The Kirkpatrick residence was easy to find, though Watson could tell from the start that he would have done better not to bother looking for it. He also strongly suspected that Daniel Cutter was having a good laugh back in his sitting room. To call the stench of this place merely 'lethal' was a gross understatement. A bath would be the least of Watson's urgent needs once he made it back to Baker Street; he would have to refrain from treating his patients for a few days as well, until the period for contamination had passed and he could assure himself that he had caught nothing untoward from breathing the foul air. At least one of the beggars he passed showed signs of consumption; tuberculosis was rampant in this district. It brought a painful thought of Mary to Watson's mind, thin and bright with her coming death during her last days, her wasted frame delicate and easily broken like the hollow bones of a bird.
Adelaide Kirkpatrick herself appeared healthy enough, though that probably owed more to her not leaving her domicile than to anything hale about her person. The woman was thin and mean-looking, her face brown and wrinkled like old leather though her hands and arms were pale - pale enough to still show the trace of healing bruises where someone, presumably her husband, had gripped her too hard. Watson found himself maintaining more than a discrete distance from her; she had obviously not bathed in recent memory, which could be considered common for the sort of unfortunate that resided in Hoxton. These were truly the most abysmal living conditions Watson had ever seen, and he had seen many poor places in his travels. It was a miracle the whole population of this district had not already succumbed to some locally-bred street disease.
The state of the inner rooms did not improve Watson's opinion of Shoreditch Road. Adelaide Kirkpatrick evidently did not even attempt to keep a tidy house. Two small children of indeterminate gender languished on a pile of bedding on the floor in a corner, nearly invisible in the squalor, one of them scratching at what was no doubt an infestation of parasites, of which lice and fleas could probably be counted as the most harmless. For a moment, Watson paused to stare at them and finally comprehend why Holmes, contrary to his character, took so many street urchins under his wing. And why they were all so very grateful to him for it. To see a place like this and do nothing was beyond even Holmes' lacking sense of empathy.
The woman pulled him from his distraction with a harsh sound – that of her spitting on the floor. How charming. "Roit, now. What you want wiff my 'usband?"
"Uh…" Watson jerked his attention back to the…to call her a lady would have been laughable, and yet not the least bit amusing at all. "I am here to ask after his acquaintances - his business associates, if he had them."
"Wut, yew mean 'is friends?"
"Yes, his friends." Right. Small words, then. "I am associated…that is, I sometimes work with Scotland Yard, and I am not convinced that your husband is…that is, I think that someone paid him to commit the crime he has been charged with, and if that is the case, I wish to find his employer." Watson paused to scrutinize the woman's face for comprehension. "That is, I want to find out who hired him. If I can find him, then your husband…"
Finally, the woman's face softened, and the gradual fading of the hardness in her face revealed a sad shadow of whatever young lady this unfortunate had once been. She never could have been called pretty – her bone structure precluded that – but handsome would have been within her reach a long time ago. "Yew mean that if somebody paid my Patty to do it, they might let him off?"
Watson swallowed hard, his eyes dropping to the hat he held in his hands. "Ma'am, I will not lie to you. It is unlikely that your husband will be released without serving his time. But he may be given an easier sentence if he was hired or…threatened, to make him commit this crime." Not bloody likely, Watson thought in the privacy of his own mind, but only because he had every intention to seeing to it that all of the men involved served the full extent of their time, by legal means or not. The falsehood – and the hope it engendered in this woman – left a sour taste in his throat nonetheless. He did not give himself away by it, his face a study in attentive neutrality, such as he used toward his most troublesome patients. Holmes would have seen his lie, but Holmes was not here.
Adelaide Kirkpatrick stared at him for a long moment, her eyes shining, and then she turned to bustle at a filthy table next to a stove that contained something hovering in the early stages of putrefaction, to judge by the stench. "My 'usband's no' a bad man, Mister. He only does wut 'ee does cuz of wut we needs. He loves me, yew know. He likes bringin' me presents, but tuppins is 'ard ta come by. He jess doesn' know no better, an' that Josie bugger told 'im 'ee could 'ave money for 'elpin' 'im." She paused, frowning at the tabletop as she wiped a dirty rag over its rough surface. "S'my fault, really. Iffin 'ee didn' love me, 'e wouldna got caught up in that mess jess tryin' ta get coins fer me. He wouldna been stuck 'ere at all, rottin'."
Watson blinked a few times, unsure of his grasp of everything that she had just said. Haltingly, he offered, "I'm sure that you can't be blamed for his poor choices."
"An' why not?" Adelaide turned on him, the rag held out shaking in an impotent threat of violence. "I'm the one what made 'im love me. I made 'im ask my 'and in marriage, even though I knows I ain't worth it. If itwernt for me, 'e wouldn' be stuck 'ere tryin' ta scrape a livin' outa the dead groun'. I got every lickin' comin' ta me, you knows - s'only fair, what I suffers; like the good Lord says, is penance, it is. I know my crimes, Mister. Don' you go sayin' you know better – you don' know a pittance when you sees one!"
Watson backed up quickly, more to avoid being touched by the festering filth of the wash rag than anything else, but her words hit him harder than her hand ever could have. He flashed onto a remembrance of Holmes apologizing for making Watson care about him, for corrupting him by making a friend out of him. "Dear Lord," Watson breathed.
"The Lord don' come down 'ere no more, Mister. We's only got ourselfs ta look to 'ere."
"I…yes, of course. My apologies, madam." Watson had no real notion of whether or not his response was appropriate to this situation, but he imagined that he could hardly make things worse at this point. "Mrs. Kirkpatrick, I implore you…" He wanted out of this rotten place, but for all the mental disturbance he had already suffered, he had not yet fulfilled his purpose for coming here. "I only want to know who your husband was working for. Not Redding or Williams. There was a gentleman, a…a sponsor, if you will. He hired your husband and his friends to do a job – to assault a gentleman near the Punch Bowl, where your husband went to gamble on the boxing matches. Do you know anything of it?"
