friend, Holmes himself did not even attempt to grasp back.

That did not mean that Watson had any intention of conceding the battle; he would go down with that ship if he could not keep it afloat because he was incapable of giving it up. It was far too late for Watson to save himself; his chance passed the moment Holmes came back to him. Back for him. So he did what small, inconsequential things he could. He bribed Mrs Hudson to cook foods that he knew Holmes enjoyed – not that much cajoling was needed, for her own concern was evident – so that at least Holmes would put on a few pounds worth of something he liked. Holmes would have eaten anything that Watson put in front of him, of that Watson was certain, but he refused to take advantage of Holmes' complacency. Watson refrained from comment when Holmes spent increasing amounts of time in the bathtub, coming out with pruned fingers and damp hair and skin that had been scrubbed an angry red. He indulged Holmes with tickets to see Wagner, and invitations to art exhibits that he had obtained with the help of grateful and wealthy patients, and reservations at Marcini's and Simpson's. Holmes would not leave the house for any of them, but Watson persisted in his attempts. He finally managed to coax Holmes out to the park when the weather briefly broke and then let him sit on a bench and stare silently at a few roosting geese for hours, until it became clear that his mind had wandered completely away. Watson then led a frighteningly complacent Holmes back to Baker Street in the gathering dusk, trying not to be disturbed by the empty, directionless rambling of his gaze, or the way he kept his eyes downcast whenever they passed people on the sidewalk. The way he walked too close, even allowing for their linked arms. The way he angled himself toward Watson as if afraid to be caught wanting him near.

Holmes' appetite decreased eventually, as Watson had expected it to, though he still ate whatever Watson asked of him. Holmes took to smoking more in the evenings - more even than was his usual wont - and after a while, he only ever held his violin in silence, the bow discarded somewhere on the opposite side of the room. His voice remained gruff and gentle, but he used it less and less, answering Watson with single words devoid of inflection of any kind. He eventually stopped bothering to dress in the morning and simply wandered about the sitting room in his ratty old dressing gown, not pacing so much as meandering aimlessly until he met an obstacle that caused him to change direction. Watson encouraged him to take his wanderings to the street, but it soon struck him that Holmes would only leave the house during daylight hours, and even then, only if Watson left with him. He wasn't sure if Holmes were doing such on purpose, or if the inclination had slipped his rapidly narrowing field of awareness, but either way, knowing that took the appeal out of the sorts of long walks that Watson had enticed Holmes to in the past, usually as a diversion from the slow spread of ennui. Holmes had always loved London - loved to blend into it and lose himself to disguises and crowds, to protect it as if its citizenry were his responsibility and his alone. To sit in the center of it like a spider hidden in a beautiful and intricate web, ignoring flies in favor of moths. And now he feared to even step out his front door, lest London hurt him again.

It was a familiar descent, in some ways. In others, completely foreign. Holmes falling into a black fit was normally a conflagration of chaos and loud, angry protestations of boredom and everyone else's idiocy - a vague intimation that the world owed him stimulation and had failed him by leaving him to stagnate. There should have been noise and destruction, broken furniture, exploded chemical beakers, but Holmes' melancholy did not come accompanied by anger or frustration, or even desperation this time, and the pining after a worthy adversary was absent. This strangely silent and graceful fall proceeded almost without notice, until Watson woke up one morning wondering if this were actually a descent at all.

Lestrade was able to find nothing save rumors, though he told Watson that he had personally inspected every dock worker he came across for the tattoo that Holmes had described on one. It was eerie to hear Lestrade refer to the attackers by Holmes' nicknames for them: Left Arm Man and Top Man…Fourth Man… Watson did eventually go out to the scene of the crime with Lestrade, more out of a morbid need for self flagellation than because he could actually be of use. Some part of Watson burned to know just how bad it had been so that he could accurately gauge the amount of guilt he should carry for not being there to stop it. It was a disheartening little excursion to a forlorn hole between rundown tenements. The air smelled of cat piss and garbage, just as Holmes had upon his return, and Watson morosely marked the site in his mind as the unremarkable alley where his dearest and only friend's life had been forever altered. It was an event that no one else would ever mark, and an alley that would never garner more than a disdainful glance and a wrinkled nose for the stench of it, but at the moment, it was the most important place in both his and Holmes' lives. And it didn't even matter because there was nothing in it to help Watson set things right again.

Probably with neutral intentions, Lestrade remarked that in other circumstances, he might have waved the whole matter under Holmes' nose to try to get a lead. Innocent comment or not, it stung. There were some incongruities that might have enticed Holmes, had it not been all about him already: the gentleman organizer, the fact that the thing of most value – Watson's fifty pound wager – had been returned so that the only real theft was of a somewhat valueless watch and an easily traceable cigarette case, neither of which had appeared in pawn shops yet. The fact that they had known Holmes by name, the fact that they had let him live to possibly identify them later rather than leave him safely dead… And why like that? Why specifically attack him like that when knifing him or beating him bloody would have put him out of commission with less fuss? Leaving aside the fact that Holmes had no matters in hand at the moment, if someone were annoyed at his prying into a case, then they should have been better to just kill him outright, and it would not have been the first attempt to do do. Plus the clues to previous, similar assaults that had gone unreported. It could have been a crime of opportunity perpetrated in the heat of the moment, and yet the entire affair felt deliberately contrived to resemble such. Too contrived. No, the manner of attack was too personal; there was a motive to it that Watson had not yet grasped. On the surface, it appeared to be a petty if brutal attack, perhaps in revenge for the loss of a bet, or because they felt cheated to learn the identity of the man they had gambled against, as if it would have affected their wagers to know who he was. Perhaps just because Holmes was Holmes and the criminal underbelly held grudges, highlighting one of the many, if better, reasons why Holmes endeavored to keep his likeness out of the papers. Hell, Holmes may have simply been rude to them, which was a natural state of existence for him, unintentional though his discourtesies often were.

On the other hand, those explanations felt wrong, at least to Watson. Mrs Hudson's words kept ringing in his ears. What is he working on? They must have had a reason. Holmes had been working on nothing as far as Watson could tell, and no one from the Yard had consulted him in months. Singling Holmes out for attack took foresight – finding him on a night when Watson was not with him, on a street where they'd be unlikely to be observed, herding him forward, the ambush… Holmes was known for his fighting skills, even when walking alone, and the petty criminals steered clear of him with the understanding that if they did not molest him, Holmes would take no notice of them. Common crime held no interest for Holmes because it lacked ingenuity, as crass as it sounded. Of course, all that implied was that the men who had attacked him were not common criminals at all, or at least that Fourth Man himself was not.

It was not until the next Friday morning that something finally happened. Mrs Hudson appeared at the sitting room door to tell Watson that they had a visitor who refused to come upstairs, and when Watson reluctantly went down with the intention of running him off, he found one of the Irregulars standing on the front stoop with his hat in his hand, a lad of fifteen by the name of Cartright. Watson figured he must look a fright from the way Cartright stared and then quickly looked away, but there was nothing for it; he felt a fright.

After a second's consideration, Watson stepped outside and shut the front door to save the heat. "Hullo, Mister Cartright. I'm afraid Mister Holmes has no work for you lads right now, but if you're in need of it, I could put in a word for you with a chap I know at hospital. Manual labor, but he pays well for an honest day's work, and he has some rooms to clear out."

Cartright chanced a glance at him, eyed the cigarette that Watson was trying to light against the wind, and then simply asked, "Is it true? Mister Holmes was attacked?"

Watson ceased his efforts with the match and it went out, though he stood as if still trying to light his cigarette on the wisp of smoke.

"There's been folks talkin'."

"Have there." Watson let his eyes wander until he spied two other lads sheltering in a shop doorway across the street. They were older boys like Cartright, and they made no effort to hide the fact that they were watching 221B.

"Is he okay, Doctor?"

Watson lowered the match and plucked the unlit cigarette from between his lips. "Why are you here?"

"Because we feels what we owe Mister Holmes for what he does for us." Cartright shivered in the chill breeze that kicked up at his feet and crammed his sorry, patched hat back on his head.

"He would not want you involved in this," Watson told him. "And I agree. Young man, this is not a safe business."

Cartright nodded, but ignored the sentiment. "We's been watchin' the place since we 'eard."

"There's no need for that."

"We'll keep on anyway, if it's all the same to you." Cartright looked down for a moment and then abruptly stuffed his hand in his pocket. When he brought it out, his fingers clutched a scrap of paper, which he thrust toward Watson. "'Ere. Some bloke's been tellin' tales. Braggin' like. We thought you'd best know about it."

Watson looked at the paper, and then up to find Cartright staring at him with a look so very like the one Holmes wore now that it took him a moment to react. "Mister Cartright, tell me that you have not been nosing around in this."

"Only listenin', sir." He tripped closer and shook the paper at Watson, a few inches short of actually pressing it against his chest. "We know what goes on, Doctor Watson. If it twernt for Mister Holmes, we'd all three of us be in worse straights, and we know it. He grew us up safe as we could ever hope, livin' on the streets like we haff to. Don' think we don' know what mighta happened to us without 'im."

Watson blinked softly at him and then took the paper.

"That's the man's name, sir." Cartright shrugged one shoulder at the paper, his hands already back to warm in his pockets. "'E's been at a pub in the east end called Mitch's every night this week, boastin' about 'ow 'ee stole Mister Holmes' watch right offa 'im."

