It was nothing specific that woke Watson. A vague feeling pervaded the amorphous dream he'd been having – something about Murray, his loyal orderly from Afghanistan, and the arrangement of crumpets in a straight line down the center of the tiger skin rug, which had contained an exposed spinal column in the dream, fur pelt skinned back with medical clamps to reveal blood, muscles, tendons and pearled bone. Holmes had also been there, sitting by the tiger's head, sorting buttons into boxes labeled with various people's names. One of the boxes had remained conspicuously empty beside Watson's loaded and cocked revolver.

Watson shifted to find a more comfortable position and registered the dull, fading ache of his old war wound. He must have contorted his shoulder in his sleep, but he had apparently already rearranged himself before waking because the brief flare of pain that his movements engendered subsided rapidly once he stilled again.

"What were you dreaming of?"

In the darkness, Holmes was merely another shadow. Watson peered in the direction of his voice and eventually managed to make out the shape of his bowed back. It was only the sound of his voice which let Watson know that Holmes was faced away from him, seated erect on the edge of the bed with one shoulder propped against the headboard. Watson blinked in an effort to dispel the darkness, but it proved impossible. "What?"

Holmes shifted slightly, a well of ink moving against an old, dried bloodstain. "You sounded distressed for a moment in your breathing. Were you dreaming of the war?"

"No. Not really." Watson grunted with the effort of struggling upright, scooting back to lean against the headboard as well. He reached to his left without thinking and ran a hand down Holmes' spine, counting the sharp protrusions of vertebrae that appeared beneath his fingers. Holmes stiffened at the touch, but only a little, and it seemed merely habit at that, so Watson left his hand resting near the nape of Holmes' neck. "Did I wake you?"

Muscles moved beneath Watson's hand, the sleep-warmed fabric of Holmes' nightshirt pulling taut as he shrugged. "I was resting poorly; think nothing of it." The heretofore unnoticed scent of freshly burnt tobacco finally reached Watson's nostrils, followed by the soft crackling of cigarette paper as Holmes took a deep drag from the lit fag pinched in the fingers of his right hand. The glow was enough to illuminate little more than the sharp tip of Holmes' nose. His exhalations curled through the still air, the chromatic opposite of ink drops bleeding in weightless swirls through still water.

Watson rested his temple against the wood of the headboard. Not entirely certain of where the notion originated or why it seemed so important now, he said, "I know that you are not entirely alright, but… Would you tell me if you were contemplating some…some rash action?"

Holmes swallowed, an audible punctuation in the darkness. "I don't know what you mean."

"Yes," Watson countered, his voice devoid of either recrimination or sadness. "Yes, you do."

A quiet breath betrayed Holmes' effort not to sigh. "I'm not sure. I would like to think so." The mattress creaked and Watson felt the subtle pull of the top sheet evidencing Holmes' movement. "Would you? Tell me, I mean. If it were you."

Watson sucked his lips in between his teeth and swallowed the thickness in his throat. He looked away even though his eyes could make out little in the darkness. "No," he admitted. "Probably not. It's not something a fellow talks about, you know."

"Is that why you never spoke of it when you first took digs here?"

Breathless silence passed between them, but it lasted only a moment. "What?"

"You thought I didn't notice how you would retreat up here and take out your service revolver. You used to handle it the way I handle a syringe."

"And how, exactly, is that?"

"As if it could save you from the plague of your own mind."

Watson worked his tongue in silence behind closed lips and took care not to let his respirations betray him as Holmes drew on the cigarette beside him. Though his eyes remained dry from sleep, Watson blinked several times and trained his unseeing gaze in the direction of the blockaded window.

"I could see it," Holmes continued, his voice an incidental murmur weaving about the unfurling curls of the smoke he exhaled. "I remember feeling a sort of panic every night when you retired to bed. From the onset of our association, you were…kind to me. You tolerated my erratic behaviors, you even willingly carried on conversations with me. I wanted to keep you for that alone. No one had ever behaved like that to me before. You…valued me, my thoughts, my opinions. You actively courted my friendship. I couldn't understand why you did it, but it was…. It felt good. And I was terrified that you would take it back. I dragged you to that first crime scene out of desperation; I couldn't think of how else to keep you distracted from whatever was going on in your mind. I myself knew that feeling too well to abide leaving you alone with it. I knew the sort of havoc it could wreak, and I didn't want that for you. You were...better. You deserved better."

Watson smiled even though he knew that neither of them could see it. "It worked; I never thought of my revolver that way again." The mirth slipped from his face, gently but with an almost audible sense of gravitas. "Do you know, I really think you saved my life by it. Working cases with you, it was like being a character in my own adventure novel. It was so far removed from real life that I could hardly imagine the kind of man I had been before."