Adelaide's eyes narrowed, suspicion swimming in a glint of madness in her eyes. "My 'usband didn' assault nobody. I know 'e stole an' he did some other things what honest men don' do, but 'e never assaulted no gen'lman. I told that ta them Bobs when they was 'ere before, puttin' 'im in darbies, an' I'll tell you too. My 'usband's a good man! If 'e ever did anything wrong, it was us what drove 'im to it. Yew should be arrestin' us, not 'im."
Watson really had no response for that. She was stark, raving mad, just as Cutter had warned him. Abused and corrupted by a cruel life and a worse husband, beaten often enough by him to leave her nose permanently crooked and several of her fingers bent at unnatural angles. Convinced by virtue of this deplorable treatment that her husband's crimes – his cruelties to her, his abuse, his other myriad criminal acts – were her fault, for making him love her. She was so deluded that she couldn't even see how little resemblance his treatment actually bore to any kind of love that any sane person would recognize. And it was so like what Holmes had said to him, that Holmes had perverted Watson's innocent affections and made a criminal of him by it.
The comparison was like a slap, and Watson found himself wondering how Holmes could have come by such a mindset. Yes, the assault he had been subjected to had been brutal and scarring, but this kind of perversion of the ego took years to develop. The attack may have been a catalyst for Holmes, to lead him to this end result, but the seeds of it would have had to have been planted long before that. When, Watson wondered. Was it him? Had his dismissive tendencies, his criticisms, his treatment of his dearest friend set Holmes on this road, or had he been on it before they met? What must Holmes have suffered, either from others or from the torment of his own mind, to drive him down the same path as this long-ill-treated woman, to believe himself so unworthy?
"I, um…I understand, of course." Watson wanted out of this place like nothing else – more, even, than he had wanted out of that last horrific battle after it all went wrong in Afghanistan. At least at Maiwand, he had been in possession of a weapon – at least his bullets could theoretically protect him from the enemy. How was he supposed to defend himself from this madness? He could hardly shoot this woman to remove the formless threat that her very existence seemed to press on him. "Please, just tell me: did he have an employer? Did he ever speak of a gentleman benefactor? Did he ever mention any jobs that he had been paid for?"
Adelaide sneered at him and turned her back. "If 'e had a genl'man payin' 'im, 'e never said nuffin' to me. Anyways, Patty wasn' no fool. He didn' take no jobs from no toffs; them's not ta be trusted, an' Patty didn' go mixin' in things what weren't his. Tha's a right way ta gettin' put in the Thames, Mister; nobody cares if us griddlers turn up missin' in the mornin'. We gots ta be careful 'bout our business."
Watson nodded and breathed through his mouth to reduce the effects of the foul odors surrounding him. "What about money? Did he bring home anything unusual in the past month or two? Did he go to any unusual expense in that time?"
Adelaide scrubbed at the dirt that was most likely a part of the table by now. "No."
"Are you certain?" Watson pressed. Her short answer could either be a sign of dissemblance, or of her continued hostility toward him; he could not tell which.
The rag went flying to land in a heap on the floor in front of the stove. Adelaide whirled around, her hands on her hips, and demanded, "Why? So's you can take it from us? You ain't gettin' nuffin' from me! What I gots is mine, you 'ear?"
Watson held his hands up in a mollifying gesture. "I assure you, I don't want to take anything from you. I only want information."
"Yeah, well yew can take what you want and sod it!" Adelaide picked up a spoon from the sideboard and flicked it at him. "Go on, git! I've enough to worry about wiffout yer pryin' and wantin'. I ain't got nuffin'! My 'usband's in the lurch an' I ain't got enuff fer a bread load wiff what 'e left us! You think you 'ave wants, Mister? You try livin' like we do!"
Watson had already passed the door jamb when he finally realized that Adelaide had driven him backwards and out of the building. He caught his footing before he fell off the stairs at the stoop, and nodded, his hands held away and empty to demonstrate his harmlessness. "I am sorry to have troubled you, madam. I assure you, I meant no harm." He fished in his overcoat pocket and took out one of his cards. "If you remember anything about a gentleman, or if you hear about one, you can contact me here." He held the card out hopefully, but eyed the spoon wielded against him with a wary eye. When Adelaide made no move to take the card, Watson added, "Please. There's money in it for you, if the information you bring is good."
Adelaide's face twisted again, this time in more than just suspicion. Hope of that desperate a caliber was an unexpectedly ugly thing on a face so worn. "How much money?"
"That depends on the quality of your information." Watson waved the card again and breathed an inward sigh of relief when she took it.
After studying the card for several seconds with a puzzled frown, Adelaide confessed, "I ain't never learned no letters."
It took a moment for Watson to realize that she was confessing illiteracy. He should have expected that; most people in these straights were uneducated – that was how they ended up in such hopeless dead ends in the first place. "Cavendish," Watson told her. "Take it to the telegram office in Cavendish and they'll tell you where to go."
Adelaide glowered some more and then secreted the card away in a fold of her clothes that may or may not have concealed a proper pocket. "Fine. Now git lost. We ain't got no use fer no Nancy-dress layabouts in 'ere."
Watson opened his mouth to bid her good day, only to have the door slammed in his face. He grimaced instead and turned to pick his way back to the open sewer that passed for a street in Hoxton. A distressingly large number of hostile glares followed his dignified if hasty retreat. He had two more stops to make before returning home: the unfortunate flower girl, and the beggared blacksmith who had entered statements on the attack into the police record. They should be easy enough to find.
He had to walk back to the vicinity of the Punch Bowl, as no cabbie in their right mind frequented Hoxton for honest fares. Or for dishonest ones, for that matter. Just as he finally spotted the beggar, however, Watson was waylaid by an errand boy, one who did not appear to be one of Holmes' irregulars. The child shoved a folded note into Watson's hand which simply read: The Diogenes Club. Come at once. I have Sherlock here. M. A post-script read: Tip the boy.
Any thought of interrogating the beggar fled from Watson's mind.
"Did my brother ever tell you about our parents, Doctor?"