Watson studied Cartright with a new sort of respect. "Mister Cartright, promise me that you won't get tangled up in this any further." Cartright merely studied him back, and Watson found himself looking at the paper again, haunted by the hint of too much knowledge in such a young boy's eyes. "You have my gratitude."

"We know, Doctor." Cartright tipped his hat the same way that Holmes would have, a jaunty if refined affair that the lad had obviously copied from his benefactor. As he turned to go, however, he stopped, half facing Watson, and then his eyes suddenly skewered Watson where he still stood on the stoop with the scrap of paper fluttering in his fingers. "Please don' tell Mister Holmes what we done. We know he wouldn' like it."

For the first time all week, Watson smiled, a genuine one. "You have my word, sir."

Cartright's mouth creased, but it came off more as a grimace than anything else, too aged an expression for one so young. "Obliged, sir. I'll be on me way."

Watson watched the boy go, the gratitude sloughing off his face like a snake shedding skin. He stepped inside only to grab his coat and hat, calling a random excuse to Mrs Hudson, and left with the scrap of paper clutched in his hand. Josiah Redding.

---

It took Watson nearly an hour to make his way to the east end, and then another to realize that "Mitch's" was actually Cartright's version of Michelle's. The poor lad had a street accent to rival a foreigner's distortion of syllables.

The place turned out to be a seedy, disreputable little tavern, run by a great lout of a Frenchman. Watson realized too late that he had no hope of going unnoticed in his middle class finery, set adrift in a sea of grimy men who smelled like the fisheries, slaughter houses and dockyards they worked in. Holmes would have wasted no time tearing the seams of their jackets and rolling them both in muck to affect a hasty disguise, but Watson was not Holmes, and by the time it occurred to him that ruining a set of clothes was a small price to pay for revenge, he had already been seen. Watson snuck his way to a corner with as much nonchalance as humanly possible, but heads turned in his wake anyway. Compared to them, Watson was practically a blue blood, dressed like that.

He had originally intended to just ask the landlord to point Redding out to him, but the hostile atmosphere and the Frenchman's unrelenting glare convinced him to simply sit in the corner and try to blend into the wall with his ears open. He ordered a whiskey that arrived in a stained glass but told himself that the alcohol itself was enough to sterilize it as he sipped at it. The drink tasted just as cheap as it was, and it burned its way down his throat with no real flavor. He nursed it anyway and settled in to wait.

High tea and supper time had both passed under a darkening sky by the time Watson's attention lit on a likely fellow. A waif of a barmaid with a perpetual look of fear on her coal-smudged face had set about lighting candles and lamps throughout the main room; Watson took her for the Frenchman's wife and smiled when she passed him. If anything, the gentility spooked her and she rushed off without setting her taper to the sconce beside him. Watson sighed and dismissed it from his mind as he struck a match to light the thing himself. His possible query had lumbered to the bar by now, and the man leered at the barmaid as she scuttled past. Very likely then, Watson thought. The brute. It appeared that there would be no loud and obnoxious bragging tonight to betray the man by; his great ox-like head swayed as he surveyed the room, and then he scowled, apparently seeing no one he cared to bandy with. The man snatched at the drink that the Frenchman set before him, downed it in one swallow, and then tossed his coins on the counter. Watson had already dismissed the fellow as a mere boor, but he was still watching as the man puffed out his chest and pulled out a pocket watch. Much too fine a pocket watch for such a neanderthal. Watson could just make out the shape of a pierced half-sovereign dangling from the chain.

Watson grabbed his cane, his vision tunneled on the man - large and heavy-boned, so he mentally pronounced this oaf Top Man - when a pair of hands suddenly shoved him back down by his shoulders. Watson swung his cane without thinking only to have it caught and wrenched down, out of sight below the table. "Think about what you're doing, Doctor."

Watson gaped at Lestrade, half-hidden below his tipped bowler hat, his usual clothes obscured beneath a dirtied great coat that smelt as if he had dug it from a dumpster. Too stunned to reply, Watson looked instead at Josiah Redding, who had evidently decided not to leave after all; the man had a half-pint in his hand now, and as Watson watched, some other ruffian hailed him from the farthest end of the bar. Watson tensed again to move, practically insensate with the desire to drive his heel through the man's skull, but Lestrade still had hold of his cane, and Watson wasn't thinking straight enough to cross the room without it. In a furious whisper, Watson spat, "Let go of me!"

Cool as ice, Lestrade replied, "I can't do that, Doctor."

"Lestrade, that man - "

"I know. Josiah Redding."

Watson ceased struggling, unaware up until that point that he had been doing so ever since Lestrade grabbed his cane, and glared at the inspector. He would have brought his revolver if doing so had not entailed a trip to the sitting room and Holmes' scrutiny...for whatever that was worth now. As it was, he could not simply shoot the man from across the room, and he would not have shot to kill even if he could have. He wanted the man to bleed out slowly, to watch his own life pool in droughts of crimson on the floor, and his sword stick served that aim better than a revolver. Except that Lestrade had a python's grip on his cane at the moment. Since he had presented himself as a target, Watson turned on him and spat, "What are you doing here? How did you - "

"An annoying little bird told me," Lestrade quipped, his voice hushed in the din. He let go of Watson's cane now that he figured the immediate temper had been tamed. "Said you ran off like a bleedin' idiot all by yourself. He was worried you'd do something stupid, like take on some brainless oaf twice your size, alone." Lestrade gave Watson a wry, pointed look. "Can't imagine where he got that idea."

Watson fumed for a moment, then all but jabbed a finger at the man across the bar. "Why are we just sitting here? That man - "

"We are keeping watch until the rest of my men arrive," Lestrade replied, eminently reasonable where Watson could only be described as incensed. "Or rather, I am. You should go, Doctor Watson, before you get hurt."

"I won't get hurt. He will get hurt, and most emphatically so. He's over there flaunting his new pocket watch. Did you notice?" Watson leaned forward over the table and nodded his head toward his quarry. "That's Top Man, Lestrade. Need I remind you of exactly what Holmes said he did? He's probably bragging about it as we speak."

Lestrade's eyebrow went up in a faint display of disgust. "No, you do not need to remind me." He turned to peer across the room with his chin resting on his hand. A moment later, Lestrade inhaled and said, "Doctor, I really think you should wait outside."

"Like hell."

"I dare say Mister Holmes would be a bit less edgy, were you out there with him."

Everything stilled for a moment, like crystal just before it shatters. "Holmes is...what, he's here?" Watson glanced around, nearly frantic. He half expected Holmes to traipse through the doorway dressed as a gypsy or a peg-legged cripple, or a mongoose.

"Who do you think told me where to find you?" Lestrade retorted. "And knock that off; you stand out enough as it is, all dressed like a toffer in a dive like this. He's outside with Clarkey. Hasn't even left the carriage."

Watson settled down, his nerves all aquiver. He had absolutely no desire to leave, not with that man standing in his sight, his head thrown back as he bellowed over something no doubt obscene that he had just said. "How did he know where I'd gone? Even Holmes isn't that good."

"He probably got worried when you didn't come home for supper. A few of his street boys were with him when he turned up at the Yard. Perhaps they'd followed you? Reported back?"

Watson flared his nostrils. Cartright may have sold him out, or Holmes may have simply observed traces on the boys and deduced where they had recently been, and where Watson in turn might go. It heartened Watson to think of Holmes taking one glance at them and then demanding to know which east end establishment they had sent Watson to; he may have even deduced the correct street name on his own.

"Doctor." Lestrade had to tap his fingernails on the table to break Watson's murderously intent glare at Top Man's broad back. When Watson consented to glower at him instead, Lestrade said, "I am asking you, as a friend, to go outside now."

Watson glanced again at Top Man simply because he wanted the bastard's blood spattered on the floor, then furrowed his brow as Lestrade's odd expression registered. Watson tilted his head and twitched his mustache as he attempted to identify it. "Why? Holmes is alright, isn't he? You said he's in a carriage with Clarkey."

Lestrade pursed his lips in lieu of an actual response either way. "Doctor, those boys brought Mister Holmes to me. Are you following?"

"No," Watson drawled, drawing the syllable out longer than necessary simply to convey his lack of patience. Holmes wasn't injured, was he? He couldn't possibly have gotten himself hurt in the few hours that Watson had been gone, not considering his recent, overly cautious avoidance of any and all people not strictly necessary to inhabiting their flat. Darkness had long since fallen, though, and Holmes was out there in it, without Watson standing behind him to guard his back.

Lestrade looked as if he wanted to knock Watson's head about to see if there were any sense in it. "He was extremely upset, Doctor Watson."

A tiny thread of guilt slithered through Watson's intestines, and he threw a worried glance at the tavern door. "How upset?"

Lestrade pressed his lips together, thinning them out, and regarded his fingers where they overlapped on the table. "This is Mister Holmes I'm talking about, Doctor. When I say upset, that's exactly what I mean."

Watson chewed on his lip for a moment, his head turned toward Lestrade but his eyes lingering on the other side of the room. "It is rather dark out, isn't it?"

"So he remarked when he showed up in my office."

Watson shut his eyes for a moment and exhaled through his nose in a frustrated huff. "Damn."

A whisper of clothing implied that Lestrade had nodded with a similar sentiment. "I didn't realize how bad he...it was."

"I know," Watson murmured. He glanced up at Lestrade from under twitchy brows. "Did anyone else..."

