His voice is hazy, meandering like his thoughts. "The Egyptian god Ra had a daughter – Ma'at – placed her highest in the heavens so none could be above her. We gave her sword and scales, a coat of gold and a blindfold and dragged her down. Pity. We should have left her there. Her sword's too sharp – it cuts both ways, cuts the one who wields it..." He can see the wound, a chasm from hip to ribs that bleeds bloody shadows and little snakes. He'd press his hand against it to stem the flow but he doesn't want to touch the serpents, so he will let it drain him dry. "Mind the vipers," he advises absently.
The waters of oblivion are lapping at him again, floating him on a tide that will carry him out far from shore and drown him lovingly in their heavy embrace. But he has a little time yet.
"Moran knew, he'd seen it. He was up on a ledge on the other side of the rift. I think the water spoilt his aim. Saved by a thousand water droplets." This shouldn't be funny but he can feel his lips drawn wide in mirth at the image in his head – or outside of his head, he really can't tell any more. A curtain of precipitation serving as his saviour. It was like having his life saved by a puddle...
He's uncertain if he said that aloud; Watson's moustache looks troubled so perhaps he did. "I should have let him. Moran. Should have let him shoot me, puddles be damned." He can no longer feel his fingers; it occurs to him he may have less time than he thought.
"I ran. Fled scene and country and the country after that. Holed up in Vienna for a spell – not at my best," he admits conspiratorially, "but I was having a bit of trouble with my arm. It wouldn't stop dripping."
"Why is it," the doctor complained, "that the only time you dress correctly is precisely the time you shouldn't? For godsake, how long did it take you to put your waistcoat on?"
"Your waistcoat, actually," Holmes corrected.
"The bloody waistcoat!"
"It's not bloody." A glance at the lining as he gingerly extricated himself from it. "Mildly stained, I grant you, but not discernable from the outside..."
"Your sense isn't discernable from the outside," Watson bit back, unpacking lint, bandages, carbolic and needles from his bag. "Take your shirt off."
"The stitches are perfectly adequate, you don't..."
"You appear to be under the curious misapprehension that was a request. Shirt. Off."
The garment was removed and discarded so Watson could scowl at the bandage. Then that in its turn was unwound so Watson could scowl at the wound. "Tell me again why you have a hole in your shoulder the size of a half-pence."
"More thrupenny bit – ah!" Holmes stopped as the doctor's prying ministrations poked a little too hard. "Your bedside manner leaves much to be desired..." He hurried on before Watson could retaliate further. "Because it was necessary." There was the sharp scent of carbolic, and a curious sensation he could only assume was pain.
"Necessary?" Clean bandage was being rewound over a lint dressing, snug and secure as a second skin.
"To ensure Moriarty's death. Yes."
Watson was perched on the arm of the chair, pinching at the bridge of his nose - although, given the circumstances - he didn't look as troubled as he aught. "Why Switzerland, Holmes?"
"Because I will not break the laws of this country!"
Watson's chin raised at that. "You frequently do!"
"Not the ones that matter!" He retorted heatedly. "Besides, Lestrade and Gregson are getting to be quite promising..." He looked up as he spoke and caught Watson's expression; his friend's head was tipped to the side, his mouth struggling not to smile, forcing his moustache crooked. It was so easy to know exactly what he was thinking.
Labouchere's Amendment.
"I've always thought Section Eleven spectacularly stupid," he admitted easily.
The moustache and the lips beneath it crinkled further; he unfolded himself and stood, glancing towards the fireplace, the window, anywhere but Holmes, in a touching display of amused modesty. "Well, indeed, your disregard for that piece of legislation has upon occasion been made crystal clear."
Still shirtless, his feet set a course towards his pipe on the table but his path curved, deviating; he was drawn like a load-stone to true north.
"What did you say?" The doctor had been heading towards the cut-glass tumblers and the whisky decanter when he turned, bringing them both unexpectedly toe to toe, closer even, two pieces of magnetized iron arrested by the presence of the other.