Watson missed a step in his pacing, aware that his behavior could only be called rude and yet unable make himself settle in one place. He to wanted to find and throttle Lestrade for being such a witless boar, and then he wanted to confirm to his own satisfaction that Holmes was truly alright after fainting dead away from shock in Lestrade's office.
Mycroft had been waiting for him in the foyer when his cab arrived, then led him directly up to the Strangers Room with little explanation except that Lestrade had contacted Mycroft when it became apparent that Watson would not be easily found. Though Mycroft had confirmed that Sherlock was here and resting well under the influence of a dose of chloral, he would not allow Watson to go to him. He had insisted that they have a conversation first, as if Watson could possibly concentrate on the social arts in this instant. Then again, perhaps that was the point, and Mycroft aimed to keep him rattled in order to elicit more honest, less calculated responses. Only a Holmes would do such a cruel thing at a time like this, and all for a conversational leverage that Watson had no intention of granting. And that beside the fact that Watson was not capable of the sort of duplicity or subterfuge that this sort of gambit was designed to undermine.
"Doctor Watson?"
Watson stopped abruptly to recall the question, scanned the room, and then forced himself to keep an even pace as he approached the chair opposite Mycroft's ungainly, seated form. "No," Watson replied, his tone clipped into as much civility as he could manage just then. "He has mentioned that his mother died in an asylum – that she suffered from a nervous hysteria coupled with delusions – but that is all. It was never a subject he seemed inclined to discuss."
"Well, of course not," Mycroft grumbled. He gestured to a brandy snifter on the table at Watson's right hand, a twin to the one that he himself paused to sip from. "Sherlock was very young when the extent of her illness became apparent; I imagine that he has few pleasant memories of any of us from those days."
Watson shut his eyes long enough to contain the desire to either roll them or glare, his jaw clenched for a moment, and then he picked up the brandy that had been left for him. "Forgive me, sir, but what has this to do with your brother's current condition?"
To all intents, Mycroft ignored this question, but Watson knew him through Sherlock as a man who ever only approached a question from the side. His answers may have been oblique, but they were still answers. "Our father was a landed gentleman. Nothing too extravagant, of course; too many years had passed between the titling of our ancestors and his inheritance of the estate. We lived comfortably enough as commoners, wealthy in comparison to many. Father wed a French woman he had met in his travels – a niece of Emile Vernet. You may have heard of him?"
"Holmes has mentioned his French connection before."
Mycroft nodded and settled his bulk like a great seal rolling more deeply into an indent shaped in wet sand. "She was his second wife, actually, his first having died childless of a wasting illness not two years into their marriage."
Impatient now, Watson interjected with, "Mister Holmes, I really do not see how this is relevant. You tell me that Holmes has suffered a shock, that he is sedated because of it. I am Holmes' personal physician, besides being his friend. My place, right now, is with him, not sitting about drinking brandy - "
"Mother was given to delusion, but our father knew that when he met her."
Watson bit his tongue and nodded with a modicum of civility since dissuading Mycroft from his narrative would be akin to trying to stop Sherlock from going at his chemistry paraphernalia in a manic fit. And he doubted that he would be either able or permitted to find Sherlock in this labyrinth of a club without Mycroft to guide him.
"It was always a harmless thing; at times, I suspect that he was a bit charmed by it. It made her unique, gave her an unusual perspective. She was shrewd in business matters, even more so than father; he consulted her without shame, and blamed her insights on some unfathomable gift of the slightly maddened mind. It was a ridiculously romantic notion; he would have done better to think on the matter rationally and see that she was simply not well."
"That is very unfortunate," Watson offered, wary now. Surely, Mycroft could not mean to draw comparisons between the inherited madness of the Holmes matron, and Sherlock's very understandable, lingering symptoms of mental trauma.
"Sherlock came by his observational abilities from her, you see; it was she who taught him to deduce from a man's appearance so well that he could then judge an entire character by it. She would memorize the exact placement of objects in a room, her spacial senses downright frightening. If anything was moved even an inch from its assigned position, she would fall into hysterics and lock herself away in her room. I suspect that Sherlock, being of a very young and impressionable age, absorbed much of this peculiarity from her. Even as a child of five, he was ever nudging things back into their proper places so that she would not become alarmed by their shifting about in the normal course of daily affairs." He paused to study the light refracted through the crystal of his glass, his aloof façade showing wear. "His memory was a remarkable thing, Doctor Watson. A boy that young, possessed of a recall of such precision..."
"Your brother is one of the most intelligent men I know," Watson offered, more to break what looked to be an unintentional slide into a brooding silence, than because he felt it needed to be said.
"Yes," Mycroft agreed, the word ponderous as it rolled from his tongue. "Yes, he is quite brilliant, indeed." He shifted and seemed to startle himself back to his primary topic; it was a most peculiar mannerism to observe in Mycroft, of all people, who may occasionally fall asleep when not properly stimulated by his surroundings, but who never simply wandered away in his waking thoughts. "Mother never spoke of her delusions in company, though our father and I could always tell when she was listening to something not in the room. Some of her friends insisted that she spoke with spirits, but even mummy denied that. She knew enough, at least, to say that what she saw and heard were not spirits, and she knew very well that none but her would ever see them."
Watson swirled his drink about the glass twice, clockwise, and ventured a sip. Expensive brandy, that much was obvious. Of course, it would have been ridiculous to believe that Mycroft indulged in anything but the best. Against his will, Watson's professional curiosity had been peaked and he asked, "She was lucid in her madness, then?"
"In the beginning, yes," Mycroft replied, his eyes distant and his hands quiet around the brandy snifter. "Or so we always thought. We came to learn later that she was ever telling Sherlock about the invisible men. How they were all around us, touching things and moving things just enough that she always knew they had been there, but never enough that anyone else would notice. How they disordered the evenly swept nap of the carpet as they passed with footprints that she insisted matched no shoe in the house. How if a trinket turned up missing, it could only be in their possession, to be squirreled away in a cubbyhole somewhere, never to be seen again. She told him how clever they were, how they made bad things happen around them as if ill events were drawn to them through an unseen ether, like fog suctioned by a draft to flow through a crack in a door." He paused, quietly disturbed by his remembrances, and finished, "How they would one day come for Sherlock." Mycroft sucked in an emotionally laden breath as his eyes came to rest on his drink. "She terrorized the poor boy from the time he could talk until his seventh year. We never had an inkling."