Thankfully, Lestrade caught the unspoken question and shook his head to save Watson the need to finish his sentence. "No one else noticed; Clarkey and I kept him near the whole time, and considering his usual insanity, he behaved himself remarkably well."

Watson let himself blink loosely at the table. "My gratitude. How did you find me?"

"The tall lad – Carter?"

"Cartright," Watson supplied. His eyes inevitably wandered back to the man who was insidiously ruining his life by taking away the one real comfort left to him.

"Yes, that's the one." Lestrade laced his fingers together on the tabletop and then took to avid contemplation of his knuckles. "Cartright told me that a few of the lads heard that something happened. They've been watching your house."

Watson flared his nostrils; he already knew this. His eyes tracked back to Top Man and fixed there, on the watch chain he could still see pulled taught over the man's large though firm abdomen. "I am aware of that already, Inspector. I've spoken to Mister Cartright myself."

"Doctor, I don't think you understand." Lestrade stood up and planted himself squarely in the chair across from Watson, effectively blocking his view of Top Man, or at least requiring Watson to pay attention to Lestrade as a side effect of having to glare past his ear to keep visually skewering his quarry. "That boy told me that Mister Holmes spent two hours wandering around to your favorite shops and restaurants looking for you."

Watson bit his lip, an expression that he knew his mustache would hide, and fingered the wood grain beneath his palm. There had to be some mistake; Sherlock Holmes did not wander anywhere. He stalked his own teacup when it disappeared on him. "All the more reason for me to put a decisive end to this." He gestured pointedly at Top Man. "I am not leaving this rotting establishment until that is done."

"Look here, Doctor." Lestrade leaned forward to lend an illusion of confidentiality to their conversation. "Those boys say they only brought him to the Yard because they thought you'd be there – that Cartright lad thought it's where you'd gone from the start. Apparently, he only got Mister Holmes to go with him by telling him that they would take him to you. And then you weren't there, and the boys had to tell us where you had gone – "

"Do you have any brothers, Geoffrey?"

Lestrade started at the use of his first name. Watson probably should not have taken such a liberty, but he couldn't find it within himself to regret it, since it had finally cut through the copper and hit the man underneath. "Um…no," Lestrade replied. He eyed Watson for a moment and then slanted his gaze off across the room to where Top Man stood over a table of cronies, gesticulating as he blathered on. "I have a sister, though." Lestrade sucked on his teeth and then admitted to the table top, "It's not the same, I know."

Watson flared his nostrils and then had to make a concerted effort not to fall into a moment of melancholy; he did not have that luxury. "I did have a brother." He emphasized the past tense. "He was a lot like Holmes, actually. Drank himself into an early grave."

Lestrade spared a moment to inhale, his eyes flickering briefly to meet Watson's. Finally, with a long sigh, he remarked, "There's a reason he did not want you involved in this part of it."

"I know," Watson agreed. "It hasn't hit him yet. I think he's still numb to it at the moment."

"I think you are too," Lestrade interjected.

"No doubt." Watson paused for effect as much as to gather the strength to keep saying these things aloud. "He's going to turn to the needle eventually. I need…" Watson glanced up to find Top Man again, and the fury he still felt mingled in with the terror of knowing what would soon come. Almost too quietly to carry to Lestrade, Watson finished, "I'm going to lose him, at least for a little while if not altogether. I need to do something before that happens, because if I don't, I'll go mad. I'm already going mad, just from the knowing of it. Can you understand that?"

Lestrade's answer probably would have come on the heels of the unyielding if sympathetic sigh that he offered initially as if to soften the blow, but as he opened his mouth to speak, caught in profile in a sliver of Watson's periphery, he stiffened. "Oh, hell."

The muffled curse drew Watson's attention, and then he straightened as well. Holmes stood framed in the pub doorway with Clarkey right behind him. A formless sort of fear coiled up in Watson's innards as he watched Holmes scan the dim bar room. It wasn't Holmes' reaction that gave away the moment of recognition when his eyes encountered Top Man. In fact, it was the studious and complete lack of reaction that betrayed it. Holmes' gaze fixed on the man and his expression went blank for a bare handful of obvious seconds before he made a point of not looking anymore, as if he could avoid being noticed by not noticing in turn. Ignoring the hand that Clarkey attempted to stall him with, Holmes threaded his way through the room, his attention squarely fixed on Watson even though his gaze merely darted glancing blows across and around the table where Watson sat looking guilty, a mirror image of Lestrade's own half-obscured expression.

Holmes pulled up a vacant chair from a nearby table and plopped down into, just near enough to Watson for the proximity to be noticeably too close. "I asked Mrs Hudson to prepare a cold supper since you missed the evening meal. She'll have it prepared in time for our return."

Watson blinked at Holmes a few times – he hadn't heard Holmes' normal, arrogantly strident voice in days, and now to have him say something so jarringly banal in a faint rasp that testified to the long disuse of his vocal chords… In lieu of a response, Watson wrapped his hands around his whiskey glass to quell the urge to fidget. Clarkey had found a chair of his own by then, but the four of them could hardly pretend at being inconspicuous now; Clarkey, bless him, looked nice and crisp in his uniform, and the spectacle of a constable entering an establishment like this had already sent a few skulking, unsavory types out the door. Top Man was not one of them; he seemed perfectly at ease across the room, lounging about with his simpering little depraved admirers like a black king holding court in the corner of a chess board.

Lestrade grumbled under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose in the process, and then he blew out a resigned breath. "Are the men in place, Constable?"

"Not yet, sir," Clarkey replied quietly. He lowered his tone further to admit, "They haven't actually arrived yet."

Next to Watson, Holmes shifted uneasily and threw a hooded glance around the room."Watson, what on earth are you doing here? This place is ill fit to be called a public house - it's filthy." He caught sight of a few dice games in a dim corner, and then a handful of men gambling at cards. "Much more my sort of establishment than yours." His forehead bunched up and then he peered quizzically at Watson. "You did not get hold of your checkbook, did you? I was not aware that you had added lock picking to your repertoire."

Drolly, Watson replied, "Well, one of us should be proficient at it. And since you still aren't..."

Holmes gave him a blank look and then grinned unexpectedly. In a smooth and understated movement, he swiped Watson's whiskey glass away and downed the remainder of it, which amounted to barely one swallow. It took him a second to grimace, his eyes filming over at the unpleasant burn of the stuff, and then he gave the glass a dirty look. "This is ghastly." The glass clanked loudly as he set it down. "Right, then. If you are not busy gambling away your meager fortune, then I suggest we find a more pleasant location to pass the evening. As I said, Mrs Hudson is waiting for us." His eyes flickered across the common room again, and Watson's followed when he noticed Holmes stiffen.

Top Man and his cronies had quieted, but for the worst possible reason. Watson could see the moment when Top Man recognized Holmes. A second after that, his eyes narrowed at Clarkey, the only recognizable law officer among them. They must have looked quite the spectacle – a law man, a bum in a smelly overcoat, a scruffy gentleman wearing a foppish wide-brimmed hat, and Watson himself looking far too fine in his quality wool suit.

"We have a problem," Watson announced. Top Man had evidently decided against trying to escape, because he was headed for their table.

Holmes tugged at his shirt cuffs, which gaped around his wrists in the absence of cuff links, and leaned toward Watson. "We should go now. You know how Mrs Hudson disapproves of late meals. She does have to clean up the kitchen afterward, you know."

Lestrade inhaled sharply, sparing zero attention for Holmes' commentary on the proper treatment of a landlady, which under other circumstances would have been amusing. "Nervy bugger."

A peculiar hush settled over the pub – that type of hush that people took on when they were only pretending to mind their own business. It was ridiculous, how quickly the situation spun out of hand. One moment, all four of them were sitting there, dumbfounded at the gall of the man approaching them, and then everything changed. The next thing Watson knew, he was on his feet with no recollection of drawing the blade from his cane, Lestrade's fingers clamped on his shoulder to warn him off of doing anything rash. Clarkey had shot from his chair as well, but before he could do anything, Holmes finally made a move of his own.

It took Watson an extra moment that he could ill afford to realize that Holmes wasn't about to go on the attack, as Watson expected. Instead, Holmes craned his neck around to better peer up at the towering bulk of the man bearing down on them, and calmly greeted, "Hello, Thomas."

The brute returned, "Aye, William." And then he dragged a chair over to straddle backwards. "Me and the boys was just wonderin' what yer doin' over 'ere with these sorry louts."

Watson blinked, aware of Clarkey's uncertain though still tense stance on the other side of the table. 'William' was the name that Holmes boxed under. Now that circumstances demanded extra attention to detail, Watson looked at the watch chain that this Thomas bloke was wearing. Up close, it was obviously not Holmes' watch, though it was still too rich a bauble for the sort of man wearing it. And what Watson had earlier taken for a pierced half sovereign decorating the chain was now revealed to be nothing more than an old foreign coin, probably Asian in origin. This was not Top Man.

Holmes offered Thomas a twitchy smile, an expression quite out of place on Holmes' face for its uncertainty, and then he directed his eyes back to the edge of the table, where his hands rested. Only then did he notice Watson standing there with his blade half drawn. He frowned at Watson's white-knuckled grip on either part of the sword stick, and then he slanted his eyes up to catch Lestrade sheepishly reclaiming his seat, followed a second later by Clarkey. In that tone of eminent reason that never failed to grate Watson's nerves – the one that intimated that everyone except Holmes himself had lost their wits in an abrupt and inexplicable fashion – Holmes asked, "What the devil is the matter with all of you?"