"I didn't."
"You did," he persisted quietly, thoughts of a drink forgotten. "You said 'true north'."
Holmes looked at him and there wasn't an inch of space between them. "Did I? I don't think I did," he murmured, his lips almost grazing the other man's jaw. The doctor's hand was lightly on his shoulder, he could feel the casual heat of it through the bandage and it felt as if there was no warmth in the world save what was transmitted to him through that touch.
He reached an arm around Watson's back to draw him closer (there were still scant molecules of air and space between them and Holmes would banish them all, must banish them for what right have they to be next to this man's clothes, his skin, when he was not?) His heart was beating faster in his chest, harrying the blood through his veins in a rhythm he longed to fall in to. The song was too loud, the rhythm too fast, it had passed expectation and pleasure and was becoming desperate and pained...
His eyes snapped open, weak daylight all but blinding him. His heart was stuttering in his chest like a broken clock and his body was stiff, feeble and aching from all he'd put it through and the unforgiving floor he was lying upon. His cheek was pressed not against flesh but upon the stubble of a rug whose pattern was too rich – the colours made him ill. The unpleasant scent of bile reached his nostrils – it seemed the Persian rug had already claimed its revenge: he was flat upon the floor, cold and shaking beside a patch of vomit, his arm a blaze of newly waking agony amidst sodden dressing, his shirt crumpled and stuck to his back with sweat.
Without wishing to he saw the empty bottles, dark blue and brown geometric shapes in his field of bleached and wavering vision. He was alive – he must have miscalculated the dose. Or, since such simple mistakes are anathema to him, he must surmise he did not mean to kill himself after all - he was a traitor to his own cause.
The air left his chest in a tired hiss rushing past a dry throat and cracked lips. He would lie there, if he could, whilst the world turned on without him and whilst he waited for the pain and everything else to go away. But he could not. He was alive, and the Colonel was still on his trail. He has his pride, if nothing else, he couldn't allow himself to become the crowning trophy in Moran's swag bag. He rolled awkwardly to his side with a groan and struggled to his feet. The past was of no help to him now. He must move on.
"Always thought it idiocy to keep trying at something one clearly hasn't the skill for. Like trying to run though a wall... You used to say I had not just a knack but a positive flair for self destruction." His lips are numb, but they have probably curled into a sorry smile. "Seems I don't, not when it matters." He raises the bottle and takes another mouthful, almost missing. "Practice makes perfect."
The tide is rising higher, its eveniency is comforting, but it would be most bothersome to drown before he has finished his confession. "I went to Tibet – trying to cleanse my soul perhaps, if I have such a thing. Strange how something so evanescent something I have no evidence for should choke me so, should weigh so heavily. Like a coat of lead. Can one lose a soul? I think it may have died at Reichenbach and I kicked it over the edge with the Professor's corpse. Requiéscant in pace."
Talking is becoming more tiresome and his thoughts are slipping away from him if he doesn't pin them in place with a stern mental gaze and oh god it is getting so hard to keep his eyes open.
"I'm tired," he mutters, "but promises to go and miles to keep... I went, oh," he slurs airily, "to so many places. Maybe not as many as all that," he corrects himself. "I was free of the Colonel, Tibet proved a jaunt too far for him. Miles to go before I sleep..." He refocuses his gaze with an effort. "Received a telegram from Mycroft when the Adair business kicked up. I never could best him at hide-go-seek, ever so sharp eyed, brother mine. Finish what you started: deal with Moran. I've never been good at tidying up after myself, you know that Watson, untidy habits. Burning myself to nothing to solve the case but once it's done then so am I, loose ends are for the Yard, tea trays for Mrs Hudson, notes and the reports I leave to you."
