"This way, Doctor." Mycroft gestured at the proper door and indicated that Watson should enter ahead of him.

Watson hesitated as Mycroft walked past him to consult in whispers with a servant stationed at the head of the rear staircase. Once Mycroft's body language indicated no cause for concern, Watson depressed the latch handle and pushed the door slowly open. The last thing he wanted to do was startle Holmes, or wake him if he still slept. He needed whatever rest he could get, after the disruption of the previous night.

A collection of cushions lay scattered in disarray on the floor before a large, overstuffed settee. Draped over the arm of a nearby chair were Holmes' frock coat and braces, his cravat neatly folded on a table beside them, the old, plain onyx tack that he favored visible as a faint glint on top of the smoothed fabric. Holmes himself was not immediately visible. "Holmes? It's just me, old boy. Are you in here?"

The shadows near the curtained window stirred, and Holmes craned his neck to peer out from behind a very large, maroon velvet wingback chair. "Ah! Watson. At last."

Watson took a step forward, then stopped for no immediately discernible reason. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course." Holmes nodded in that manner he had when upset and yet not able to realize his own state for himself – a twitchy nod, an unconvincing and blank smile accompanied by a tic of the muscles beneath his eyes, his expression guileless and yet also empty somehow. "I am fine, Watson. Is it time to go home?"

Watson pried his shoes from the carpet and finally made his way across the room to crouch before Holmes' chair. Holmes had furled himself up into the cushion with his feet braced at the edge of the seat and his knees tucked close to his body. A rug lay in puddles and pools about the folds of his person, hooked in elbows and over shoulders, and trailing down to drag a corner along the floor. Watson studied him for a moment with the utmost intent.

"Watson, could you happen to spare a cigarette? I am desperately in need of one."

Watson opened his mouth, blinked, then shook his head. "Yes, of course."

"My gratitude, my dear Watson." Holmes reached for the cigarette that Watson offered to him, but his aim seemed to be a bit off and his hand shook. Fatigue, most likely, from both the earlier shock and the sedative, perhaps compounded by the craving for tobacco. Holmes was in the habit of smoking far more in a day than he had been able to sustain of late; no doubt, the lack of it was starting to wear on his disposition.

"Here, old cock. You're liable to do yourself harm." Watson uncurled the fingers that Holmes had wrapped over his own on the cigarette in an attempt to take it, and lit it himself before offering the fag back. He had to place it directly into Holmes' fingers so that he did not fumble it.

Holmes managed a long draw, his face creasing and then smoothing out in bliss as he exhaled. He grimaced, however, at the aftertaste; Holmes had never been a fan of the Arcadia blend. "Ah, yes. I think that it is long past time I procured a new cigarette case. You have been most generous with your own."

"Think nothing of it, Holmes." Watson rocked back on his heels, shifting his weight to avoid unnecessary strain to his bad leg. He would purchase the new case himself at the earliest opportunity and call it an early yuletide gift. The fact that Holmes had finally referred to the loss of his old one in such plain terms was a matter to be celebrated, in Watson's opinion. Of course, he would never put it to Holmes in that manner. "Your brother should be joining us in just a moment. He needed to converse with one of the staff first."

Holmes brightened with that sort of forced, sickly inner light that Watson had often noted in terminal patients. "My brother is here? Marvelous! Perhaps he will join us for dinner."

Watson's optimism of just a moment ago fled. He could see the beginnings of a dangerous mania in the unnatural cheer of Holmes' exclamation. Perhaps wisely, he said nothing of the matter aloud.

The vacant smile on Holmes' face abruptly folded and then dissolved like lime beneath a stream of acid. His gaze skittered off into a corner and he puffed more vigorously on his cigarette, raising a ring of smoke all about his hair. "My head aches terribly, Watson."

"I doubt that the drug has worn completely off yet. Here - let me take a look at you." Watson raised a hand to Holmes' face, hesitating only to offer a reassuring smile in light of the flinch this engendered. "You've got a bit of dirt here." He traced over a very faint discoloration in the hollow of Holmes' right cheek, which did not smudge beneath his fingertip. Then his fingers moved with more surety to pull gently at the skin beneath Holmes' eyelid so that he could better examine the pupilation to determine his current level of intoxication. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, which was to be expected after a recent administration of chloral, but the slight swelling of burst capillaries along the outer edges of Holmes' nostrils was not. That was more indicative of a momentary lack of sufficient air, such as in suffocation. Or, the beginning stages of it, anyway, such as when one person covers the nose and mouth of another, but stops before rendering the other unconscious. If Holmes had hyperventilated violently enough to render himself unconscious, he may have sustained such minor markings, but...

Holmes smelled wrong. Watson knew the brand of his pomade, his soap, his aftershave, and the various colognes he occasionally donned if they were to be mingling in company. He knew which blends of tobacco Holmes smoked depending on his mood, his caseload and his current level of disposable funds. Furthermore, they shared a bed, for god's sake. Whatever repercussions or implications that situation presented in a social context, it also meant that Watson was intimately familiar with the way Holmes smelled after either sleeping or being drugged nearly into a coma. They were not the same scent, and Holmes smelled of neither right now. The odor that Watson detected on him – of musk and an unpleasant, unfamiliar tobacco blend – did not belong on Holmes. And he had been awake for longer than the size of his pupils implied. He smelled of anxiety like a stressed animal, not of a recent waking and a sleepy stumble across the room to a chair.

A din of hushed voices sounded from the hall, foreign patter in the accustomed dead silence of the Diogenes Club, and then Mycroft pushed the door open widely enough to admit his person. The heavy oak clicked into its jamb in his wake. He really could move like a cat when the mood took him, weighted frame or not. "I have sent for biscuits and a fresh pot of tea." He stepped up to Sherlock's chair, his pocket watch open in his meaty palm though he was not studying it at present. "Ah, brother mine." Mycroft's voice was a deep, comforting rumble like the friendly growling of a very large, toothless predator. "I trust you rested well."

Watson glanced up to give Mycroft a pointed look, then directed his attention back down to catch Sherlock's reaction: a vacant smile, but wary somehow. Watson had never noticed such a reaction to Mycroft before. Had Sherlock always been so careful of him? "Mycroft. Very well, thank you. I do apologize for the inconvenience, of course."