Watson scowled in annoyance and slid his blade back home as he threw himself back down into his seat. Holmes' behavior upon entering the pub – that had been recognition, yes, but not of a sinister kind; he had probably simply wondered if he could manage to avoid being noticed and roped into an unwanted conversation as his alter ego, the champion underworld boxer William Scott. "Nothing, old cock. Pay no mind to us lesser mortals."

Holmes gave Watson an odd look and then dismissed him with a prim sniff in favor of searching his pockets. His frown turned more concerted as he apparently failed to find what he was looking for, and then he deflated where he sat, staring blankly across the table in the general vicinity of Lestrade's right shoulder. "Watson, I seem to have misplaced my cigarette case."

Watson actually felt himself grow cold at that. Simply because he could think of no other acceptable reaction, Watson silently fished out his own cigarette case and slid it across the table until it nudged the blade of Holmes' palm. Fingers closed over it with barely a glance at the object now enclosed in their grasp, and Watson relinquished it to Holmes' single-minded inspection.

"Ah," Thomas grunted. He crossed his arms over the impressive bulk of his chest and nodded a confirmation to himself. "I see. You're here as Mister Holmes, then."

Holmes flicked an eyebrow up but he seemed far too absorbed in examining Watson's cigarettes to make any additional reaction.

Watson took over for him, which he was well used to doing when Holmes completely distracted himself during an investigation. Having it happen now, while the only thing occupying Holmes' great mind was the choosing of a cigarette, left him disconcerted. "Um…yes, Mister…Thomas."

"Tha's a right shame," Thomas sighed. "Ol' William 'ere's the only boxer what makes a challenge for me, you know. I was lookin' forward to a round."

At great length, Holmes finally selected one of the cigarettes – what difference he had seen between them all, Watson would never know – and snapped the case shut.

Thomas eyed Holmes expectantly, and then he turned pensive when Holmes appeared, for all intents and purposes, not to have heard him at all. He glanced at Watson, and then eyed Clarkey, who stood out like a sore thumb. "Whudder you boys lookin' for in 'ere, anyway? You after some bloke?"

Holmes' gaze skittered around the table and then he snatched the oil lamp to light his cigarette by. Around the puffing, he said, "Watson, we really must be going. I can see from your complexion and the state of your attire that you have not eaten since lunch. You know how cranky you become when you miss your scheduled meals."

The eerie air of utter nonchalance actually raised hairs on the back of Watson's neck. "I…Holmes, do mind your sleeve. You're going to set yourself on fire."

Holmes' eyes flicked to the flame of the oil lamp and then he set it down in favor of plucking the cigarette from between his lips. From his behavior, his whole world could have narrowed to that one object, and never mind that there was anything going on outside of it.

Most other men probably would have been insulted by Holmes' propensity for ignoring a direct address. Thomas, though, merely appeared concerned as Holmes took a long drag and then studied the lazy flickers of smoke that his exhale produced. "Right," Thomas grunted. "Should I be goin' then?"

"No," Watson assured him. He raised a hand to motion Thomas to remain, unnecessary as it was since the man had made no move to rise. "Would you happen to know a man called Josiah Redding? We understand that he frequents this establishment."

Thomas grimaced as if his own tongue had taken on a foul taste. "What you want with that bugger?"

Watson straightened. "You do know him, then."

"Wish I didn't," Thomas grunted. "Man's a bloody useless braggard, and a dipper to boot."

Watson figured that he had run "braggart" and "blackguard" together, not that the technicality mattered; Thomas had clearly meant the term as an insult.

Holmes lowered his brows and managed somehow to peer down his nose at Watson despite the disparity in their heights. "Who is Josiah Redding?"

"Never mind, Holmes." Watson directed his conversation to Thomas. "Do you know where we can find him?"

Holmes scowled. "At my last reckoning, we had not taken on any cases."

Watson sucked his lips in against his teeth and then elected to ignore Holmes. "Sir?"

"Why?" Thomas demanded. "What's he done now?" He looked to Holmes yet again, but suspiciously this time. "What the hell's goin' on, Mister Holmes? What's this about, huh?"

It was Lestrade who answered, shrugging his way from his borrowed coat as he did, probably because the pungent beggar type that he appeared to be – poorly appeared, at that – would garner no respect. "I'm afraid that's a matter for the Yard, sir. Do you know where he is?"

Thomas squinted at each of them in turn, but his eyes rested on the side of Holmes' averted face when he replied, "No, sir, I sure don't. But I can ask around if you like."

Lestrade started to answer, "That won't be necessary," but Watson cut him off.

"I would most grateful for any information you could gather." Watson fumbled in his pockets for a card and a half crown, and slid both across the table to Thomas. "A telegram can reach me here, any time of day or night."

Holmes glanced at the items that Watson left on the table in front of Thomas, and then glared at Watson. "I asked you to stay out of this."

"I never agreed to your terms, Holmes."

Thomas made a point of studying their interaction, and then he slipped Watson's card out from under the half crown, leaving the coin itself behind as he lumbered to his feet. "Right, then." He appeared wary of a sudden, and Watson wondered exactly what he had noticed to make him act as such. "I'll be discrete, don't you be worryin'. Got me a reputation, you know." Thomas glanced again at the two Yarders and then tucked his chin as he scrutinized Watson with a pale shadow of Holmes' more practiced mannerisms. "That Redding bastard's got a rep too, if you catch my drift, sir."

Watson nodded and wondered if he had gone pale. Thomas knew. He knew. "There is also a man with a tattoo here." Watson indicated the spot on his own shoulder, which he knew of both from a few of Holmes' passing comments, and from the notes that Clarkey had allowed him to see. "An anchor surrounded by a sickle and stars."

Thomas' frown deepened and he turned his head a fraction to one side, so that Watson now resided in his periphery. "Aye. Should be obvious enough, that."

Holmes flared his nostrils, expressing displeasure at nothing in particular as he held his cigarette in front of his face, and then he mumbled, "There is only one star."

Watson swallowed. "Yes, one star." Nearly inaudible, Watson murmured, "Apologies, old fellow."

"I am not discussing this with you, Doctor."

"Right, then," Thomas said again, though far more softly this time. He hesitated as if he wanted to say something more, but he ended up simply puckering his brow as he brooded down at the top of Holmes' head. Then he walked away without another word, boots clomping too forcefully across the stone floor. A gaggle of his cronies tried to set upon him, but Thomas made a series of rude gestures and disappeared out a side door.

Lestrade waited for the hubbub to die back down a measure, and then he rounded on Watson to hiss, "Outside. Now. The both of you."

Once they had all adjourned to the sidewalk outside, the night air damp and turning chill, Lestrade flung his odious overcoat into a gutter and jabbed a finger at Watson. "You are interfering in a police investigation."

"Nonsense," Watson replied airily. He adopted Holmes' own diversionary tactic by explaining, "Our investigations are merely running parallel, Inspector."

"Bollux! You – "

"You did not actually expect such a poor attempt at concealment to work, did you?"

Lestrade stopped in mid tirade to glare at Holmes, but for once, he did not bother to argue his official qualifications at detective work versus Holmes' amateur, if often more effective, tactics. "No, Mister Holmes," he ground out. "I most certainly did not. But I couldn't very well go traipsing into a place like that looking like myself, now could I?"

"Watson did." As if Watson could not possibly do wrong, which was a fiction since Holmes often took a perverse sort of glee in listing out Watson's mistakes to him, from blunders of logic to grammatical errors. Holmes blinked down at the discarded disguise, then shrugged. "Traipsing in smelling like an unwashed tramp was hardly any better. You drew far too much attention to yourself simply by virtue of the stench of that thing."

Lestrade pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek and let his gaze wander skyward as he reigned in that special brand of annoyance that Holmes could engender in people so easily. Then he flung a hand at Clarkey. "Tell the boys to go home; there's nothing for them to do here."

Clarkey scuttled off to see to the dispersement of any officers who had arrived by then. Once he was gone, Holmes gave a dramatic sigh and turned to Watson. "I find myself quite enervated by this detour of events. Shall we retire back to our rooms?"

"Holmes…" Watson glanced pointedly at Lestrade, who rolled his eyes but consented to retreat out of earshot. Watson turned back to Holmes and asked, "Are you alright?"

Holmes started. "Of course I'm alright. Why on earth would you think otherwise?"

"Well…" Watson started to shake his head, then decided against it. "You haven't really spoken to me in days, for one. For another, your behavior in the pub was…bizarre, even for you."

"I have been dragged to this infernal dump quite nearly in the middle of the night, after missing supper, and you inquire as to why I may be slightly out of sorts?"

"Missing meals has never unsorted you, Holmes." Watson found himself picking at his own knuckles and frowned down at them. "I realize that my leaving in such an abrupt fashion must have worried you. I apologize for it."

Holmes scoffed. "You are hardly contrite, Watson."

More sharply now, for he was convinced that at least part of Holmes denseness was an affectation, Watson clarified, "I did not say I was sorry for coming here, or for sticking my nose into this business; only for worrying you and causing you to be here at this uncivil hour with me." He paused. "Though I am glad to see you out. Your silence has troubled me deeply."

"Watson, you know very well that I am apt to languish for days on end in exactly that manner. I believe you colloquially refer to such episodes in your scribblings as my 'black fits.'"