Watson swallowed and turned his attention to a more healthy drought of the very fine brandy in his glass. "What happened in his seventh year to put an end to it?"
"She murdered our father."
Mycroft did not mark Watson's sharp inhalation, nor react to his sudden stare; he seemed not to be entirely present at the moment, and Watson found himself chilled. One thing he had learned about the Holmes brothers is that they were always firmly entrenched in the present – they were aware of the living moment to a startling and sometimes terrifying degree – it was the source of their deductive gifts. Perhaps it was also the source of what had driven their mother to madness. Far too many times, Watson had seen Sherlock overwhelmed to the point of immobility by too stimulating, too busy a scene. Overly crowded restaurants, the deafening din of a crowd on the Strand... Sherlock could not retreat from the stark, present moment as others could. How much more notice would he have to take to be driven mad by an abundance of detail?
His eyes trained unblinking on the fire, Mycroft droned absently on. "She used arsenic, of all things. I was away at school when it happened. She mixed it into the sugar bowl. You see, every morning without fail, our father consumed two cups of the strongest brew of coffee that the cook could manage. It was so strong that he needed six spoons of sugar to make it palatable." Mycroft paused, his eyes unfocusing. "He never noticed the taste, his coffee being so very bitter to begin with."
"Dear god in heaven."
"The cause of death was determined quickly, of course; it was not a subtle affair. The arsenic was traced back to the sugar, and our mother made no effort whatsoever to conceal her guilt. She told all and sundry that the invisible men had made her do it – that they had threatened to harm Sherlock if she did not kill her husband."
Watson gulped another sip of the brandy and then looked up to find Mycroft watching him. "How did Sherlock take this?"
Again, Mycroft ignored the direct answer and continued his narrative. "Even as the doctors dragged her away from the house, she was screaming to Sherlock that they would come for him one day. And that when they did, no one would be able to see them but him, and no matter who he told, no one would help him just as no one had helped her, because they were the only ones who could see them."
Without conscious volition, Watson began shaking his head in negation of the utter horror he had just been told. "I do not understand why you are telling me this now." And yet, one traitorous corner of his mind held to the notion of the heredity of certain forms of madness, a catalogue of Holmes' most inexplicable and irritating habits listing themselves out within the quiet confines of his mind to be held up against this new information.
Old leather gave an ominous creak and Mycroft sat forward in his chair, his brandy discarded on the side table. He looked…frightened. Mycroft Holmes actually looked frightened. "Doctor Watson, when I went to the Yard to retrieve my brother, he said only one thing to me before the physician on duty gave him chloral to make him sleep. 'Mycroft,' he said, 'I saw an invisible man. You must tell them that he is real.'"
Watson stared, his eyes wide and dry in the stuffiness of the room. Then he propelled himself back to his feet and negated that with every appropriate gesture available. "No. Sherlock is not mad; I would know it if he were. He has been under a great deal of stress these past two months, and Lestrade had just delivered him an unwarranted shock. I highly doubt that he was himself when he said that."
"I took the liberty of inquiring after the precipitating situation. I understand that there was a fight in any alleyway near Canal Street, that my brother was mugged and beaten. Inspector Lestrade – "
"Inspector Lestrade should learn to keep his mouth shut on his unfounded suppositions!" Watson slammed the brandy snifter onto the surface of the sideboard, where it miraculously did not break. "I am aware of his theories, and damn him for a pinchcock for repeating such drivel to Holmes' face! He is wrong, and I will have his arse in a sling for upsetting my friend!"
Mycroft appeared taken aback by his fury, and then he picked at the edge of his empty glass before discarding it. Without making eye contact – as if he were physically unable to do so for the fear of what truths he might read in Watson's person beyond the words he might speak aloud – Mycroft said very softly, "Swear to me that you believe that, and I will take it as divine truth, Doctor. Because from where I am sitting, he looks to be more his mother's son than I ever dreaded in my worst imaginings."
Watson trembled in place for a long moment, wresting his profession about himself like a cloak since his rationale had fled along with his calm. "You said mugged and beaten. The truth was far worse, Mister Holmes, and I will not speak of it any further to you without Sherlock's express consent. Suffice it to say that he suffered a great trauma both physically and mentally, and Inspector – " He could hardly keep from spraying spittle as he snarled the title into the expectant silence – "Lestrade believes that this makes him an unreliable eyewitness to his own assault. He cannot see the facts for what they are, and he will not interpret what evidence he has in any way save one – "
"He states that the evidence points irrevocably to only three assailants."
"As if he would know the difference!" A deep, steady breath served to gloss over the instant in which Watson nearly told off Holmes' brother in the most impolite manner possible. "Lestrade is good at what he does, but he is not of Holmes' caliber; that is a simple fact. The evidence is not conclusive. There is positive proof of three perpetrators, but there is no proof that a fourth did not exist."
"And you have logical arguments for your belief in a fourth perpetrator?"
"One cannot positively prove a negative," Watson retorted, and he was right about that much at least. "Not even Lestrade at his most convoluted 'deducting' could manage that, so yes, I have a logical reason for continuing to take Holmes' account as true. The testimony that Lestrade does have is biased, and certain of the witnesses could easily have been bought for various reasons."
"Such as?"
"The pattern of criminal behavior was established by interviewing…" Watson nearly said sodomites, but that would give too much away. Halting in his speech, he continued. "…by interviewing men of a criminal turn themselves; if their activities were known, their livelihoods would be ruined and their freedom very likely forfeit. They could easily have been persuaded to maintain a fiction by someone with an interest in damaging Sherlock's credibility."
"But there is no actual evidence of tampering," Mycroft pointed out. "And from what I have been told, no case or undertaking to precipitate such a crime in the interests of discrediting my brother."
Watson nodded, reluctant to concede that point, but it was a true statement. "There is no evidence solidly against it, either; there were no direct witnesses."