A lie – he was lying; Watson was certain of it. And that disturbed him more than it normally would, to know that Holmes was being deceitful, for when Holmes truly wanted to lie, when he made an effort towards it, he did not display tells. More distressing even than that was that Mycroft did not seem to have observed this. Did Sherlock lie to him so often, then, that Mycroft assumed this mannerism to be a normal one, born of honesty?

"Mycroft, I wonder," Watson said, his tone utterly devoid of emotion. "Could you put up the light a bit? I'd like to get a better look at your brother." As soon as Mycroft had stepped away to turn up the wick on the wall lamp, Watson leaned in closer to Holmes and hissed, "What in bloody hell are you playing at? What's happened? You're not fine."

The façade slipped a bit, but not much – merely enough for Watson glimpse something vague and wild in Holmes' expression in the instant that the room brightened. As Holmes' features once again smoothed to inscrutability, Watson thumbed at the mark he had noticed earlier on Holmes' cheek. It was not a smudge of dirt but a bruise, not of the type caused by a sharp impact, such as Holmes might have sustained when falling to the floor insensate; it was the kind of bruise formed by an application of excessive pressure, such as by the grip of a hand.

Or a press of fingers.

Watson narrowed his eyes and frowned before taking a good look around them, one hand wrapped about Holmes' wrist to best gauge his pulse rate. A fresh glass of water, sipped from to judge by the smudges on the glass, sat innocuously on the dry sink next a pitcher that still held nearly two liters of water. Holmes' hand shook beneath Watson's fingers. He would not have been able to pour that glass without spilling something; his coordination upon Watson's entrance had been such that he could not even manage to pluck a cigarette from Watson's fingers. The sink and carpet were both dry, so there had been no spill. Of course, someone could have poured the glass and left it ready for him, but an instinct of indeterminate origin spoke against that. The pulse beneath his fingers jumped.

Mycroft's gaze had by now followed Watson's, and he squinted at the scene in irritation. "I gave instructions that no one was to enter this room without my being present."

Watson looked again to Holmes and found naked eyes staring back at him.

No. That word and nothing else encompassed the entirety of Watson's mind for a brief moment, and then he looked up at Mycroft. "Someone has been here."

"Well, yes," Mycroft replied as if correcting an exasperating child. "That much is obvious." He gestured around at the evidence, of which he had doubtless noted far more than Watson had. "I shall have to speak to the staff about the proper following of instruction."

"No, Mycroft," Watson snapped, causing Mycroft to furrow his brow at both the rudeness of his tone and the ungranted use of his first name. "Someone has been here."

Sherlock twisted and leaned over the arm on his chair so that he could see the room behind him, his somewhat speculative gaze meeting his brother's. After a moment of shared examinations, Mycroft looked to the second door, the one not leading to the corridor. Then he turned back and pierced Sherlock with a very indelicate gaze. "Surely not. This is an exclusive club. Every admittant must present credentials at the door, and furthermore, the staff is trained to recognize members on sight. No intruder could possibly have made it up here without notice."

Watson scoffed in Sherlock's place, since Sherlock himself had merely lowered his eyes at his brother's harsh words. "In the first place, no building is entirely secure; your brother can tell you that himself. And secondly, membership in an exclusive club, even your exclusive club, does not put a man above reproach."

"Of course it doesn't," Mycroft returned; he had, by now, assumed an offended air. "Several of our members are involved in disreputable dealings, but they are paltry things – petty blackmail and intrigues, indiscrete dalliances with unsuitable partners… Do you truly think that I would fail to notice a man of genuinely criminal character? Of a twisted enough turn of mind to have orchestrated…" He trailed off abruptly, as if it had just occurred to him that his brother was in the room, and that he could hardly continue speaking as if the wronged party were a stranger, or perhaps some passing acquaintance of no consequence. Mycroft seemed to grow smaller though he moved nary a muscle in the silence. "Forgive me, mon frère. That was unnecessary."

Sherlock merely looked puzzled, and Mycroft shook his head in a bizarre combination of sorrow and irritation.

"Holmes." Watson reclaimed Sherlock's attention with a touch to his shoulder. "Was someone here?"

"I thought that we had already established that. Do keep up, Watson."

"Don't deflect; I will not play word games with you over this. Was someone – anyone – here when you woke up? Did something happen before we arrived?"

Sherlock stared at him, studying his face as if he expected to find something other than Watson's concern. He seemed to waver for a moment, his resolve flickering visibly on his face.

Watson gripped his other shoulder as well and gave him a gentle shake as if to break the eggshell-thin surface of his composure. "Holmes. Did something happen?"

"No."

That answer was unexpected, and Watson did not, for a single moment, believe it to be the truth. "Are you certain?"

Sherlock tilted his head to one side, an uneasiness in his manner that spoke of something guarded and perhaps just a shade distrustful. Eventually, Holmes shuttered his expression altogether and replied, "Absolutely. Nothing happened. Can we go home now?"

"Holmes, I am only trying to help you."

The expression which came over Holmes' face at that could have frozen the surface of a fresh cup of tea. "Oh. Is that what you call it?"

Mycroft made a startled sound, then admonished, "Sherlock!"

Ignoring his brother's outburst, Sherlock continued, "Was it not you who impressed upon me the importance of not deceiving one's friends?"

Watson's head jerked a bit from side to side, an indication of regret rather than denial. His gaze flickered in Mycroft's direction, but did not actually leave Sherlock's person. This was more important that any concern for privacy from the elder Holmes. "I owe you an apology for this morning, for the argument we had over the paper. But Holmes – "

"It was during that affair with Mr. Culverton Smith. Do you recall, Watson? You were absolutely beside yourself upon learning that I had lied to you. You spent an entire hour lecturing me on the importance of honesty, and then you asked me why I had not told you the truth of the matter from the beginning. Do you recall my response?"

Uncertain of where this was going, but sure that it would be unpleasant, to judge by the sharp glint of banked fury that Holmes could not quite conceal in his eyes, Watson replied, "Of course. You did not trust me to maintain the deception well enough to successfully lure Smith to Baker Street. You said that dissimulation was not part of my character."

With no warning, Holmes unclasped his hands from where he had been grasping them together around one knee, and dropped his feet to the floor so that he could lean forward. "My concern was apparently unwarranted, my dear Doctor." His voice was venomous, and so unlike his manner of late that Watson drew back from him. "Your acting skills are far better than I ever credited."