"Is that why you write us into stories? Because you see our lives as sensational fictions?"

"Maybe at first. I don't know. Sometimes, I just wanted other people to be as impressed by you as I was."

"But that went away," Holmes replied, his voice hushed and careful, muffled like a shrouded bell. "You were sick of me by the time you met Mary."

Watson fidgeted with the edge of the blanket. "It wasn't your fault." He knew how inadequate that was as an explanation, but it was the only one he had. He didn't know what had happened to sour his regard. Perhaps Watson had simply realized that no matter how amazing Holmes was, he was just as human and flawed as anyone else. Holmes was no hero, no philanthropist. When he solved crimes, it was for the thrill of the puzzle only, to satisfy himself and to hell with anyone else caught in the folds. Or so it had seemed to Watson at one point. He couldn't tell anymore if that were true or not; he only recalled feeling disgust at Holmes' coldness, his disregard for the humanity caught in his orbit. His occasional cruelty, his silence, the drugs that he turned to even though Watson sat right there before him and cared that he was destroying whatever might remain of his essential self. Watson could recall feeling disillusionment at the imperfect man. In fact, he could very clearly remember coming downstairs from his room on one particular morning, dust motes glittering in a shaft of sunlight pierced through the crack of the window blind to strike Holmes' slipper, and the so-called Great Detective insensate in his chair with his Morocco case in his lap and the tourniquet still tied about his arm, cutting off the circulation to his fingers to the point that they had been swollen and turning blue. And Watson had thought to himself quite forcefully on that morning: how dare that man be the one to save Watson from himself?

"I haven't changed, Watson."

Watson looked up, blinking into the nothingness in front of him where he knew Holmes to be. "I know. But I like to think that maybe I have."

"That is what people tell themselves when they cannot face the truth of their own natures." It was a harsh statement, but Holmes stated in plainly rather than with rancor. "You haven't changed any more than I have."

"You cannot know that, Holmes. I am not going to abandon you. Even if by some miracle I find another woman willing to be the wife of a lowly part time doctor, I won't make that mistake again."

For a moment, no answer seemed forthcoming, and then Holmes mumbled, "You promised no more lies."

The tight flare of pain in his chest came suddenly, and Watson had to spend several exaggerated paces of his heartbeat trying to find a way to refute Holmes' well-placed mistrust. "That man in the stories," he finally offered. "You once accused me of taking all of the things that I value in you and putting them into that character."

He stopped to reconsider what he meant to say, but he could hardly leave that statement as the end point. In the beginning, before he really knew Holmes, that might have been true – he may have thought that the Ideal Reasoner really was the true Sherlock Holmes, and that it was good for him to be so. Watson knew better now. And why Watson should ever have preferred the cold logician to the real man, he would probably never know. At this point, it probably made no difference anyway. Neither of them could change the past.

"Holmes, that man is not you. Do you understand? He's a caricature. No one would ever accuse that man of heating towels for my war wounds or soothing my nervous fits or…or entertaining fancies of one day keeping bees in the country." This last, Watson stated with fondness, a chuckle creeping into his voice without his conscious intent. Again, the heaviness of sobriety returned quickly, and Watson said, "You do know that, don't you? I have… I have no love for that man. He's not real." It was too dark for the gesture to have any impact, but Watson raised his head and faced Holmes anyway. "You are."

Neither of them said anything for a while, and Watson wondered if perhaps he should have kept his own counsel on the matter. Holmes was not the effusive sort, and Watson's sentiments were the kind that could only ever be spoken under cover of darkness, and even then should be denied for decency's sake. Then, finally, Holmes said, "John?"

Watson forced his apprehension away and turned his head to peer toward Holmes' voice. "Yes, Sherlock?"

Several more seconds passed, weighted and cloying, before Holmes whispered in a manner hindered by the thickness of unwanted emotions, "Thank you."

Watson nodded, relief warring with other more nebulous feelings. "You are most welcome."

The moment remained unspoiled for a while longer, uninterrupted except by their breathing and the sound of Holmes smoking. After Holmes ground the stub in amongst the other remnants littering the saucer on the side table, he turned around and groped for Watson's hand against the bedclothes. Puzzled, Watson let him have it, and then he stopped breathing as Holmes pressed the cold steal of Watson's own service revolver into his palm and closed his fingers around it.

Watson said nothing. He merely disarmed the weapon before returning it to the drawer of his nightstand, and then sat in still silence as Holmes shifted to mirror Watson's pose, sitting up against the headboard in the dark.