"Was it not you who just pointed out the impossibility of proving negatives?" Mycroft asked sharply. "Lack of evidence against a thing does not translate into a proof of its opposite."
"And what would you have me do?" Watson demanded, his face heated both by his outburst and by the brandy he had consumed. "Conclude that Sherlock's mind - his greatest asset, the one thing that he values above all else - has failed him? That he is mad, that - that he is seeing invisible men?" He shook his head, hard. "I am not ready to believe that. If he is right, and there is a fourth man, where does that leave him?"
Mycroft remained silent for several breaths, and then sighed in concession. "Alone, and in danger." He pushed himself to his feet and Watson exerted a tremendous will to remaining still in the grip of his lingering anger. "Doctor Watson."
Startled by the nearness of the voice, Watson retreated even as he turned to find that Mycroft had come close enough to touch him. "Yes?"
Delicately, Mycroft looked to one side, and Watson wondered how he ever could have thought this man inscrutable. "When you say worse…"
"I'll not betray his privacy." Watson crossed his arms with finality. "Not even for you, sir."
Mycroft lifted a hand to his watch chain – that most compulsive of his habits, knowing the exact time at all times – and studied the face with more intent than he needed to confirm the hour. "After our father's death, an uncle came from France to stay at the estate and look after Sherlock's interests. I was too busy with my education to bother with the inheritance I received, beyond using it to pay for my studies, and I...did not like to return home even when I had the opportunity. I never had, truth be told. Even discounting our mother's eccentricities and the strain that her presence could cause when she gave into the fits of paranoia, that house had always been…disquieting, for lack of a better term. A more poetic sort might say that something of the sickness of mother's mind had imprinted itself in the stonework and the walls – that delusion or not, the invisible men had left their poisonous mark in that place through her."
Uneasy now, Watson shifted, one hand twitching in an aborted impulse to reach out and comfort. He would not impose in such a manner, however; Mycroft was not like his brother, and Watson had no right to take liberties. Hoping to startle Mycroft from this contemplative fugue, Watson said, "Mister Holmes, perhaps we should go see to your brother now."
Mycroft ignored him, and it occurred to Watson that the elder Holmes was a very isolated creature. There was a very real possibility that he had never spoken of these things aloud to anyone before. "The result of my disinterest was that I had scant contact with my brother for the majority of his childhood. I was away at school by the time he was three, and after Mummy's funeral, I did not even visit during holidays. When Sherlock was thirteen, he ran away. No one informed me at the time." His gaze unfocused and slanted to the left. "I suppose that they imagined I would not care, as I never had before then. In any case, nearly six months later, Sherlock appeared on my doorstep at Downing College, Cambridge, where I attended university."
"Perhaps it would be best to leave this conversation for now." Watson stepped nearer, his fingers gripping more tightly at the empty brandy snifter. "The day's events have been trying, I am sure." When Mycroft ticked back into the present and looked up to meet Watson's gaze, Watson pressed, "You are surely not yourself at the moment. Pray, leave this until you are less…" …upset was what he had meant to say, but looking Mycroft in the eye now, he could see that this was not the case at all. Mycroft was not addled by an excess of emotion, and he was not babbling out of some haunting sense of nostalgia. He was perfectly lucid and calm, and these utterings were purposefully done. He was not likely to later regret giving away his confidences.
"It was the middle of winter," Mycroft continued, his manner direct now that he could see Watson's attentiveness. There was a reason for this, a calculated reason why he wanted Watson to know these things. What those reasons might be, Watson could not yet tell. Mycroft simply ignored the flash of puzzlement that no doubt shone on Watson's face, and went on with his narrative. "He had nothing on his person save the clothes he had worn when he left and his violin clutched to his chest." His steady gaze wavered and Watson caught a glimpse of something almost like sorrow in the grey of his eyes. "He was half starved and filthy, wearing a threadbare old coat that had once belonged to our father, his violin bow broken in half in his pocket. I could never get him to tell me why he left home; he only begged me to provide him with a new bow, and after I had agreed to do so, he asked me very calmly not to send him back. I gave him my word that I would not."
Watson's eyes narrowed. "The uncle – "
"Never laid a hand on him, I assure you." Mycroft smiled sadly. "I do care enough, good Doctor, to have made very certain of that."
"Then…if the environment was not damaging, why…?"
"Why did he leave? Why was he so adamant that he not be returned?" Mycroft shrugged, a motion of one shoulder and the flip of its opposite hand, more a gesture of regret than dismissiveness. "I have suspicions, of course, but nothing substantiated by fact or even hearsay. And until I know for certain, I will accede to his wishes and simply keep him near, where I at least know that he is well looked after." That old shadow in Mycroft's face hardened, and he looked every inch a Holmes. "I have not contacted any other member of our family for nearly thirty years, Doctor Watson. I even abandoned what remained of both of our inheritances to avoid being tracked down through the money. I was barely a man at the time, and frankly terrified that if I retained any connection to our family, then someone would suspect that I had Sherlock in my keeping, and come to take him from me. I broke off my studies within a week of his arrival, and then we traveled here, to London."
Watson flicked a glance at the dying fire laid in pale embers in the grate, and ventured, "You make it sound as if he had done something wrong, something to make him flee."
"He may have," Mycroft conceded. "But I rather believe that his nature merely unsettled the wrong sort of people." A grin surfaced to run along the poorly defined line of his jaw. "He ever saw too much, too clearly, you know, and could not help himself blathering it all out in company. Discretion has been a learned response."
Watson answered Mycroft's grin with an unexpected smile of his own, remembering Holmes' deduction of Watson's pocket watch at the beginning of their acquaintance, and the manner in which Watson's temper had immediately gotten the better of him.
Mycroft's amusement failed him a breath later, and Watson watched the gradual appearance of that same brand of melancholia that he often observed plaguing Sherlock. "It was too late, though, by the time he finally made it to my door. Sherlock loved me and he came to me, but to judge by his appearance at the time, he only did so out of desperation, after all other avenues open to him had failed. He had ceased to trust me, if he ever had. And...he was not the same anymore. I could keep him safe and I could see to his education, but I have never been able to truly help him. For all my insight and my knowledge, I have not the faintest sense of how I let my brother down; I only know that somehow, I did. I have grieved that much ever since." He narrowed his eyes to best observe Watson's reaction, and then remarked, "Surely, you understand my position? I cannot assist my brother if I am not made fully aware of the facts of the matter."