Watson nodded, but his eyebrows went up in contradiction of agreement. "You have not been suffering a black fit, Holmes. You have been drifting about our rooms like a ghost, smiling and carrying on as if nothing were amiss, except for refusing to speak and flinching from my hands. And you have not so much as picked up your violin in over a week. I have been afraid for you. I cannot even begin to imagine what thoughts have been going round in your head, and after our last conversation on this matter, I can only think that you have been distorting facts again…" Watson heaved a sigh and looked up to find Holmes feigning disinterest. Feigning it poorly, for even though Holmes made a point of examining the scene over Watson's shoulder, the movements of his eyes were random and unfocused. "I am terrified to think of the toll this is taking on you."

"Do not be ridiculous," Holmes snapped. "I have been attacked before, and suffered far worse injuries than this. I don't see what all of the fuss is about, anyway. You have never reacted like this before."

"Holmes, you… I was there, if you recall. When you came home that night? Do not try to tell me that this was simply some common assault on your person; I know better."

Grudgingly, Holmes admitted, "I was taken aback, obviously. I have no personal experience of that sort of crime. But in point of fact, it was not the most brutal attack I have been subjected to."

"It is the most appalling."

"Oh, do be still; it was no such thing. I have thought about it, and concluded that my initial reaction was simply due to the shock of the unexpected and unusually intrusive nature of the attack. There is no further cause for concern, Watson. As you can see, I am healing up quite nicely. There is no lasting harm done."

Watson fought valiantly not to react to that pronouncement, not in any way, though his mind unhelpfully produced a vivid recall of the sound of Holmes voice as he thrashed on the sitting room floor. Holmes could be unbelievably stubborn once he had decided on an idea, no matter how absurd. And this assertion of his, that having been set upon in that alley were an incident hardly worth mentioning, was an obvious if flimsy defensive tactic – Watson could see that. Desperation was not a state that Holmes succumbed to naturally; it only ever filtered into his actions over matters of a personal type – matters concerning Watson, being the most notable. Watson still was not entirely certain that Holmes had not opted to fake his death at least in part to escape the constant reminder of having lost his dearest and only friend to a woman's arms. And disappearing for three years like that made no logical sense at all, considering that Moran had known all along that Holmes was very much alive. It did make a sort of immature and twisted emotional sense, however, which was entirely in keeping with Holmes' lacking attributes in that department. Watson had never bought the stories that Holmes had tried to sell him about Tibet and traveling and adventure. That bookseller that Holmes had been impersonating…Watson had seen him at his store on the corner more than often enough to know that Holmes had been in London for at least a year before revealing himself to Watson. But the Great Hiatus was not something that they spoke about, probably for fear of what may be said on both sides.

In any case, Holmes only displayed acts of desperation when he did not know, emotionally, how to handle something. Feelings were not something that Holmes dealt well with, seeing as how he had subsumed so many of his own over the years, sometimes in total denial of their existence. He built battlements around himself out of logic and reason, and he rationalized things that could not, by definition, be rational. To Holmes, however, everything should be rational, and so he tried to force abstract ideas and feelings into constraints that were not made for them. When that approach failed, when something struck past his carefully constructed fortifications, Holmes reverted to often senseless actions, a sort of ritualistic series of activities meant to banish the feelings, or else to render them obsolete through some show of normalcy. If he did not acknowledge them for long enough, then they meant nothing, and so were not real.

Watson assumed that this was the stage at which Holmes had found himself that afternoon. Numbness had worn off, and rather than face what was left beneath it, Holmes had decided to act as normal as he was capable of, as if acting so could render it true. But his façade was quite grievously cracked, and even Lestrade could see it. Hell, even Thomas, who only knew Holmes as a fellow boxer, could tell that nothing was right with him at the moment. This step in the process was always short lived. Next, Watson knew, came the black mood and the chemical remedies, which were merely another form of evasion. Holmes was the sort of person who should never be cursed to sit alone with his own thoughts.

Even if Watson had wanted to say something, it was too late; Holmes was already walking away, one hand thrust casually in his pocket while he rolled the lit cigarette between the fingers of his other. If it weren't for the tension in the careful set of Holmes' shoulders, in the too-practiced nonchalance of his stroll, Watson could have believed that Holmes was, indeed, perfectly fine. He might even have been tempted to envy the ease with which logic could render such a heinous crime irrelevant. But he knew Holmes far too well to be tricked into thinking such a thing.

"Holmes." Watson chased him down the sidewalk. "At least give me back my cigarette case, will you? I could use a smoke of my own after having wasted the entire evening drinking truly abysmal whiskey and making a fool of myself."

Holmes stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and peered back at Watson, his face in profile as he strained his eyes to see over his own shoulder. He looked almost…stricken.

Watson stopped as well, just outside of arm's reach. "What?"

"Watson, you are many things, but foolish is not one of them. Pray, do not to call yourself such; it is most disagreeable to me."

Of its own accord, Watson's head tipped faintly to one side, like a dog assaulted by a peculiar scent that had wafted only for a bare second on a tendril of lonesome wind. He might have thanked Holmes for the solemn delivery of that compliment, but that was not their way. Instead, Watson cleared his throat and blinked before repeating, "My cigarette case."

"Oh." Holmes seemed to twitch himself back to the present, and then he patted himself down, which ended in a frown. "Oh. My apologies, dear fellow. I must have left it on the table." He offered Watson a wide smile – too wide, and sickly around the edges – and patted Watson's good shoulder as he strode past him. "I won't be but a moment, Mother Hen, and then we can be off home to fill your grumbling belly with Mrs Hudson's admirable repast."

Watson nodded and grimaced to himself as he watched Holmes disappear back into the pub, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of what were clearly a pair of Watson's trousers – they were too long and bunched around the ankles, plus just a bit too wide in the waist, which explained the way Holmes' belt cinched and pleated the fabric where it hung loose around his hips. His waistcoat appeared to be his own, for it fit snugly across his abdomen, as was his long black frock coat, but the white linen shirt beneath them both could only have been Watson's as well, for the sleeves were too long and would no doubt bear cigarette burns by the time Watson pilfered it back into his own possession, if he ever managed to pilfer it back.

After Holmes passed out of sight, Watson allowed himself a moment to shut his eyes in the hopes of collecting himself. He honestly did not know how to fix any of this. He could have his revenge, yes, but for what? Holmes would still be ineffably broken in that sad and ill-definable manner. He would still have that wide-eyed look upon his face, no matter what he did to hide it – that secretly hollow, cast-off expression that some of his Irregulars wore like seconds skins. The knowing look that lent a reddish cast like burnt mahogany to the brown irises of his eyes, as if the sun were shining behind dark brown crepe paper. The one that Watson suspected would tear him to ribbons eventually and leave him shredded as well, just from seeing it every day on his friend's face.

The scuffle of boots reached Watson's ears and he forced his eyes open, straightening his back and planting his cane firm at his side to bear that fraction of his weight that his own leg protested. His limp had worsened with age and he could not help but equate it with the burdens he had chosen to bear, as if they increased his body mass in a very tangible way, which they might indeed have done; he could not be certain that it was merely a fancy to imagine it so. Watson looked up as Holmes exited the pub, the cigarette case catching the glint of street lamps from between the thin fingers that clutched it. Holmes nearly collided with another man on the sidewalk who was headed into the pub at the same moment. At the last instant, Holmes noticed the man and tried to twist out of the way, but his shoulder bumped into the other man's arm, a glancing blow. Watson quite clearly heard Holmes' polite apology – "Do excuse me, sir" – and the larger man's snarl – "Why don't you watch where you're going, bloody swell" – and then time seemed to freeze in spite of the continuance of events.

Holmes had paused in the act of turning away, facing in the opposite direction from Watson with one ear cocked toward the brute he had grazed. Watson saw him glance up, his lips parted slightly and his expression naked as he sized up the man in the pub doorway. A second or dragged by and then Holmes huffed something under his breath as he stumbled backwards, his gaze searching for something along the sidewalk in Watson's direction. As Holmes shuffled away from the pub, he must have made some peculiar sound, because the brute glanced back for a closer look at him, and immediately perked up. "Oi. Sweet little poppet, is it?"

The voice stopped Holmes dead in his tracks, his back to the pub and the threat within its doorway. It was dark, the sky like pitch beyond the glow of gas lamps and lighted tenement windows that lined the opposite side of the dirty street, but Watson could still see him blanch.

"Inspector." Watson hefted his cane in the surest grip he had ever mustered. "Lestrade!"

Lestrade turned at the calling of his name as Watson stalked past him, making for Holmes. "Doctor?"

Redding. Top Man. He did not advance on Holmes, but even in stillness, he looked a crouched predator looming in the oily street. Holmes stumbled back a step and ran into Watson. A startled sound escaped him, not quite a gasp but close, and he flailed at the unexpected presence of a person where, a moment ago, there had been none. Watson merely grabbed Holmes by the collar in spite of the instinctive shielding of his arms and shoved Holmes behind himself. Safe. Out of the way.

Top Man's attention shifted to Watson, eyes darting briefly to the stick in his raised hand, and then he narrowed his eyes. "Right," Top Man growled. "Look here, Guv. I don't mean any trouble, see?" The flash of wary hostility in his eyes betrayed otherwise; this man relished the thought of violence.