Watson swallowed, his lips briefly forming soundless words as he tried to produce a persuasive response. "Holmes, that situation was entirely dissimilar. You made me believe that you were dying, for god's sake!"

"Yes," Holmes drawled, settling back to sprawl languidly in the chair. "And you made me believe that I was safe." He gave Watson one last look of the purest loathing and then stared past him at the drawn curtains. He whispered an addendum to that statement, however, which Watson was not certain he was meant to hear, and with the words, the hatred in his expression turned to a sadness profound in its simplicity. "You promised." He did not seem to refer to any one promise in particular, and the assertion seemed more powerful for being so vague. Holmes put every promise on the table with that statement.

"Holmes…" Watson shifted and placed a hand on the arm of the chair next to Holmes' elbow. He had done far more damage by his well-intentioned lie than he had ever imagined he might. And he had no excuse to offer. To claim that he was trying to protect Holmes by not worrying him sounded trite in his own mind. "I could not think how to tell you."

Holmes offered a rude snort and shifted his gaze further to the left – further from Watson's pleading face.

"Lestrade is wrong, Holmes. And I have not given up on Fourth Man. If he is out there – "

Abruptly, Holmes slammed his fist into the arm rest, startling Watson into nearly overbalancing as he jerked backwards. "If, Watson! Do you hear yourself? If! Not even you believe me!" They stared at each other, Holmes breathing hard enough for it to be unhealthy, and Watson breathing not at all. Holmes narrowed his eyes. "You do not even deny it." He gave a mean, self deprecating laugh and sprawled once again in his chair, his ease a depressing thing and his eyes absently flickering over the expanse of curtain and wall beyond Watson's shoulder. He took a careful drag of the rapidly diminishing cigarette. "Thank you, Watson. I will no longer require your assistance in this matter."

While Watson fretted with his cuffs and Holmes seethed in silence, Mycroft quietly excused himself from the room. He left through the side door rather than the one leading into the main hall, and Watson watched his bulk disappear into the darkness of the adjoining room. Then he made himself confront Holmes again and say, "I have made a grievous error, my friend, and I have hurt you by it. I know that you will deny such sentimentality – "

"I deny nothing." The anger seemed to drain from Holmes' body, leaving only a delicate weariness behind. He inhaled as if to heave a great sigh, and then merely breathed it out again in calmness. Holmes' eyes worked their way steadily back in Watson's direction, but stopped short of actually landing on him. "Watson, I do not know what to think anymore. If you tell me that he does not exist, I will take your word on it. Only, please…" He broke off and bowed his head to frown intently at his hands, the nub of the cigarette still trailing a wisped curl of smoke. Even now, they continued to shake. "Please do not lie to me again. I understand now why it so upset you with Culverton Smith. You insisted on my solemn word that day that I would not purposefully deceive you in such a manner again, and I gave it. I never thought that the vow was not binding on you as well. That was my error; it was never explicitly stated. If you match your promise to mine now, I will forget that this ever passed between us."

Watson nodded without hesitation and leaned up on his haunches again to grasp Holmes by the forearm. The part of Watson that still ached to think of Reichenbach wanted to accuse him of breaking his promise less than a year after giving that vow. But he knew that he could never bring that dark time up on his own initiative. They had agreed to put the matter behind them, after all - to render it a non-event in their acquaintanceship. "I will make that promise on one condition."

Holmes seemed to swim up from whatever melancholia had beckoned at the start of Watson's apology. He blinked a few times and then fixed an expectant gaze on Watson. Not on his eyes, however; he continued to avoid that, staring instead in the general direction of the topmost button on Watson's shirt.

For no real purpose, Watson nodded again, perhaps to encourage Holmes' marginal attempt to deal with the way this felt for him. Or perhaps the gesture was only for himself. On a whim, Watson slid his hand down Holmes' arm and grasped his fingers instead to still the steady tremor that still gripped him. "Tell me what happened before we got here."

A boneless lassitude stole over Holmes' features, disturbing for its incongruity to this conversation. Holmes leaned more fully back in his chair, looking for all the world as if he might fall asleep at any moment. "I was thirsty." He sucked his lips in against his teeth and then offered Watson a watery smile as he finally looked him in the eye. "Fourth Man poured the water, and since I was not up to holding the glass myself, he assisted me." The fingers in Watson's grasp curled and then tightened over Watson's to a point just short of painful. "I know he was merely a figment, my dear chap." His smile lingered on his lips, though it had already faded from the skin about his eyes. "But it was very real, all the same." His gaze slid away from Watson's as if Holmes simply had no energy left to prevent it from wandering.

Throughout the sparse explanation, Watson had been concentrating on controlling the emotional reaction that threatened to impose itself upon the despair in Holmes' manner. Now, he felt compelled to ask, "What makes you so certain that it was not a real event?" Even as he conceded the necessity of asking, Watson could not help thinking of it as a cruel thing to ask a man already balanced so precariously.

Holmes was, by now, gazing vacantly at the ceiling, his head tipped back against the wing of the chair. His fingers lay lax once again in Watson's hand. The cigarette pinched between two fingers of his other hand had gone out. "He said so."

Watson swiveled his entire torso to face Holmes more fully. Perhaps more sharply than was warranted, Watson demanded, "What did he say, exactly?"

Unexpectedly, Holmes chuckled at that. It was a suspiciously wet sound. "My dear, sweet Watson. Believe me when I say that you really do not want to know what he said."

Watson frowned but let the matter lie; he did not want to push Holmes from his current, fragile state of calm.

Several minutes later, Mycroft returned looking perturbed but stated that he had found nothing too extraordinary in the adjoining row of rooms. There were signs of recent occupancy, but that was hardly startling. The staff had also noticed several of the club's members moving about in the hallway and exiting various rooms on this floor. Someone had clearly entered Sherlock's room, but that was the only thing that any of them could determine with certainty. And Sherlock, after stating once again his desire to go home, remained resolutely silent for the remainder of their stay.

Holmes waited near the curb with his hands pressed deep into his pockets. His gloves were not on his person; he could not recall whether or not he had picked them up from the table beside the door when he had left Baker Street. Possibly, he had set them down in Lestrade's office, but if that were the case, he would simply consider them a loss. He had no desire to either see or speak to Lestrade at any point in the near future. Part of him was embarrassed by the dim recollections he possessed of the scene caused by his contemptible reaction. More than half of him was simply too angry and offended to bother dealing with any of it at all.