Holmes moved again in the dark, a settling of limbs and nothing more. "I thought I heard someone downstairs," he explained. It might even have been the truth.

There may have been a reaction to that statement hidden somewhere deep within the folds of Watson's own memories of the nights that he himself had lain awake with his revolver clutched in his hands. Not all of those nights had followed hard on the heels of his being invalided home. There were others – nights when he swore that he could still hear the deafening rush of water screaming his failure to him in the dark.

Nothing made its way to the surface, however, and Watson merely swallowed before responding, his voice just a whisper of disembodied sound, "Of course, old fellow."

They remained like that, wide awake in the waning dark until the shadows lessened enough that Watson could make out the edges of the sharp features of the face of the man next to him.

"Right," Watson announced simply to break the brittle pall of quiet that had befallen the stuffy and claustrophobic room. "I'll see about a pot of coffee, shall I?" Without waiting for a response, he rose and donned his thick brocade dressing gown before removing the chair blockade from the door. He could feel the weight of Holmes' gaze boring into his back as he left the room.

A soft glow of hearthfire tumbled out into the corridor on the ground floor, leading the way to Mrs Hudson's kitchen. The room was empty, coal scuttle banked low, but a kettle sat out on the stove, needing only to be moved over the fire, and when Watson lifted a tea towel draped over a plate on the cutting board, he found himself inhaling the scent of a loaf of bread that must have been pulled from the oven less than five hours ago. The crust remained warm to the touch.

In spite of Mrs Hudson's assurance of her availability throughout the night, Watson set about quietly making the tea himself. There seemed no need to disturb her at this point, as he was perfectly capable of boiling water for coffee without doing any damage to the dishes.

Apparently, he made rather more noise than he realized, as Mrs Hudson padded quietly to his side as he attempted to slice the bread into manageable pieces, her tread softened by her slippers. "Here now," she scolded gently, prying the bread knife from Watson's fingers and nudging him out of the way. "Let me handle this, Doctor, before you mangle the whole loaf."

Watson allowed her to take over without a fuss, sighing as he ran his fingers through the disorder of his hair. Shaking fingers, he realized then, and brought his hand down so that he could stare at them.

"It's not like cutting for surgery, now, is it?" Mrs Hudson hummed, her hands moving swiftly to section the bread into slices appropriate for toast. She stilled her ministrations long enough to glance over her shoulder at him, and then set the knife down, her features pulling alert and concerned as she moved to push his trembling hand down below the range of his eyesight. "Right. I want you to sit down right here on this stool, and put your head between your knees."

Watson did as instructed and breathed heavily for a moment, the warm air near the fire catching thick in his throat. He hadn't realized that he had paled, nor had he quite registered the faintness overcoming his vision until the blood began to rush back into his head.

"Oh, you poor dear," Mrs Hudson tutted. Fabric rustled and brushed about the room as she moved away, then back toward him. "You must be exhausted." She took his fingers in her own and wrapped them about a small glass from which wafted the unmistakable, biting scent of brandy. "Small sips, now; you know how it is."

Words seemed beyond him at the moment, so Watson merely did as instructed. The alcohol burned a nauseating trail down his esophagus and he coughed a bit three sips in. His head continued spinning, but from the drink this time rather than from a thinning of his blood.

The kettle began to whistle and Mrs Hudson removed it from the stove before the sound could carry much farther than the kitchen. "Do you want to talk about it, then?"

Watson shook his head, but spoke anyway. "He had my revolver."

All movement ceased for a moment, and then Watson heard the clink of the kettle being set down. Mrs Hudson appeared before him and crouched down to be at eye level with him. "He wouldn't, you know."

"No," Watson breathed, shaking his head. "No, I don't know."

Mrs Hudson pressed her lips together and dropped her eyes, probably because she knew that she had no grounds to refute him. "Maybe if you took a holiday, the pair of you. Somewhere in the country."

Watson began to laugh softly, for no particular reason, and it devolved so quickly into a dangerously precarious brand of hiccoughs that he strangled the sound just as soon as he heard it echoing in his own ears. He frowned. "You know, it may be better if you take a holiday. This house… I don't believe that it's quite safe anymore. We'll pay, of course; it's the least we can do after all the trouble…" He trailed off, weary and not quite certain how to finish the thought anyway.

Mrs Hudson studied him for a moment, settling back on her heels as she did so. "Is this about the portraits, then? I promise, no one was up there today, and I wouldn't touch his things. I know how he gets about that."