Ah, yes, and there it was - that manipulative streak which Holmes always claimed Mycroft lived by. The purpose of this tete-a-tete was to elicit sympathy, perhaps empathy, and thereby induce Watson to reveal the information he sought. Watson nodded in response, but not in capitulation. "It is because of my understanding that I will not break my confidence with your brother; he would not appreciate such an indiscretion, and I am not willing to further damage my relationship with him simply to satisfy your need for atonement. Surely you can understand my position."
"I see," Mycroft breathed. For the barest heartbeat, Watson felt menaced even though he knew that Mycroft would not strike out physically against him. Not with potential witnesses as close as the next room, at least. "It was that bad, then."
A faint tendril of unease wended its way through Watson's abdomen, drawing his eyes downward to break the tension building between them. "I once failed a brother through my absence as well, Mister Holmes. But unlike you, I did not learn the lesson the first time 'round." On the surface, it was James to whom he referred, drinking himself to death and the rest of the Watson family into squalor while John played hero in foreign lands. But the image of his long dead brother paled beside the ones that Mycroft's words had evoked. Watson playing family with Mary while Holmes investigated a dangerous criminal empire with no one at his back, Watson leaving to treat an English patient in a Swiss village while Holmes waited beside a waterfall…dozing at home is his chair by the fire while Holmes counted buttons in an alley and cried.
Softly, as if he could tell the true direction of Watson's thoughts, and how he wavered – and he was a Holmes, so he probably could at that – Mycroft said, "He is my brother too, John Watson. In spite of the difficulties his nature has caused, I only ever wanted to see him well."
Watson raised his head, eyes sharp with unwelcome moisture born of both sorrow and outrage. He knew that he was being played like a cheap fiddle, and oh, what a master the elder Holmes could be. To hold up the bond that Watson shared with Holmes and pervert it to serve in this emotional blackmail... Watson nearly said as much – nearly let his tongue spout the foul words that clamored behind his tongue for release. And yet…
And yet. Mycroft did not wear the face of a counterfeit artist trying to pry secrets through subterfuge and skilled words. He wore the weary face of a worried and beaten old man. Let others say what they like about the Holmes brood; Mycroft did love his brother.
His nostrils flared and swollen, voice a shivering live thing in the quiet of the hearth-warmed room, Watson steadied his gaze on Mycroft's and hoped to god that Holmes would forgive him for this. "Four men set on him outside a boxing establishment. They dragged him into an alley, took everything of value from his person, held him to the ground, and used him like a common whore. When they were through, they gave him back the money they had taken and told him that it was payment for services rendered." His voice had ceased to come evenly halfway through, but he persevered, and his gaze remained steadfast. "When he came home, all he could talk about were the number of buttons he had counted on their persons. He insisted that he should not have thrown the money away because our rent was coming due. He apol—" Watson's throat closed and he cursed himself in silence for this sign of weakness. A brutal stamping of his bad leg served to dislodge the obstacle, but it also jerked his eyes down and his lids closed over the sight of Mycroft's hand trembling where it still gripped the open pocket watch. "He apologized. For upsetting me with his injuries. He apologized for making me care that he was hurt, for worrying me. He insisted on replacing the shirt he was wearing when it happened because it was my shirt he had borrowed for the evening. He—"
That time, when Watson's throat closed to strangle his words, it stayed closed, and Watson let it. There was no need for more, he could practically hear how Mycroft's heart strained to imitate the metronomic tick of his exposed pocket watched in doubled time. Moisture welled behind Watson's tightly clenched eyelids, but he refused to let it run free. He needed his composure. He needed to find Holmes and assess the damage that Lestrade had done, and then he needed to get them both home to where the outside world could not touch them. He needed to be away from this overlarge man who even now retreated with stumbling steps to collapse his untenable bulk into the nearest chair, lest his legs give out beneath him.
"Where is he?" Watson demanded with what vocal force he had left.
"I…I had him taken to a private room. My private room. Upstairs. I…I will take you there."
"My gratitude," Watson bit out, his jaw clenched to further assist in the containment of his fury and his unshed tears. "For keeping him safe." He meant that as thanks for more than just this afternoon, though he didn't realize the additional meaning until after the echo of the words had died in the far corners of the room.
From somewhere near the heavily curtained windows, Mycroft could be heard heaving his bulk from whatever ill-fitting chair he had found himself in urgent need of. Then a shattering of crystal broke the stifled atmosphere that had fallen like a pall over the room as Mycroft heaved his brandy snifter at the wall with all of his considerable might. The outburst ended there; Mycroft had never been a dramatic type. "Doctor Watson."
Watson drew a fortifying breath and then looked up at Mycroft.
"I find threats to be tedious, you know. They are so often idle and ineffective."
Watson drew his head back, but the rest of him remained frozen in sudden apprehension.
"My brother is very dear to me. It is distressing to learn of an event such as this in so startling a manner. And so long after the fact that there is little left for me to do about it." Mycroft raised his eyes from a farcical display of nonchalant consultation of his timepiece. "I trust we understand each other."
He knew that Mycroft was quite serious in his menace; Watson also knew, via some ineffable understanding of the Holmes mindset, that Mycroft would not make such a statement if he did not have the resources to make good on his implications. The smirk made its way onto Watson's face anyway. It was not a mirthful expression – in fact, it was quite as joyless as the dark place that Watson had reserved in his mind to store all of the things he most wished to forget about the past two months. "Mister Holmes. If you truly believed that my holding of your brother's confidence were a transgression, then I doubt we would have partaken of any part of this conversation at all."