Tiny specks of snowflakes fell thick across Carlton House Terrace, which Holmes watched from his perch at the corner of Regent Street. In the other direction, he could only barely make out the edges of Saint James Square. The building housing the Diogenes Club loomed like a specter at his back, an oppressive presence within the thickening snowfall. He did not huddle in his great coat, though he thought about it as the wind blew more chill than a moment ago. Several hansoms clattered past, wheels marking deep ruts in snow dirtied by pedestrians and horses. Holmes shivered at the cold and considered the merits of interrupting the discussion going on at his back for the sake of requesting a cigarette. He decided a moment later that he did not want one quite enough for that.

Holmes loitered well, from long practice at being inconspicuous, while pretending not to notice that Watson and Mycroft were talking about him. Holmes could tell that Watson was more worried than he had been in several weeks, but there was little that Holmes could think to do to put him at ease. And he did not really want him at ease, to be honest. Watson had lied to him. Holmes was not sure how that made him feel, but it was an unpleasant sensation at the very least. Let Watson share in the discomfort caused by his dissemblance. Holmes wanted him to hurt; it was something that he had not felt since Mary Morstan had entered their lives. While an unwelcome development, there was a grim satisfaction to be found in spite.

The muffled quality of a nascent snowfall lent a sense of suspension to the evening, as if all the world had been put on hold for the duration. Holmes seemed able to think clearly for the first time in months. He felt not like himself, but not unlike himself either. This state of disconnection was not a good thing; he knew that much. And yet he reveled in it for the simple mundanity of having so little on his mind that the usual clutter of his thought processes seemed a surreal and distant thing. He could be objective from this distance without the aid of chemical solutions. He could look back on the incident in Mycroft's private room and know that the majority of it was most likely a trick of the senses caused by lingering morphine dreams and the consumption of chloral compounded by the nervous fit to which he had succumbed in Lestrade's office. It made perfect sense, after all; his mind had been stretched thin by the incident the previous night. Of course he had not yet fully recovered from it.

Holmes also looked back and knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Fourth Man had been there, however muddled and nonsensical his recollection. But he could hardly explain that to Watson without confirming himself just as mad as everyone seemed to fear he might be. As he himself feared he might be. Art in the blood, he had once told Watson. And so many of an artistic bend were mad in at least a small measure. The dwindling rational part of Holmes' mind could credit the possibility that he was no longer quite sane. He did not like it, and his intellect railed against the fear of it just as vehemently as did his less reasonable aspects. But he did consider it. If this were a case, and he the client, he would be bound by logic to consider it.

A collection of greetings and a scattering of laughter drew Holmes' eyes eastward toward the intersection of Cockspur Street. Though not the source of the noise, Holmes recognized the figure of Cartright shadowing against the side of a building, just outside the halo cast by the nearest gaslight. Holmes nodded to let him know he'd been seen, and Cartright detached himself from the murk with a smile in return. His footsteps crunched in the fresh snow as he came up to stand alongside Holmes, joining rather than approaching him. There was a subtle difference. "Mister 'olmes, sir."

"Surely you have a warmer place to be than this," Holmes returned. He detected the quiet amiability of his own voice even as Cartright did, but where Holmes had no energy left to address the oddness of it, Cartright looked at him sidelong. Hoping both to deflect the scrutiny and to sooth his fraying nerves, Holmes asked, "I don't suppose you have an extra cigarette that you would be willing to part with?"

Cartright kept right on staring from the corner of his eye as he replied, "Mister 'olmes, you'd be welcome to my last one if I were dyin' for the want of it."

Holmes twitched and hunched in on himself, his hands clenching in his pockets. "I am certain that is not necessary." He cast his glance in the opposite direction and forced a modicum of ease back into his stance.

"With all respect, sir, I don't think you quite appreciate all what you done for me. A man's got a right to be grateful."

A cigarette appeared in Holmes' periphery and he jerked himself back to awareness of the present, turning back toward Cartright in the process. He took the proffered fag with a mumbled, "One should not take such things to excess."

"You ain't got no say in how I express my regards." Cartright struck a match and cupped his hands around the paltry flame long enough for Holmes to light the cigarette by it.

After puffing a soft red glow into the end of the cigarette and then inhaling deeply enough to feel the burn in his lungs, Holmes replied, "Impertinent pup." He took another long drag and then indicated Cartright's feet with the hand holding the cigarette. "You need a new pair of shoes."

Something soft and altogether uncalled for drifted across Cartright's countenance. "You always used to twit me 'bout that."

Holmes scoffed, a disgruntled sound more than anything else. "And how were you to run errands for me if I allowed your toes to fall off from the cold?"

"There was lots of us about, Mister 'olmes. You could've 'ad your pick of the ones left."

"Bah." Holmes scowled into the distance and sucked at the cigarette. A few seconds later, he took to covertly watching Watson gesticulate at Mycroft while hissing below the threshold necessary for the sound to carry to the street. Reading lips was second nature to Holmes, however; Watson would have done as well not to bother.

Cartright followed the line of his sight and then asked, "They talkin' about you?"

"They are concerned for my wellbeing."

Watson's mouth formed around an angry if hushed exclamation of, Someone was in that room – we both saw the evidence!

Cartright's voice came quiet like a sudden wind. "You know we'd do anything to 'elp you. You know that."

Mycroft appeared impatient, but he replied in as placid a manner as he ever did. Evidence that someone walked in, possibly poured a glass of water, and left before we arrived. I am not pleased by the intrusion, but there is hardly evidence of foul play.

There were marks –

He struggled against the men at the Yard. You know how Sherlock gets when he is in a mood.

"Yes, I know," Holmes whispered, almost hoping that the reply would be lost to the small distance between them. "You've been keeping a guard on my home."

Cartright shifted his feet in discomfort; surely he could not have thought that Holmes had failed to notice how many of them had been hanging around, and at what hours.

That was not a 'mood,' Watson retorted, becoming more irate by the second. His nerves have been fragile –

Holmes winced and averted his gaze so that he did not have to see how pathetically Watson described his recent difficulties.