Watson nodded. "I know. I don't doubt your word." He paused to contemplate his fingers, the sight of his prints viewed through amber drink and crystal against the side of the snifter. "Neither does Holmes. He does trust you, as much as he can trust anyone."

A few moments passed in silence, Watson's thoughts oddly blank while it appeared that Mrs Hudson's were far too active for the indecent hour. Abruptly, she shook her head and pushed herself back to her feet, knees creaking audibly enough in the hushed room that Watson winced in sympathy for her. "Who would do such a thing? I know the man has enemies, but surely, this is too far?"

Watson blinked a few times, then peered up to where Mrs Hudson was tossing tea leaves about with angry gestures. "You take it for granted that this is not just some paranoid bit of lunacy on his part?"

"I take nothing for granted!" she snapped back, and then stopped what she was doing long enough to take a very deep, very deliberate breath. "If this were just a bit of lunacy, he wouldn't…he would be convinced of a conspiracy, and he would be insistent that everyone listen to him about it. He wouldn't be stealing your revolver in the dead of night and…and doing god knows what with it." Her voice trembled and broke a bit on that last strain, and she flung a tea towel onto the countertop before bustling over to fuss again with the bread.

Watson stood, gauging both his balance and the upset that the brandy had left behind in his stomach. "Mrs Hudson – "

"I'll not have him handling firearms in my house!" she burst out, surprisingly forceful considering the calm with which she had comported herself until now. "He was enough trouble with that before, shooting holes in my walls like a demented child. You tell him that, Doctor – he is not to – to touch them under my roof, I will not allow it!"

Watson caught at her shoulder and though she shrugged it off, she still turned to him for a moment, into the arm he had stretched out to her. "I apologize," Watson murmured, patting gently at her back.

Mrs Hudson made a frankly rude sound as she disentangled herself and swept past him to resume the tea making. Apropos of nothing, she stated, "I will not take a holiday, thank you very much. The two of you could hardly survive on your own, and I'll not have you mucking up my kitchen trying to make your own supper. It would be a miracle if the house survived intact."

Watson smiled, but it faded quickly. "I don't suggest it lightly. Someone has managed to gain entry to the house. You are not safe here."

"Oh, and you are?" Mrs Hudson retorted.

"If you were to see the intruder, it would no doubt ruin his plans. A witness would run counter to his apparent aims to make Holmes believe that he is hallucinating – "

"I would gladly be that witness."

Watson paused only long enough to regroup. "He would make every effort to silence you if you were. How do you think Holmes would react to that? He is already blaming himself for Cartright – I can see it in him. Do you honestly think that Holmes would be helped by your coming to harm on his behalf as well?"

Gradually, Mrs Hudson's fingers stilled atop the bread slices, and then she covered the sectioned loaf back up with a towel.

"Please, allow us to send you somewhere safe."

It took several silent moments, saturated in heartbeats, for Mrs Hudson's posture to sag. "And who will look after the two of you, then? Cook your meals and do the washing up?"

"Mrs Hudson – "

"No." She wrung her hands in a tea towel and set it deliberately aside. The tea had steeped sufficiently by now, and Mrs Hudson busied herself preparing a tray. "And don't ask again."

"Ah. Refreshment." Holmes sat up as Watson entered with the unaccustomed imbalance of a fully loaded tea tray gripped tightly in both hands. "I perceive that you woke Mrs. Hudson during your foray into her territory. You should really know better by now than to try sneaking about her kitchen before dawn."

"And is it the toast that gave it away?" Watson slid the tray onto his little-used shaving table and breathed a quiet sigh of relief at not having broken anything.

"The scent of the tea, actually." Holmes reached for the little pyramid of cigarettes that he had at some point arranged on the edge of the night table. "The last time you attempted to brew a pot yourself, it was, for lack of a kinder term, foul."

Watson wrinkled his mouth at that, but he could hardly deny it. The concoction had indeed been unpalatable.

In a seeming nonsequitor, Holmes announced, "The verdict and sentencing are to take place today." He did not need to elaborate on which verdict, or for which three men. "I wish to attend."

Watson shut his eyes for a moment, unspeakably weary after so many stresses and so little sleep. "Holmes…"

"I know your opinion on the subject." Holmes struck a match, the flare of sulfur catching on the angles of his cheekbones and the tip of his nose.

"Truly, Holmes, I don't even know my opinion on this anymore." Watson smeared a hand down his face, fingers pausing momentarily to pick at the sleep crusted in the corners of his eyes. He felt sick from exhaustion and wondered, not for the first time, how Holmes always seemed to function so sharply in the absence of proper rest. When he looked up, sighing though he hadn't meant to, he found Holmes watching him with a concerned frown. "I'm fine," Watson assured him, his smile forced.