Mycroft appeared smug for a moment, but only for a moment. Then he affected his amiable exterior once again. "You really are quite a lot brighter than your sensationalistic stories imply. And loyalty to my brother can only ever serve to reassure me." The companionability faded away in the next heartbeat, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "You will take the very best care of him." It was not a command, nor even a question; Mycroft stated it as a simple, empirical fact. "He will allow you the liberty because he gives his trust to no other, but remember that I care for him too. I do not wish to learn of such a misfortune through another chance of your absence in a time of emergent need. I have spent these three hours past, sitting in here and drinking far more brandy than is wise for a man of my constitution, convinced that my Sherlock had slipped away without even my barest notice – that by my unknowing neglect three and more decades past, I had somehow helped to drive him there myself. I could think only of that ragged boy who arrived on my doorstep with a violin cradled in his arms like something precious, asking me for a new bow before he dared ask for my protection. I will beg you only this once: do not do that to me again, John Watson. It was a cruel thing to endure."
Watson watched the subtle play of Mycroft's features, the concealment of common emotion that seemed second nature to both him and his brother. More, perhaps, to Sherlock, if he were being honest. Mycroft did feel, openly if in a reserved fashion, and he empathized quite easily. Sherlock…well, he felt, but not very well, and his empathy was a peculiar thing at best.
"I cannot swear to that, Mister Holmes," Watson replied with candor. "He is my very dearest friend, you see. I would protect him even against you, sir."
"Yes, I can see that much quite clearly," Mycroft replied, and seemed almost…wistful. "You look to my brother's best interests first. As it should be, dear boy. He is fortunate in his friend."
Watson really didn't know what to say to that, as he doubted that he truly deserved such high regard from either of the Holmes brothers. He merely offered a noncommittal nod in acknowledgement of the words themselves, if not of their truth, and waited for Mycroft to lead the way from the room.
The world was calm again when Holmes woke – muffled and muted like a head stuck under a pillow at dawn, and warm like Watson's oldest quilt. He peeled his eyes open to find himself lying on a settee in a dim, well-appointed sitting room. From the smell of hearth fires and finery, he was no longer at Scotland Yard. Neither was he home at Baker Street, but he did know this place, he was certain of it. He turned his head, his neck protesting like the rusted hinges of an old garden gate, and spied more furniture arranged in a crescent around a hearthstove, the grate open and glowing with banked coals. A wall sconce set high on the wall near one of the room's two closed doors glowed brightly enough behind a dark shade that Holmes recognized it for a vapourlamp rather than an oil lamp.
This did nothing to help clarify his location as most buildings in London within a certain radius of Scotland Yard, and even most domiciles within walking distance, had gas laid in, so he dismissed the fact as irrelevant. This was a strange room, by appearance more a sitting room or a private study than anything else, and yet the presence of a stove and the kettle set to gently heat on top implied some form of at least temporary residence. There was no proper kitchen, however, and no bed as one would find at an inn. The size of the room was suggestive of a private flat for those of small means, such as the many that Holmes rented throughout London for his work, and yet the richness of the décor precluded that this was such a place.
Several more minutes of observation, bleared through the effects of the chloral he had been given by the physician at the Yard, yielded nothing that his mind could fix upon as significant. He was still very tired, though, so perhaps if he waited a spell and then tried again, he would find himself better equipped to deduce his location. A glass of water would no doubt hasten the process, and Holmes could hardly swallow for the dryness of his throat. He had noted a carafe sitting in stillness on a dry sink in the farthest corner of the room, a scattering of moisture smeared along its lip winking in the light of the single lamp.
Holmes pushed at the rug draped over his torso until it fell with a dull thump to the floor. His fingers felt overlarge and foreign to his person, and would not grasp the edge of the cushion beneath him when he tried to pull himself upright. Desperate for the water to wet his throat, Holmes rolled carefully to the floor and found himself pressing his heavy head into the rug that he had just discarded. Blackness danced before his eyes, threatening a return to oblivion. His own concoctions never treated him thus – they were there, and then they wore off; at most, he dealt with the aftereffects for some span of days, but never did they linger within in him like this, trying to reassert their hold. Chloral was a horrible drug, he decided. He would instruct Watson to keep it from him in future.
In the mean time, Holmes managed to prop himself on wobbling arms, the majority of his weight relegated to the legs folded uselessly beneath him. He did not really care what he looked like when he began crawling across the floor like a drunken victim of palsy; he was so terribly thirsty, and they should not have left him alone so far from the water to begin with. It was uncivilized.
The door farthest from the light cracked open enough that Holmes perceived the movement, but he could see no shape in the darkness beyond. "A draft," he pronounced, and winced when the slur of his voice reached his ears. He could barely retain enough coordination to complete his journey across the room. When his knuckles rapped against the cabinet door of the dry sink, he clawed his way up on his knees to reach the ewer taunting him from above.
Just as his fingers closed on the handle, someone snatched it from him and moved it from his field of vision. "Allow me. You're in no shape to handle this yourself."
Holmes slumped back toward the floor and twisted as he settled to face halfway toward his benefactor. His head thumped back against the soft wood of the sink as he panted to catch his breath after the effort of crossing the room, and he wondered how much longer this infernal drug would addle his body. He tried to focus on the man pouring water into a glass for him, but his vision would not resolve into crisp enough lines for him to see anything other than the shadow of a body blocking out a swath of the lamplight above him. The sound of water swirling from the ewer immediately attracted the remainder of his attention. He reached toward the man, his own hand entering his field of vision as an unsubstantiated mirage shimmering from afar. His fingers struck thick woolen trouser fibers. With a great deal of effort, he mumbled, "…very kind."
"Not at all, Mister Holmes," the man replied softly.
The thin clink of the ewer being placed back in its bowl roused Holmes from an unintended lapse into slumber. Infernal drug. He lifted eyelids grown unwieldy with artificial fatigue, eyes widening in vain to better see his benefactor, though his pupils would not dilate to allow him any degree of clarity in the low light.
A glass of sparkling water drifted into his field of vision, but hovered just beyond reach. "I'll assist you, shall I?"