"Watson." Holmes latched a hand onto Watson's sleeve, just above the elbow, stilling his arm. It was the only thing that prevented Watson from clubbing the foul man then and there. "Mrs Hudson has supper laid out. We would do best not to keep her waiting."

"Yes," Top Man purred. "You'd best run along home, poppet. Who knows what might happen to a pretty thing in a place like this?"

Holmes flinched, minute but there. As Holmes ruffled his shoulders in the act of shaking off his lapse of feigned normality, Watson shrugged Holmes' hands away. There in front of him – there was the telltale watch chain, not pawned for money but kept as a trophy, dangling from the man's grimy waistcoat pocket. Watson steeled his glare and felt his lip curl up under his mustache as he snarled, "My friend would like his watch back, sir." He meant the title as an insult, and Top Man clearly took it as such.

"Watson – " Holmes pawed at his sleeve again.

Watson wrenched himself free again and took a step nearer the odious man in front of him. Literally, at that – the man reeked of the sewer, just as Holmes had that night in the sitting room with the scent of this – this fiend still etched into his skin. "You repulsive devil," Watson spit out.

Top Man's face darkened, turning grotesque before Watson's eyes. "You watch who you be calling names there, sir. I don't take kindly to threats." His lips turned up faintly, perhaps a snarl or perhaps something worse, and looked at Holmes. "But the little poppet here already knows that, don't he? Eh, poppet?"

If he weren't already incensed enough to strike, hearing Holmes swallow a noise of some sort – not a whimper, decidedly not – behind him would have tipped him over the edge. Top Man towered a full head over Watson, but it hardly mattered to him. "Give it back!"

"Watson, it is hardly of any import." Holmes grabbed his sleeve yet again, and added his other hand to the mix this time, grasping Watson's wrist just above the brutal grip he had on his stick. "Here. Your case." He wheedled the cigarette case into Watson's breast pocket and then tugged at him. "Come, now."

Watson twisted his right arm away from the flimsy restraint offered by Holmes' shaking hands and paused in his fury only long enough to turn and shove Holmes back as hard as he could. He heard Holmes trip against someone else, who presumably caught and righted him since Watson did not hear a body sprawl all over the pavement. Then Lestrade came up next to him asking, "Mister Josiah Redding?"

Watson reigned in his temper with a valiant effort. He could not go in for murder, he reminded himself; Holmes would never forgive him that.

Top Man snorted. "What of it?"

Lestrade puffed up and brandished a pair of darbies; from the looks of it, he was only barely in control of his temper himself. The disgust probably tempered it, oddly enough; Watson could see it where it snarled up Lestrade's left cheek. "You, sir, are under arrest for assault and robbery. I advise you to come quietly."

Redding balked. "Who did I rob and assault then, eh?"

"Him!" Watson snapped, stabbing a finger awkwardly but forcefully to where he assumed Holmes stood behind him; he hit his mark, because he could both feel and hear a whoosh of air that signified Holmes jerking aside to avoid being jabbed. "And don't you dare deny it, you wretched cur! You have his watch - I can recognize it from here!"

Lestrade tried to calm him with an ineffectual hand to Watson's forearm. "Doctor, you should leave this to us."

Watson fumed, but since Clarkey had appeared with a handful of proper officers, he grudgingly shuffled out of the way, shoulders hunched with the tension coursing through him in search of an outlet. Holmes immediately latched onto his jacket sleeve, though not with much force, and tried to pull him even farther away. Watson merely set his feet and refused to be dragged from that spot.

Top Man, however, let loose a grin the likes of which could have frozen the blood in the veins of a man whose body boiled even a single degree less than Watson's own. "What, Mister Holmes over there? That wasn't assault." He looked at Lestrade. "Inspector, is it?"

Lestrade grit his teeth. "Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade of Scotland Yard. I would advise you not to say anything more, sir. If you do, it will be entered into evidence against you."

"You can enter whatever you like," Redding purred. "We didn't have us an 'assault,' Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade. What we had us was a gentleman's agreement. Mister Holmes told us to go ahead, all nice and quiet like. Seems he's some sort of indorser. Shameful, really. Needed a fix real bad."

"You – " Watson spluttered himself incoherent, and then rounded on Lestrade, who appeared just as sickened by that intimation as Watson felt. "Inspector, surely we do not have to listen to this – this reprehensible twaddle!"

"Certainly not," Lestrade spit out. "Mister Redding, your hands, sir." He brandished the darbies, which cued the other officers to draw closer in preparation for a scuffle.

"But surely," Redding crooned, "you don't think I would ever want to harm a hair on his pretty little head? No, no, no. It would be such a shame, marring that soft skin of his. Like spoiling a fresh pot of cream."

Watson gaped, speechless and repulsed to the point that he could actually feel the whiskey he had drunk earlier trying to crawl a burning trail back up his esophagus. He could sense the utter silence behind him where Holmes stood, like a presence pricking needles into the soft spaces between his vertebrae. The quiet amplified when Holmes calmly let go of Watson's jacket and backed up a step. Gentlemanly distance - the proper position for a mere friend to take in polite society, so as to avoid suspicion of deviances such as inversion. Watson ducked his head, well aware of how feral he could make himself look, and stepped right back into the sphere of personal space that Holmes had vacated.

"Why don't you tell them there, poppet," Redding goaded. He appeared manic. Hungry after his own words. "Tell these gentleman how you begged us for it. Tell them how their good little Detective Sherlock Holmes went crawling on the ground to get it, hands and knees in the street like a dirty little slut. Tell them how it got you off, why don't you."

The entire horrid moment seemed to crawl past in wretched stillness, etched frozen into whatever fabric wove beneath the visible reality of that dark street. Revulsion, disbelief, nausea all held at bay in the grip of the shock that rendered everyone save Redding mute. It struck Watson suddenly that Redding wasn't trying to justify his actions by making it sound consensual, but rather squeezing every last ounce of mortification from his erstwhile prey that he could get. To embarrass Holmes in front of every man present – to emasculate him before his peers and render him...not comical, but certainly grotesque in a sort of dark mockery of mirth. Ridiculous. Laughable. Common...disgusting.

"Lestrade," Watson hissed. "Shut him up this instant or I will not be held accountable for myself."

"You aint' got no shame, have you, precious?" Redding stepped closer to Lestrade, but only because it also brought him closer to Holmes, blocked as he was. Lestrade, for his part, seemed unable to gain control over himself enough to do anything other than gape. The assault was a psychological one, and from the scuff behind him, Watson imagined that it worked and that Holmes had shied. "Wanted it bad, I could tell."

A small sound drew Watson's gaze over his shoulder. For a split second, he met Holmes' wide eyes, and then Holmes violently shook his head before stuttering a panicked gaze about to graze the other men who were present, his features gone dangerously pale in the darkness. Watson felt his own eyes spark like flint as he fixed his eyes back on Top Man, wishing that they were alone so that he could skewer the man without witnesses.

"Street was all filthy, and there he was, down on the ground waiting for it. Quivered and moaned like a good little whore, didn't you?"

Holmes' reply came as barely a breath on the evening air, but the tone in which he whispered it carried clear as bells, just a painfully soft and gentle statement of fact; there wasn't even any recrimination to it, as if he were simply correcting a delicate error. "No. You held me down."

To Lestrade, Top Man declared, "He's right modest, isn't he? Why, the pretty thing was practically begging for it, he wanted it so bad."

Scratch that - Watson would have preferred an abandoned building where he could take his time killing the man. He heard Holmes mumble a tremulous negation that included one syllable but no actual word, and Watson's own skin heated with fury and mortification both.

"Tell them, poppet – tell them what a fine ride it was, eh?"

Watson glanced back again, but Holmes was busy searching faces for hints of...blame, probably. And he was calm about it, for all his eyes waxed too wide and his hands were balled in his pockets to hide their shaking. Watson could perceive it, however, in the tense lines of his forearms, the muscles of which Holmes had tightened to try to suppress the trembling.

"Like breakin' in a prize young colt. Bet they don't know how that pretty white skin of yours turns pink. Or how you squirm when a man touches you. Remember that?"

Holmes clenched his jaw, a muted recollection of terror and desperate shame written in equal measures upon his face as he backed up a step and avoided looking at anyone now. "I didn't squirm," he whispered. "I didn't."

Watson gripped Holmes by one shoulder to arrest any further argument that Holmes may have made to Top Man's incendiary statements. Sotto voce, Watson breathed, "You do not have to defend yourself to the likes of him."

"Made you shiver, didn't I, precious?" Top Man persisted in his perverse taunting, performing for all present. The continued taunting drew Holmes' eyes, his very gaze pale as if he were resigned to hearing such perversions applied to his person. As if he knew he deserved to have such things said of him. "Trembled and moaned like a cheap whore when I took you."

Holmes dropped his gaze to swallow and then scanned the crescent of Yard men again. He was looking for evidence - for tells that they believed this filth and would turn on him. For signs that they found him repulsive or weak...anything other than what he had striven to portray himself as for decades now...that they pitied him rather than respected him now - the poor, helpless little victim. Watson took his other shoulder as well and tried to turn him away from the scene.

"If only they could've heard it. Remember how hard it made you? I do." Top Man raised his fingers to his nose and inhaled as if the aroma itself were bliss. "I remember how good you smelled...decadent. And the way you asked for it... Such a pretty little thing with a cock in your mouth. Shut you up good and proper, 'cept when you moaned around it." He leered at Lestrade. "Did the pretty thing never tell you how much he likes that? Bet it might come in handy, no, Inspector? I bet he gets right annoying sometimes. Bet you'd love to be able to shove something in there every time you get tired of listening to him flap that smart, pretty little mouth of his."