"You could sleep longer." The words came accompanied by puffs of smoke from the inhalation he had just taken. "It's early, still."

Watson shook his head. "I don't think I could, actually. Not right now." He pulled the sash of his dressing gown tighter about his waist, then arched his back to crack the stiffness from his spine. From the corner of his eye, he could see the disordered pile of cigarettes where just a moment ago, they had been neatly stacked. His gaze shifted to Holmes' fingers and the careful lifting of the lit fag to his lips. "You're trembling."

"It's nothing," Holmes countered by rote, but he seemed to think better of it a moment later. His eyes shifted as if he were trying, for once, not to be furtive. "It's…normal. Nothing to be concerned about; it will pass shortly."

Watson paused in his cataloguing of secondary symptoms – pale sheen of sweat, remembered heat of the skin, a pallor hinting at mild nausea. This was from the cocaine, then. How long had he been feeling the aftereffects of his binge? It had been a full day since Watson had broken into his bedroom. The craving for another prick from the needle must have been nearly overwhelming by now, starved as his blood had to be after three straight days in a stupor. "How bad is it?"

"Manageable," Holmes grumbled around his cigarette. "You needn't worry yourself, Watson. I am accustomed to this."

Usually, Watson was not privy to this stage of the proceedings. Holmes' black fits, and the higher dosage rates of his cocaine, tended to end with several days' worth of sleeping. By the time Holmes returned to Watson's company, he was weak, perhaps, and still prone to a general malaise as if after a mild stomach sickness, but nothing worse. "You say 'accustomed.' Is it always this bad?"

"You become insufferable when you are not rested. I am fine, Watson. Do stop clucking at me."

Watson stared into the empty space between himself and the window by his bureau, then focused on their reflections in the glass. Certain that Holmes knew he was being watched, Watson demanded, "How often is it like this? Holmes, this is an undeniable signifier of addiction."

A rustling came from Holmes' direction, followed by the creaking of the mattress as he removed his bulk from it. "Cocaine is a medicinal substance – "

"So is laudanum. And yet there is no question that excessive use - "

"My use of cocaine is not excessive!" Holmes wrenched a rug from the foot of the bed and flung it over one shoulder. "I cannot abide stagnation, Watson. My mind rebels – "

Watson scoffed. "You have not been stagnating of late."

" – I haven't a single case on, and there is nothing to occupy my mind and I am going in bloody circles – "

" – and three days without cease, saturating your body with that poison is hardly 'not excessive' – "

" – and it will not STOP!" The shivering increased, and by some trick of extra sensory awareness, Watson knew that he was retracting his limbs, pulling them all in against himself. "Must we have this discussion now?"

It was only the thin note of pleading, which sounded alien when mingled with the unusual imprecision of Holmes' voice, a clogged sound like an old pipe, that stopped Watson from pursuing the matter further. "All right. You are correct; this is not the time for it."

Holmes snuffed some sort of acknowledgement, too resentful for gratitude, and went still beside the closed bedroom door, save for the trembling that fairly rattled his feet against the floorboards that he stood upon. A moment later, he launched himself toward the tea service. The end of his cigarette glowed red as he puffed on it, agitated and uneven in his motions and breaths. "Will you come with me today?"

"Of course," Watson replied, so quick on the heels of the question that Holmes' voice only died out in the beginning of Watson's. More smoke billowed about Holmes' form, and Watson imagined that he could taste the ash in the air.

Hesitant now, Holmes stared at the empty teacups before him and ventured, "Watson…what you said last night… I want you to know that while I may have been...may have reacted poorly to your…leaving me for Mary, and… I never anticipated that you would truly – "

"I was upset." Watson stood and made his way across the room to the wash basin. "Please, let us just put it out of our minds."

Holmes seemed to find this unsatisfactory, but he quieted long enough to return to brooding at the edge of the mattress next to his haphazard pile of cigarettes while Watson proceeded to serve them both tea. Nearly inaudible in the mumble that he made, Holmes offered, "I am trying, Watson. With the cocaine. You must see that much, at least."

The cascade of tea slowed to a trickle, and Watson set the pot back down in its place. He remained there for a moment, a dozen hot-headed responses vying for freedom from the prison he imposed on them with his tightly pressed lips. Finally, once the tempered retorts had quieted, Watson nodded. "I know. It's just…hard, Holmes. It's hard to watch you do this."

Behind him, Holmes breathed, "I know." But that was all that he could offer in response, and while it was undoubtedly true, it wasn't quite enough.