"We 'eard what them bobs' been sayin', that you weren't seein' right when it 'appened."

Holmes' curiosity got the better of him and he looked back up in time to see Mycroft shake his head and say, You can hardly expect me to hand the club rolls to a non-member. "It is not your concern," he told Cartright. "I would ask you to stay clear of this."

"Do you really think we'll just tuck tail an' hide?"

Watson only barely maintained his composure when he replied, I don't care what Sherlock said – something happened, and he won't tell me what it was!

He was barely lucid at the time, Mycroft pointed out; it had the air of repetition. Surely, if anyone could tell the difference between a dream and reality, it is my brother.

You don't know what he's been like.

"What do you need to prove there was another one?" Cartright asked, his tone a match to the calm, stubborn intensity suffusing Holmes' own. "We'll find it for you iffin we 'ave to toss the whole east end to do it."

I spoke to the staff, Mycroft interjected before Watson could get good and steaming on a rant. None of them saw a man who did not belong. The private rooms on that floor were used only by their assigned members, the reading rooms were not frequented by anyone unusual –

"I will not ask you to stay out of this again, young man."

"You don' have to tell me nuthin'," Cartright rejoined, "but I ain't gonna stop what I'm doin' just because you said. Nor the rest of the boys, neither."

Someone tried to suffocate him! Watson snarled. I don't care if he says he imagined it, I don't care if he thinks himself mad as a hatter – the evidence is there, Mycroft, in the mark on his face, in the swelling of the soft tissue –

Holmes tore his eyes away again and looked, truly looked, at Cartright. The boy had long since grown into a man. How had he failed to notice before? "You do not owe me anything, lad."

Cartright nodded, and it seemed a sad thing. "I know," he whispered. "You won't never take nothin' back for it, and we respect that. But what's like to happen to all those other little ones what always come along, if you're not still 'ere to look out for them?"

"And what makes you think I don't trust you to that very thing in my stead?"

Cartright's eyes dropped, and he shifted as if just realizing the exposure inherent in conducting a conversation like this. He had removed his wooly cap at some point and was now working the frayed edge through restless fingers. "You ain't never left us out in the cold, Mister 'olmes. We ain't like to do it to you neither. You and the Doctor, you're the closest to family what most of us ever had."

"Now see here," Holmes broke in, alarmed at the turn that this visit was taking. "There's no call for all of this sentiment. Just leave it lie, there's a good fellow."

"No," Cartright snapped. "We ain't simple, Mister 'olmes. You didn' 'ave no reason for doing good by us – you didn' get nothin' from us, no matter what errands you sent us on."

"I assure you, I had no motives beyond the procurement of cheap labor."

"Oh, bollocks. You want me to believe that you taught us letters and gave us scarfs and sneaked us food and taught us trade so's we'd work cheap for you? If that was all you was after, you could of done better gettin' a boy or two from the work house. What you did, had nothin' to do with gettin' errand boys."

"Don't!"

Cartright startled and looked up, and Holmes could tell that the boy was reading him with transparent ease: the anxiety twisted in the tense line of Holmes' shoulders, the pale hint of something less easily defined settling into the tightened lines about his eyes… Cartright swallowed and looked down again. A moment later, he straightened with resolve to say his piece, but he simultaneously looked as if he would rather shrink into the ground and be away. "When I was growin' up, I used to imagine that one day, I'd have me a family, and my boy would look to me just like I look to you – like he hopes he can grow up and be half that man as what he's lookin' at. And that's somethin' I think you ought to know, cuz there's no one else what could've been that for me."

Holmes kept his eyes fixed firmly on the snow falling all around him – a light flurry now transformed into a fat, fluffy swirl of cold, stifling white. He knew that Cartright's words had impacted him, that they had registered on an emotional level and were doing something strange behind his ribcage. Watson normally saved him from these embarrassing moments of utter uselessness, but Watson was approximately three minutes from outright shouting at Mycroft, and Holmes had abruptly lost the ability to lip read. A reaction to this sort of pronouncement was expected – to remain silent would be an insult. "That's… You're welcome. Now off with you."

A tiny laugh shook Cartright's shoulders and he shook his head with a fondness normally only ever found on Watson's face. "You're 'opeless."

Holmes couldn't help it – he grinned. The shared moment passed, and Holmes looked down to study the remainder of his still-burning cigarette. His mind pricked at the inside of his skull, restless and uneasy and still scattered by the effects of chloral and stress. "I am no father figure." It seemed important to point that out.

"Yeah," Cartright replied gently. "You are."

Disturbed now, Holmes fidgeted with the spent nub of the cigarette and glowered into the shower of white obscuring his view of the street in all directions. It occurred to him suddenly, how easy it would be for someone to approach him unseen. Or to slip away from the Diogenes Club unobserved. "Enough!" He flicked the stub into the street and shoved his hands back into this pockets. Watson called this his sulking pose, but he was not sulking, he was angry and put-upon, and why could no one simply leave him alone anymore? "I have said that I do not want you involved in this. You will respect my wishes in this matter, and that is final. I will speak no more on this subject. Now leave. You have a fire somewhere to sit by – you came from it just now, I can smell it on you. Go back to it and stop plaguing me with your nonsense." He angled to put his back partially toward Cartright, his gaze directed toward the square even though it was now completely lost behind a curtain of snow.

No noise whatsoever reached Holmes' ears for a long moment, and then Cartright shifted with a soft crunch and squish of snow beneath worn soles. There would be holes in them, Holmes knew; he could hear the wet squelch as Cartright stepped. A hand squeezed Holmes' shoulder so gently that he may have imagined it, and then Cartright began to retreat, silent and without judgment, his wordless support left behind in Holmes' possession like a crutch for him to lean on.

Holmes turned to watch him go, and then abruptly called, "Wait."

Cartright stopped, not wary as Holmes would have expected, but hopeful.

Holmes glanced at Watson to find him calm once again, speaking casually with Mycroft, declining a dinner invitation. He left them to it and addressed himself to the grown-up little Irregular before him. "There may be…one thing."

"Just tell me what you need us to do," Cartright said, the boyish desire to please his benefactor still apparent in his face, for all he was not a child anymore.