Lestrade's jaw dropped at the outright gall and lewdness, and Holmes made a strangled sound. Such filth was seldom heard outside of Whitechapel, and even there, certain rules applied. The fact that he had said such things aloud to a cadre of Scotland Yard officers, about Sherlock Holmes no less, held everyone present in a thrall of shock and numb revulsion, immobile though a current of livewire electricity seemed to buzz through the air, begging an outlet or an end to the surrealism of it.

When Watson failed to coax Holmes into a physical retreat, he craned his neck and hissed, "Lestrade!"

Lestrade cleared his throat, though the lines remained furrowed across his forehead as he said, "I believe that is enough from you, Mister Redding. Come quietly, now."

"Oh, no-no-no," Redding clucked. "Not quietly at all, I'll tell you. Not with such a tight, wet little prize like Mister Holmes here."

Watson didn't even recall moving. He could hear his pulse in his ears, drowning everything in a sea of red behind his eyes as his blood pressure soared to levels fit to induce a stroke. Then the red became a spatter on the sidewalk, and on the head of his cane, and he was fighting only to catch his breath before the blackened spots in his vision occluded all else.

Nothing moved for what seemed like an interminable series of short gasps that Watson nearly deafened himself with as he gradually realized what he had done, and then one of the constables piped up with, "Oh, look at that. Poor bugger must have slipped."

Watson twitched and trembled in place, his nerves a jumble in his body, blood jangling in his veins. He couldn't seem to breathe quickly enough to soothe his own heartbeat, and the medical part of him, though whispering the opposite in the farthest reaches of his mind, barely managed to break through the chaos of it.

"Yeah, he did," another constable offered. "I saw it. Slipped right there in that puddle, he did. Poor bloke." A few others nodded their tacit agreement.

Lestrade stirred himself enough to reach across Watson and pry the cane from his shaking hand. He calmly withdrew a handkerchief and wiped the spot of blood from it before tucking it back into Watson's nerveless fingers. "Sorry to say I wasn't looking at the time. But if that's what you lads all say happened, then it must be true."

Watson wheezed for a moment and then swallowed the foul tang of bile lurking in the back of his throat. He stumbled back a step and then had to pause to lean against his cane, lest he fall over.

"Right," Lestrade barked. "Get him in the wagon, then. Can't have the poor sucker bleedin' out on the sidewalk now. He's liable to clumsy himself dead if we leave him to his own devices."

A random officer grumbled darkly, "Yes, because that would be a right shame."

Lestrade shot him a quelling look and then ordered his men, "Hop to it." He waited until they started reluctantly maneuvering Top Man toward the waiting wagon - rather ungently - and then turned toward Watson. "Doctor."

Watson jerked as a hand landed on his shoulder, and raised his eyes to Lestrade's with considerable difficulty.

Lestrade did not seem even slightly irritated or put out by Watson's clubbing of his suspect. If anything, he appeared grimly satisfied. "Pull yourself together, Doctor Watson."

Watson nodded, his mouth working over a silent, nonspecific…what, apology? Acknowledgement? Something – he didn't know. There were words trapped behind his lips, but he didn't know what they were. So he nodded again and pushed himself mostly upright on his cane.

"We'll take care of all of this here," Lestrade assured him, gesturing at the gawkers crowding the inn door, and a gaggle of poor folk clustered across the street beneath a street lamp. Witnesses, Watson realized – witnesses who could contradict the notion that Redding had simply slipped and knocked himself out. Thomas stood among them, however, with his arms crossed over his burly chest, and he glared at the others in turn as if daring them to say anything in Redding's favor. In fact, he looked nearly as livid as Watson had felt mere moments ago. "Don't you worry about any of it," Lestrade said.

"Yes," Watson croaked, his voice like coal falling into a scuttle. "I'm…apologize. I apologize – "

"For what?" Lestrade demanded, his voice tinged in a subtle warning. "He slipped, Doctor. Remember?" He pressed something cold and hard into Watson's palm.

Watson looked down to find the watch chain dangling through his fingers, the gold heavy in his hand. "Yes, of course. Tripped…or, slipped…" Then Watson shuddered himself back into some semblance of himself and wheeled around. "Holmes?"

Holmes didn't react to his name; he merely stood there with Clarkey at his back, staring down at Redding as the Yard men attempted to move his unconscious bulk into the waiting police wagon.

Watson gathered his wits and stepped to block Holmes' sight of the man. "Come, old man. Time to go now." When that garnered no response either, Watson tried to catch his eye with the pocket watch. Holmes' gaze flickered sightlessly about until they caught the glint of diffuse streetlamps reflecting from the silver timepiece. His lids dropped into a languid blink and he raised a hand to brush the pads of two fingers over the dangling half-sovereign on the chain. Then he drew back, his gaze scattering to eventually fix somewhere in the stark air between himself and one of the horses hitched to the carriage that had brought him here. For whatever reason, he made an absent effort to straighten his shoulders. "Get rid of it."

"Right," Watson told him. "I'll hold into it for you." He secreted it into his pocket and then reached out to grasp Holmes' shoulder.

The contact drew the sort of reaction that words had not. Even though Holmes had to have noticed Watson's hand approaching, he jerked and lashed out with a desperate, panicked sort of mewl caught behind his teeth. It sounded like the wheeze of a punctured squeeze box, really, if grittier.

Watson caught at him, his good shoulder shoved up under Holmes' arm. He could see Holmes' legs trembling, knees about to buckle, and managed to get a grip about his waist before gravity began to pull him down. Holmes tripped over Watson's feet and then tried to twist free, which merely resulted in Watson cinching his arms to haul Holmes upright again before his knees hit the ground. "Into the carriage now, there's a good chap."

Holmes fumbled for purchase against the pavement but it seemed as if his legs had gone rubbery along with most of the rest of him. A few seconds later, he was one degree short of dead weight in Watson's arms. Clarkey hurried forward to lend his own strength, and between them, they managed to drag Holmes away from the ring of coppers and spectators. Watson kept his arms braced around Holmes' waist, all but hugging him from behind as he and Clarkey propelled Holmes to the waiting four-wheeler. One of Holmes' shoes scuffed along the ground, and then his legs abruptly folded out from under him, taking the majority of his body weight with them. Watson narrowly avoided dropping him in a mess all over the curb. As he hoisted Holmes back up, Holmes swept his foot out and nearly tripped Clarkey, but whether it came from a lame attempt to stop them taking him anywhere, or from general uncoordination, Watson could not be sure. Clarkey opened the carriage door and Watson bundled Holmes into it, following immediately after. When he tried to rest a hand on Holmes' tense back, Holmes snarled at him and shoved him off before curling himself into a corner of the bench, eyes blank and saucered, breathing in shallow, irregular bursts like a stunned songbird. Watson sat next to him, but maintained as much distance as the bench allowed.

Lestrade had trailed them unnoticed, and he motioned Clarkey to get in as well. "Stay at Baker Street until I come for you."

"Yes, sir." Clarkey climbed aboard and sat across from Watson, drawing the door shut behind himself, and rapped on the roof to signal the driver. Before the carriage moved off, Thomas stuck his hand through the window and pressed Holmes' pocket watch into Watson's slack fingers. It must have fallen from his pocket in the struggle. He nodded his thanks to Thomas at the last possible moment, and then the carriage wrenched them away.

They rode in silence for some time, Holmes panting audibly in the confined space as the carriage jostled them through dark and unfamiliar – to Watson, at least – streets. Holmes probably knew exactly where they were, as he always did, provided that he was paying any attention; he had his eyes trained out the window, but they did not move to track the scenery.

Eventually, Watson could not overlook Holmes' labored respirations, or the shaking that had seized him, and he reached across the seeming chasm of space that separated them. "Holmes."

Holmes twisted and batted Watson's hand away.

"You have to calm down, old cock, or you'll work yourself into a state." Watson tried again to brush Holmes' shoulder, but this time, Holmes recoiled and tried to backhand him. Watson took the hint and retreated back to his own side of the bench, watching Holmes with the critical eye of a physician rather than a friend. He could not look as a friend right now; it would have pained him too much to compare this man, gradually stilling as he shrank back to his original position on the bench like a flower budding in reverse, to the half-mad genius who routinely wreaked havoc on their shared rooms.

"Doctor?" Clarkey prompted softly.

Watson averted his eyes from Holmes and found Clarkey holding a hip flask out to him. He accepted it with a quiet murmur of gratitude and took a swig, grimacing at the welcome burn, then regarded Holmes again where he sat as if trying to fold in on himself. "Holmes, old boy. I'd like you to take a drink of this." He extended the flask until it impinged on Holmes' narrow field of vision.

Holmes shifted his coiled limbs and then roused himself far enough to blink at the proferred flask. He licked his lips but then shook his head in a halting fashion.

"Just one swallow, Holmes. It'll do you good."

Holmes worked his tongue inside his mouth as if it had gone dry. He did not seem to comprehend Watson's words. "There's a…cold supper. I told Mrs Hudson we wouldn't be late getting back."

Watson's vision wavered but he held firm. "I know. We're on our way home. Now come have a drink of this."