Holding the glass himself was beyond him at the moment. In other circumstances, Holmes would simply defer drinking until he was more able, but the thirst was overwhelming. He allowed himself to be pulled more firmly upright, the man settling at his back to hold him in place, and wrapped his hands over the man's on the glass even though his effort was extraneous. It was his benefactor's strength which raised the glass to his lips and held it steady while Holmes sucked at the needed moisture like a sick lamb, his head lolling sideways against the man's shoulder.
"Easy, now; you'll make yourself sick, dear fellow. Take a moment to breathe."
Holmes choked as he automatically obeyed while still sipping at the water. The glass pulled away and he tightened his grip over it only to find that he hadn't strength enough to even hinder its retreat. "No, please – " Holmes plucked at the man's sleeve in a vain bid to bring the wanted glass back to his lips. The room wavered in a wash of dizziness as he tried to move too quickly, and he fell back with a gasp for the nausea that the sensation produced.
The arm not holding the glass away from him tightened about his midsection. "Shh...there now. You've managed to make a mess of yourself, dear boy. Let me take care of it."
Holmes went deathly still, the fingers of one hand hooked purely by chance around the seam of a shirt cuff. Cuff links winked back at him, close and clear in spite of his uncooperative sight, monogrammed but unreadable through the familiar whorls and bands of discoloration tarnishing the silver like oil spreading along the surface of still water. In the darkness, he could see little of the handkerchief that the gentleman produced to dab the spilled water from his chin and neck. But the voice…
This was not right. He knew those cuff links – he would know them anywhere, in his sleep, for as long as he lived until someone bothered to clean them – but they did not belong to this man. They belonged to Right Arm Man – Holmes had seen them on him. And Right Arm Man was in the Yard. Watson had said so, had he not? Or Lestrade? One of them had – one of them must have actually said it at some point.
"I've been watching you, mon pauvre innocent. Imagine my surprise to find you walking about the halls of Scotland Yard. I almost didn't recognize you, but then, I saw very little of your face in the dark when we first met."
Holmes made a wordless sound and glanced at the door as if help might be found there. The tempo of his mind increased as he tried to make sense of what was happening, but the majority of his focus fixed immovably onto the cuff links. Their presence here, at this man's wrists, provided the most glaring discrepancy at the moment. They were very fine cuff links. Not silver plated but pure. No one of Right Arm Man's station would have possessed such an expensive pair of trinkets, and Holmes should have realized that long before now. If Right Arm Man had come by such a treasure, he would have sold them or gambled them away at the first opportunity. Unless he had stolen them from another mark and kept them as a trophy, but then how had they gotten here, to this man?
"I was very proud, you know." The handkerchief disappeared to whence it came, and then the hand returned to caress Holmes' jaw, to trace the column of his throat and flutter against the frantic pulsing of the blood in his neck. "It took a lot of courage to go there, to ask to see them. But then, I have never doubted your courage."
Holmes worked his throat to swallow, but his tongue would not function properly. The only response he could manage was a thin, helpless whine that seemed to come straight from his chest. The sedative properties of the chloral made it hard to breathe as his heart rate increased.
"I remember how you bore their abuse, how you survived so well for your dear Watson's sake. Does he know how you love him?"
Holmes jerked and sucked in a stuttered breath, his chest squeezing tight as his heart struggled to provide him with his life's blood in spite of the chloral polluting his body. "No - " He was not quite sure what he so frantically sought to deny by it.
"I heard you say his name so many times, dear boy. He brings you comfort, does he not? You trust him. You wanted him to come find you that night, to be there with you when it happened."
To be there to stop them, Holmes clarified in his mind. Only to make them stop. But the spoken words were sucked back down into Holmes' chest as he tried desperately to breathe without passing out.
"They were so cruel to you. And your John wasn't there to save you." Fourth Man crooned, warm and odorless breath puffing past Holmes' ear with each word. "They hurt you so much." He slipped his other arm around Holmes' waist to stroke at his stomach. "But I made it better, didn't I. He didn't come to you, but I did."
Holmes stiffened even further with the sort of terror he had never known before in his life. Where was Watson? Or Mycroft - he recalled seeing Mycroft earlier. This was certainly not Mycroft's domicile, so he must be at his brother's club. There should be people nearby. If he yelled, someone would come. His lungs refused to emit the air necessary to call for help.
"Do you remember how gentle I was?" Fingertips danced lower and Holmes tried to twist away from the way they dipped between his legs. "How good it felt?"
"Stop!" Dear heaven, was that his voice? A crack of a syllable, short-lived like the snap of a log burning in the fire, and nothing more. His throat was still too dry for proper speech, and he had been drugged - he might even still be asleep, and this just a sedative-induced dream. Yes, a figment. This was a figment. Any moment now, he would wake, just as he had last night. He would wake, and Watson would be there telling him that everything was all right and that he was safe now. And they would have tea, and Mrs Hudson would make eggs for their breakfast -
"You don't really want me to stop." A single finger traced a firm line along the soft shapes beneath Holmes' flies. "You want me to make it feel good again, not hurt like they did. You were so relaxed for me. So strong. And you break so beautifully."
Holmes twisted like an eel in Fourth Man's grasp only to have a hand clamped over his mouth in time to muffle his shout. He tried to thrash, but could put no force behind his blows, not still half-drugged as he was.
"Shh...calm down now, dear boy. We can't have them running in here and interrupting us, can we? How would that look, do you think?"
Holmes dug his fingernails into the hand plastered over his mouth, but the chloral had drawn all of the strength from his body; he could only shiver and squirm ineffectually against the arms restraining him like a dying fish desperately unable to breathe in the open air. No fish ever made the sounds that Holmes was making now, though.
"I mean, after all, if I wouldn't let anyone see us for your dear mummy's sake, what makes you think I would let them see us for yours?"
Such utter stillness could only ever shatter slowly, shiver apart like Tibetan sand art at the gentle trembling of the earth when the thunder breaks. His pulse rate shot up and fractured where it pounded in his ears and Holmes...couldn't breathe.
Lips ghosted along his ear, Fourth Man's breath a low purr in the encroaching darkness. "She warned you we'd come for you."
He squeezed his eyes shut.
~tbc~