A sigh worked its way up Holmes' throat and he expelled it in a sort of defeat. "I will never be free of this ludicrous, overly chivalric notion of yours, will I." He did not wait for an answer, though he caught a glimpse of the smile before Cartright concealed it behind a bitten lip. "Find my cigarette case." It was as much a concession as he ever made to anyone. "He took it with him that night, but it would be too conspicuous a thing for him to keep. I doubt he will have pawned it, and in any case, Lestrade would have found it by now if he had. But he would have disposed of it somehow, and rather quickly, I would think."

Cartright nodded, eager as the boy he used to be. "You got it, Mister 'olmes!"

"Cartright."

The young man stopped and turned back, waiting for additional instruction.

Holmes held out two five pound notes, and at Cartright's indignant look, he snapped, "Well, how are you to go haring off across London with holes in your bloody shoes? You'll be of no use to me if you freeze your toes off. Go see a cobbler, you daft thing." He shoved the fivers into Cartright's hand with an exasperated huff, and then gripped the boy's fingers in his own, crushing the papers into Cartright's palm. "Don't do anything stupid. Do you understand me? Don't—" Holmes gave the trapped fingers a hard shake. "—be stupid."

Cartright gave a solemn nod and used his free hand to cover Holmes' fingers where they no doubt pained his own for the fierceness of Holmes' grip. "We wouldn't do that to you, Mister 'olmes. We won't take no risks."

"Good." Holmes released him and shooed him off, impatient and uncomfortable with whatever had just passed between them. He watched as the lad walked away with a bounce in his step to disappear into the whiteness. A tiny bloom burned in Holmes' chest. He identified part of the sensation as pride in the character of the boy now grown, but he could not understand why it ached so much to feel it.

Holmes sat quietly in the hansom beside Watson, watching familiar streets and shops glide past his motionless eyes. Before leaving Pall Mall, Holmes had finally detected a foreshadowing in Mycroft's features of the worry that seemed to be plaguing Watson. Perhaps some argument of the good doctor's had been persuasive after all. He did not expect anything to come of it, though. How many times had he seen that look upon his brother's face as a child and hoped in vain that Mycroft would see what Sherlock could neither say nor ask for? Mycroft ever did avoid conflict, after all; he would not even stray from his daily routine for anything less than Queen and country, and even then, only far enough to pass the problem onto Sherlock. How could the poor younger brother's sordid dramahope to compare to that?

Holmes pressed his temple against the small, extraneous window fitted into the side of the open compartment and twisted his fingers together beneath the saddle blanket that the driver had kindly passed down to them to help keep out the chill. Wind and ice pellets stung his face and he squinted a bit to shield his eyes. Watson was speaking to him, but Holmes had ceased to listen less than a block after turning onto Oxford. He wasn't saying anything of import, after all. Or, well…it could have been important for all Holmes knew, he just didn't care if it was. Ennui settled about him like a pall. He knew that this was no better a thing than the false sense of disconnection he had enjoyed outside Mycroft's club. No matter; he could do nothing constructive in a state of excitement, so perhaps this lassitude would prove useful. It was almost like cocaine, save for the enervating quality of it.

"Say something," Watson pleaded, his voice cast low to avoid being overheard by the driver. He had leaned closer to Holmes, perhaps in an attempt to read his expression. Their legs pressed together beneath the blanket from knee to hip. It seemed…obscene, all of a sudden, despite Watson's belief in the innocence of their intimacy.

Holmes pulled away and tucked himself in the corner of the compartment, his facing partially toward Watson an incidental side effect of the process.

"Anything, Holmes," Watson pressed. He respected Holmes' withdrawal and forbore to touch him, but the intensity of his regard accomplished the same thing as a sharp shaking would have. "Tell me to sod off, if you like, just… Holmes, I'm sorry. I don't know how else to say it. I'm sorry. I never should have kept it from you, but I was frightened as well, and – "

"We have already discussed this, Watson, and you know how I detest repetition." Holmes shifted his shoulders to fit more comfortably into the corner of the compartment, and faced back into the wind. "I understand why you would do such a thing. It was an emotional reaction, and you are an emotional being. I account for it in my summation of you. My own reaction in the foyer was extreme, and as such, should be considered an aberration; it will not happen again. There is no further need to speak of this."

Watson did not move at first in reaction to Holmes' dismissal of the subject. Then he merely slumped on the bench on his own side of the hansom and stared in the opposite direction from Holmes. His silence did not last, of course; it was not in his nature to leave a thing like that. "Your emotions are not an aberration, Holmes; you had every right to react as you did. Anyone else would have done very nearly the same thing."

The cab drew up to the curb at 221B and Holmes drew in a deep breath as he straightened in his seat. He let it back out carefully enough that Watson would not mistake it for a sigh. "I am not 'everyone else.'" He left Watson to pay the driver and mounted the stoop without looking to either side, his attention fixed on his goal – warmth and shelter, his pipe waiting for him upstairs to banish the recollection that he had to nick cigarettes from other people when he wanted to smoke outside of his home. His violin. A fresh pot of tea for the asking, blessed quiet, and his own habitual clutter.

The key ring slid on its chain from his pocket and he unlocked the door just as Watson came up behind him. "Holmes – "

"I believe I shall retire, Watson. Feel free to use the sitting room as late as you like; you shant disturb me."

Watson secured the door in their wake and waved Mrs Hudson off as Holmes climbed the stairs without so much as a glance for her presence in the hall. Holmes heard him request a pot of tea, and then with an apology for the lateness of their arrival, a plate of sandwiches in place of a proper dinner. Mrs Hudson would be sure to fuss at that. Holmes expected that she had been keeping two plates warm for them, and that she would present them to Watson shortly with a stern look for his intimation that she would ever subject him to a cold sandwich if she could help it. No woman would; John Watson could charm a hot meal from the Queen herself, or so Holmes believed. It was incidental that Holmes received that treatment as well, being in Watson's proximity as he almost always was.

Holmes wandered through the sitting room, approaching a cheerful fire that Mrs Hudson had obviously kept burning for them. It took the bite from the air and melted the frost from the windows. Beyond the glass, Holmes could see the snow falling to coat Baker Street in the purest white, and nothing else. The morrow would be for lazy reading by the fire, then, and keeping indoors at all costs. He thought about glancing across the room to gauge Watson's mood and the likelihood of his attempting to make rounds in the morning, then decided against it. He wanted a pipe more than he wanted to deduce Watson's plans for the next day, and speaking the actual words in inquiry would only invite unwanted conversation.