Holmes flinched from nothing and then turned to stare straight ahead at the empty space beside Clarkey. "There were forty two buttons and the cuff links were monogrammed but the silver had not been well kept. I couldn't make out the initials in the tarnish. And I left my scarf…Watson, I do believe I might have caught something. It's dreadfully cold. One should not go out without a scarf. You yell at me for that." His eyes darted a fraction to the right and then fixed again. "I shall have a pipe when we get home. And you'll read by the fire. In your chair. And doze off and lose your place. A full belly always makes you drowsy." He paused as if to reign in his thoughts, but they had evidently run too far afield. "I think one of them was a dock worker. I could smell fish. And there were…rope burns…on his palms… I require my pipe, Watson."

Watson stared, momentarily horrified by the disjointed, empty recitation, and then managed to ask, "Did you not bring it with you?"

"Wasn't supposed to be gone long," Holmes replied. He sounded like his usual self, save for the lack of affect to his words. "It's on the mantle."

"Then of course, you shall have it when we get home."

Holmes nodded, eyelids fluttering as he breathed in ragged droughts of air, and then he mumbled, "Three pipe problem. It's a three pipe problem."

On the other side of the carriage, Clarkey made a point not to stare, but he looked shaken nonetheless.

"Holmes, the brandy." Watson twiddled the flask so that the liquid inside sloshed a bit.

"Yes, we shall have a brandy by the fire." Holmes tightened his arms about himself and returned to his absent vigil out the window, his skin gone too pale in the darkness. "I think…I'm going to be sick."

Watson blinked as he processed that, and then he rapped his cane sharply on the carriage roof to signal the driver to stop. Holmes' back thumped against the carriage wall as they rattled to an abrupt stop, and then Watson reached cautiously past him to push open the door. Holmes launched himself from the four-wheeler and stumbled out onto the cobblestones, but only managed to lurch as far the rear carriage wheel before doubling over. Watson prevented him from toppling forward into his own sick, and even though Holmes gave a startled yelp at being grabbed – which he ended up choking on – he didn't have the wherewithal to really fight Watson's hold on him. Watson wrapped his arms about Holmes' stomach and rode it out with him. He could feel every heave tear through Holmes' back, where Watson had tucked him against his chest. The only things he brought up appeared to be an old cup of tea and the remains of what might have once been a biscuit or two. Clear spittle followed; from Watson's own experience, it was worse when the stomach was already empty.

Holmes eventually stopped retching and slumped back against Watson to catch his breath, eyes tearing from the force of the heaves, his fingers peeling one by one off of the spoke of the carriage wheel he had been gripping for balance. He snuffled and cleared his throat, then swallowed several times as if on the verge of going at it again. Thankfully, he mastered it and then he coughed a few times, shivering violently in Watson's arms. It wasn't until Holmes' breath hitched and he turned his face into Watson's arm, that Watson realized the tears were not entirely due to his throwing up. Watson froze up like rusted clockworks in the corner of an old pawn shop. He had known Holmes to tear up from pain or discomfort, or when seized by withdrawal from one of his drugs, but never before, not even on that night, had Watson known Holmes to openly cry. Even in the sitting room, when Watson had wrenched him from sleep and inadvertently prompted a flashback, Holmes had not truly been crying. Not like this.

"Tell me you weren't listening," Holmes croaked. It was only a whisper, that.

Watson shook his head, nose rubbing through Holmes' hair as he stared blindly ahead. Then he tried to fumble Holmes closer, wrap him up, protect him. As he should have done before. As he would have done, had he not been half a cripple with a stupid useless leg. He should have been there that night. What good was sitting by the fire to his leg? He knew it didn't help; it only left the muscles to grow stiff from disuse. If he had just gone with Holmes to the Punch Bowl, then everything would still be alright – not perfect, but scores closer to okay. They should be sipping warm brandy right now and laughing over trifles, and Watson should be cursing at his atonal violin plucking and shoving food down his throat and telling him to take a damn bath because he was filthy, and even shameless Bohemians like him should have limits. This never should have happened – Watson was supposed to watch Holmes' back and remind him to take his revolver and appear as if by magic at the last minute to keep him safe.

"Tell me you didn't hear what he said." Holmes curled the way leaves do when they die. "Tell me…please…"

Watson squeezed his eyes shut, tight as he could, his whole face screwed up with the effort. "I didn't hear him." His voice sounded hoarse, as if he had been screaming for days and only just gotten it back.

Holmes drew farther into himself, but he turned to press his shoulder against Watson's chest as he did. "John, you weren't – " Holmes' chest jumped under Watson's hand, cutting him off, and then he gave a wet, wretched cough. " – you weren't listening - you didn't hear it…"

"No, I didn't." He said it like a promise already long since broken. "Not a word, Holmes."

"…say you weren't listening, tell me…"

Watson folded around him, falling back to lean against the carriage wheel lest he fall over in the street. "I didn't hear him, Holmes. I swear, I didn't hear him." He didn't realize that his own affirmation had become a plea until Holmes strangled a dejected sob and fell silent in his arms. Watson sucked in a fluttering lungful of air that smelt of Holmes and then breathed, all but inaudible, "I swear it."

Holmes burrowed deeper into the open folds of Watson's coat and shook his head. He didn't need to remind Watson that he was a terrible liar; they both knew it well. Some sort of strangled squeak got muffled in Watson's waistcoat, probably because Watson was squeezing him too hard, but Holmes offered no actual protest. He did lift a hand, however, to paw at Watson's waistcoat as if inspecting it for lint. "You have seventeen buttons."

An inarticulate sound hit the back of Watson's throat and withered there. He barely managed to implore, "Don't. Please, don't."

Rather than continue examining whatever it was he was so intent upon, Holmes closed his fingers over the fabric under his hand and held it.

Watson felt his shirt pull taut against his back as a result. He shifted his grip as if to rise, but Holmes did not budge. "We need to get out of the street, Holmes. Come – on your feet." He tried to lever himself up using the carriage itself as a handhold, but as he started to pull away, Holmes scrambled to maintain his grip. The next thing Watson's knew, Holmes had his arms coiled around Watson's waist, clinging like a viper with all of his not inconsiderable strength. Half of Watson's breath left him in a hurry, air squeezed from a bellows, and ended up back on his knees. He peered helplessly down at the dark mess of hair pressed against his ribs, and then up at Clarkey as if the constable had it in his power to render this all a fiction.

It was a feat, getting back into the carriage with Holmes latched about his middle. Clarkey had to pull Watson forcibly to his feet, and Watson dragged Holmes along with him. He felt like a mother possum, rather than a mother hen, what with Holmes hanging off of him like that - a toddler separated from his caretaker for the first time. Holmes allowed Watson to pry one of his arms off, and then Holmes claimed that hand for himself, along with the arm attached to it, and practically crawled all the way up to Watson's collar. He flinched when Watson tried to touch him with his other hand, though, and shifted around Watson so that he was nearly behind him with his nose planted in Watson's shoulder. Just for form's sake it seemed, Holmes ordered, "Do not touch me."

All Watson said to that was, "Speak up if you're going to be ill again."

"You speak up."

A faint smile graced Watson's lips at the familiar if automatic banter. He did not think that Holmes was aware of quite how often he retorted in that fashion, or of how young and petulant it made him sound. Even missing for only a mere week, Watson had felt its absence, though he only now realized as much. It almost tempted him into a sense of ease, deluded him into thinking that everything would indeed turn out okay. Almost. He knew perfectly well that Holmes could have responded as such in his sleep; it was no indicator of the health of his mind.

They ended up riding the rest of the way to Baker Street like that: Watson trying to sit on the carriage bench in the most nonthreatening manner possible while Holmes curled about Watson's arm and rocked gently enough that Watson could have ascribed it to the swaying of the carriage. Though the conflicting motions seemed to turn Holmes' stomach, he did not ask them to stop again. He seemed more calm, though – no longer balanced on the knife edge of an hysteric fit – though Watson could not be sure that he counted it an improvement that Holmes had so subdued himself. He continued to clutch at Watson, after all, and if it weren't for the chill air to excuse it, Watson would have been slightly more alarmed than he already was by the fine tremors that coursed through Holmes' thin body, easily felt where he had pressed himself to Watson's flank.

Watson cut off a barrage of musings that threatened to turn into self loathing and glanced at Holmes from the corner of his eye. His longtime partner did not seem in any way present, physically at his side though he was. When they got home, Watson would have to convince Holmes to submit to a sedative. Not for the first time, Watson wished that their places could be reversed; it would have been terrible indeed to have gone through what Holmes had, but Watson would have gladly borne it if he had been given the choice. He knew that in many ways, he was more equipped to deal with this than his very dear friend. Holmes was a brilliant and clever man, but sheltered because of it. There were simply some things that he could not comprehend.

They reached 221B without further incident, and once the carriage stopped, Holmes scrambled out. Watson trailed him inside while Clarkey took up a vigil on the front stoop. Cartright and the boys were back, Watson noted; he could make out the irregular shapes of them huddled in the shadows on the other side of the street. Cartright himself detached from the murk and held up a hand when he caught Watson looking, somehow managing reassurance and contrition in the same motion. He was only apologizing for ratting Watson out; there was no way that word could have reached him already of the calamity that had occurred at Michelle's rotting establishment. Watson made a note to buy the lad a pouch of tobacco in thanks for the information, however ill the night had gone because of it. They had one man in custody, which was leagues better than yesterday. The others could only follow, and then perhaps they could begin to put this whole sordid business behind them.

-tbc