The old black clay pipe suited him best at the moment, and Holmes took it down from the rack. His tobacco slipper seemed to be missing from the nail in the mantelpiece – Mrs Hudson again, no doubt – but he had a fresh pouch in the drawer of his dressing table, and a fire was burning in his bedroom as well. That would do. Watson could relax and have his meal in peace, and Holmes would not have to bother with his furtive concern for the remainder of the evening. Holmes took his pipe and a notebook from the chemistry table, ignored the look Watson gave him for his silence, and retreated toward his bedroom.

"Wait. Holmes, Mrs Hudson is bringing a plate for you as well."

"You may have my portion if you like," Holmes replied without pausing.

"I don't want your portion – I want you to eat your portion. Holmes, you've had nothing since breakfast, and even then, it was barely enough to sustain a grown man."

Holmes sidetracked to lift a box of matches from the table beside Watson's chair. "I am no longer hungry, Watson. I wish to turn in."

Watson set something down on the sideboard – from its apparent weight and the solid thunk of its landing, Holmes could not tell for certain if it was a book or some other object. "If you eat something first, we can both then retire. That way, I won't disturb you by coming in after you've nodded off."

Holmes slowed as he neared his bedroom door and then stopped, one hand braced on the jamb, his back rounding just the slightest bit as if concealing anticipation of a blow. "You will not disturb me if you utilize your own room for the night."

The ticking of a clock in the hallway outside their sitting room sounded clear in the silence that greeted that statement. Then, "Are you...are you saying I am no longer welcome…"

"I am saying that I wish to retire alone tonight. You may take that as you will."

"You are still angry, then. Is this punishment? You mean to make me pass a sleepless night upstairs where I won't hear if something goes wrong in the night – "

"I mean to make you understand that this arrangement can go no further!" Holmes slammed the notebook down onto the table behind the settee and whirled to find that Watson had begun to draw closer and then stopped at Holmes' outburst. "It was forgivable before, but it cannot continue. I will not allow you to enable the feebleness of my nerves as a distraction from the manner in which I enable the feebleness of yours. I won't be coddled, Watson. And you must learn to stop living in fear of my disappearance."

"That is not why – "

"Yes, it is," Holmes interrupted, his voice deadly calm. Sticky, perhaps, like syrup. "What else would it be, John? My most intimate friend?"

Watson's lips parted, his face darkening with a sudden fury. "Do not dare mock our friendship, Holmes. I am warning you. My regard for you is not perverse, nor yours for mine, and I am growing sick of repeating myself on the matter!"

"If there is nothing perverse in it," Holmes returned sharply, "then this will be no hardship for either of us."

"Are you – are you experimenting with our sleeping arrangements so that you can – what, deduce whether or not my concern for your wellbeing crosses some line that you have arbitrarily drawn to denote brotherly acquaintance from unknowing indorser? Are you truly that cold, Holmes?"

Holmes blinked at him. "I am retiring now, Watson. Alone. Have a pleasant evening."

"I will not tolerate your ridiculous theories, Holmes, and we are not finished – come back here!"

And it must have been there all along, the anger, simmering away in a slow rolling boil beneath the surface of Holmes' skin because when he reacted to Watson's sharp demand – as if he had the right to demand anything of him now – it was just there, all at once, and he unleashed it before he knew what he was doing. It came as a bit of a shock when he swung his fist and it impacted Watson's cheekbone; Holmes had not realized that he had been coming after him, probably to stop Holmes from locking him out before he could satisfy himself as to…whatever he needed to satisfy himself about. Still, when Watson staggered to the side in shock to catch himself upon the back of his basket chair near the happily crackling fire, Holmes did not hesitate to swing again, though to an outside observer, it may have appeared that he had.

Watson only barely managed to duck out of the way that time, and he caught at Holmes' arm as Holmes overbalanced. He should have expected Watson to anticipate a second hit, and he should have compensated for it. Even as this thought cycled through Holmes' thoughts, however, Holmes himself was mindlessly attempting a third hit. It was gritty, this foreign sensation bubbling up into his consciousness. This was outside of his experience of himself, and he had no defense against what it made him do. He wanted nothing better than to tear at Watson, and he had never wanted that, not even at his worst.

Watson still had one of his arms trapped, and Holmes wrenched at it to free himself. There was no finesse to his movements, no thought, no planning. He could get too little leverage for a proper strike so Holmes tried to jab at him with the heel of his hand instead, but Watson was already shoving him away, hard, and Holmes flailed as he crashed over the basket chair and then toppled into an ungainly heap on the floor, taking Watson's side table and all of its contents with him. He remained lying there for a moment, panting with exertion amongst the detritus even though he had expended little enough energy in the brief tussle. Watson's reading lamp lay in shattered pieces near his left hand, shards of glass winking with the leap and jump of reflected flames, a pool of oil spreading dangerously near to the hearthstones where a stray spark could set the whole thing alight.

"Damn it!" Watson rushed from Holmes' field of vision, then returned with a handful of rags and cotton batting from Holmes' chemistry table. He arrested the inexorable, creeping progress of the lamp oil, sopping the rags and the cotton to get the remains of it away from the open flame.

Holmes wrinkled his nose at the smell, got his breathing under control, and then rolled away from the litter of their fight. He meant to keep going, to roll straight up onto his feet and stalk away, but his knees failed to balance beneath him and he ended up back on them next to the overturned chair, gripping a leg of it to stay kneeling upright. The uncontrolled urgency of his intemperate reaction had passed, but the need to rend something apart remained. His eyes fell on a book that had been misplaced in the destruction – one of Watson's yellowbacks with a slip of paper marking the last page he had read. Holmes flashed back to that night, to stumbling into the sitting room and bringing reek with him, the memory so thick he nearly gagged on it. Watson had been reading that book when Holmes had left for the boxing ring, and Holmes had caught it as Watson had startled awake. He had picked that slip of paper from the mantle and marked Watson's place before setting it aside on the table to be picked up and finished later. Watson had never finished it. The page marker remained where Holmes had left it that night.

Before he knew it, that book was in Holmes' hands, trembling fingers tearing out pages and wrenching the binding apart. He flung the pieces aside, flutters of tattered paper and a thunk of the remainder of the binding striking the wall, but it wasn't nearly enough. That stupid, bloody book – that tripe literary trash – that was what Watson had stayed home for, and he hadn't even had the decency to finish the confounded thing? After what it had cost him? Watson should have been with him, not reading some bloody book in his chair at the fire, some pointless fiction of absolutely no redeeming quality – sentimental, unrealistic stories about nothing in his stupid, soft, comfortable chair!

"Holmes, no!"

Arms went around him like metal bands, and Holmes lashed out and back, kicking, shouting obscenities the likes of which had never passed his lips before because foul language was fit only for the uneducated – for those who did not have the wits to craft a truly devastating insult, who did not understand the subtle art of language. Watson tried to restrain him, holding his arms back, but Holmes twisted and threw him off and swung whatever he was holding at him to keep him off – ah, yes, the fireplace poker. Watson dropped out of the way and scrambled back, and all Holmes could think to do was stand there over the cracked frame of Watson's favorite reading chair, old wood split by the forceful impact of the metal rod in Holmes' hand, and –

"You were supposed to be there!"

– he might be mad now, he didn't know. There had been a man in the room at the club, but that didn't mean it was the man he thought he'd seen. He didn't even know anymore if there had been three of four of them – everyone else said three, everyone, and Holmes was brilliant, but he had been known to be wrong -

"You didn't even have to do anything, you bloody, selfish, son of a bitch! You just had to come and stand there and it wouldn't have happened!"

– and he didn't know if what had happened after the three left was real or just in his mind, he didn't know if he had made it up like they said he had, created an invisible man as a temporary balm to his fracturing sanity. He couldn't tell. He couldn't remember Fourth Man's face, he couldn't recall the scent of him or the style of his clothes, or the color and embroidery of his handkerchief, he didn't know – he only knew that Watson had promised not to let him be mad, but there was no way – no way – that anyone could have known about the invisible men unless they were the invisible men. And Fourth Man had left tracks in the freshly swept nap of the carpet -

"But you weren't there! And you didn't see him - nobody saw him, but he was there!"

– and Mycroft had said that no one could possibly have breached the sanctity of the Diogenes Club without being seen. It was exactly what they all used to say to mummy to try in vain to calm her fits. They could not truly have been there; if they had, they would have been seen by someone other than just you.

"Please. Holmes, please – just put it down, alright? There's a good chap." Watson had regained his feet but he kept his distance, his hands out and shown to be empty. Holmes had never seen him so nervous. Afraid of him. "Holmes…Sherlock…"

Holmes looked down at the poker clenched in his own whitened fingers. His whole arm shook with the tension. "You said you wouldn't allow it." God, he sounded…so unlike himself, he sounded emotional, he sounded common – they had all rendered him common. He looked for his habitual detachment, but it was gone.

"I won't," Watson assured him, earnest in that manner which Holmes had always found dull before, but which simply rekindled the fury in him now. "Whatever it is, Holmes, I swear – "

"Don't!" Sibilant hiss of a word, that. He had pointed the poker at Watson's nose, and he was both gratified and ashamed when Watson flinched from it. As if Holmes would ever strike at him in earnest. "I have been lied to enough for one day. I will not tolerate your false promises anymore. I will not be pandered to. If you believe me to be mad, then have the decency to say so!" He shouted the last two words, jabbing emphasis with the poker, and again, Watson cringed as if in expectation of violence. "If you believe that I am wrong, that I imagined him, then STOP – " He rocked beneath the force of a shiver of unaccustomed rage and then felt it subside in time for him to finish, " – acting as if he is real!"

"That's not what I believe."

"Isn't it?" Holmes snarled. "No one else saw him, Watson. Even I am not infallible. Even I admit that in your place, with the witness statements as they are, with the evidence being what it is, I would doubt my recollection. If it were you in this place rather than I, I would doubt you!"

"That doesn't make you delusional!" Watson insisted. "Listen to me. Holmes, I have seen mirages myself. I have been in that place, in Afghanistan, both under the influence of medication and not. For god's sake - I have had flashbacks in this very room when I was utterly convinced that I was under fire again at Maiwand. And I am not mad. To imagine something as real is not the same as being chronically deluded."

Holmes felt his lip curling into a sneer. "You say that to placate a man disturbed by his delusions, and then you claim to believe that I did not imagine an extra man."

"I am addressing one point at a time, you ridiculous nutter!" Watson winced at his choice of words and then elected to go on without apology for them. "And I err on the side of caution. Holmes, I am not like you – I do not have your mind and I never will. But even I can see that something about this business is not right. Leave everything else aside for a moment, will you? That night – that original night – they did give you the money back. Why would plain, common thugs do that? It was fifty pounds, Holmes. Only a man accustomed to having that kind of money would be able to part with it so easily, and for nothing more than the sake of…of humiliation. I saw what kind of life Kirkpatrick led, I visited his house – the man lived in squalor. He would never have left such a sum of money behind like that; it would be too tempting a thing for him. Think, Holmes. Perhaps you did recreate some portion of it in your mind, but do you really believe that there was nothing more to it than a few criminals indulging base tendencies?"

Holmes' nostrils flared and he finally ceased to brandish the fireplace poker as a weapon against Watson's person. It clattered to the hearthstones with painful clarity in the tense silence of the sitting room. For fear of what else he might say, of what other hurtful words or uncontrollable fits of violence he might unleash upon his very dearest…only friend, Holmes forced himself to subside. "I am retiring now." The words shook and scattered across syllables falling out of their proper rhythm. "Good evening, Watson."

With the utmost care, Holmes closed the door to his bedchamber behind himself and leaned against it as he turned the latch to lock it. He did the same to the second door, choosing not to react to the sight of Mrs Hudson standing white-faced and wide-eyed upon the landing with a dinner tray containing bread and two plates shaking in her hands. Then he removed his collar and his braces, and hung his frock coat and his waistcoat in the wardrobe. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, toed off his shoes, wrapped his natty old grey dressing gown around his shoulders, and only thought twice before removing the false bottom from the top drawer of his dresser. He had bade Watson dispose of his morphine, and he had implied that he would refrain from use of his cocaine, but if Watson was permitted to make false promises within the walls of their own home, why should Holmes be made to act any better?

He filled a syringe full of a ten percent solution and took it, and his kit, to bed with him. It was three days before he emerged from the stupor.

-TBC