He turns his head to see if he can catch the doctor's exasperated look; he can't, can't even quite make out the doctor, although he knows Watson is still there. "Mycroft knew what I was about before I even left London. He didn't dissuade me. He has always been one for the grander picture, he has all of the Empire within his gaze. If I wished to die for Queen and Country it wouldn't be a sacrifice better men had not made before me. Pessundation in a good cause."
He sighs feeling the water slip past his chin and settle in his lungs causing a last-ditch surge of adrenalin to snap him towards consciousness before he sinks. "Forgive me."
The straight-backed man standing on the other side of the table is startled, uncomfortable, as if all he'd learnt that night wasn't discomforting enough. "For what, sir?"
"Not for what I've done, there is no forgiveness for that. Forgive me for ever coming back – to you. The theatrics – the bookseller – I hadn't meant to show myself you see. I, I just wanted to see you one last time... It was unbearably selfish of me," he admits, his attention nailed to this chain of thought by will alone. "You should go. I don't want you here for this old boy, please leave."
"We need to get you home..."
"I have no home, not yet at any rate, but I'm striving to furnish myself with a neat little room, very snug. Pine is traditional, but I thought oak might be nice. No doubt my pocketbook will stretch..."
There is only one man in the world that the detective would have voiced all this to, and it is not the man standing before him. In some ways that is perhaps a kindness.
Even in this sorry, wasted state, it is hard not to be a little in awe of Holmes, whose mind works in ways easy to admire and impossible to fully comprehend. Clarky always did his best to pay attention to the man's methods on a case, but half the time they were so twisted up in his eccentricity it was hard to tell the two apart. Was his curious stare and rapping on the walls because he suspected there was a cubby hole hidden somewhere or did he just wish to know what note the wood made for inscrutable reasons of his own?
The Constable isn't a slow study, but Sherlock Holmes is a very oblique teacher.
He sighs, partly for the memories besetting him, but mostly for the most observant man in London who apparently has failed to observe the simplest truth sitting right under his nose. "Sir," he says quietly, wondering how it's fallen to him to point this out. The inspector – or best of all Watson – would be better. Holmes paid attention to them, and more importantly, actually listened to the doctor. He sighs again. Beggars can't be choosers.
"Sir, meaning no disrespect, but I think there are some things you've missed."
The brow furrows, the eyes narrow at the ceiling, a poor approximation of his usual magnesium-bright scorn.
"I think you're forgetting the corpses."
One dark brow shoots up like a startled crow, and the eyes flit uneasily left and right as if the mislaid cadavers might be beneath the chaise or propped in a corner by the curtain.
"You found them yourself a time or two, sir," Clarky continues quietly. "Moriarty and Moran between them had quite a flare for it; back in '89 they near doubled the mortuary lists."
On the chaise, the man's shoulders un-tense and his head tilts to the side. He has read those lists. He knows of those corpses. Everything is in its place, as it should be.
"But what you don't know anything of, if you'll pardon my sayin' sir, is of those left behind. Murder's never about just the one who got killed sir." There is a reproof hiding in the constable's voice, for all that he tries to exorcise it. If Sherlock Holmes spent his time playing nurse-maid to all the bereaved surrounding the cases he worked then he'd never have time to work a damn case in the first place. If he had a body as attuned to emotion as his mind was to logic then he wouldn't be the smartest man in London. (Second smartest, Clarky had heard him claim. But the Yarder didn't know of anyone else wearing that crown so put it down to a rare quirk of humility.)
For Clarky, the point of the job was justice and decency – two ideals he'd elevated in his mind to deific proportions. The long hours, the hard slog, the hours walking the streets and writing reports late into the night; the cold dinner and the weary frown waiting for him at home... All of these he endured in the hope – the belief – that it gave justice and decency the upper hand.
Sherlock Holmes did not do what he did out of justice or decency – if he had he would have joined the Yard. He did it (as far as Clarky could gather from all he'd seen and Lestrade's occasional rants on the subject) for the puzzle and for the pride of it all. He was a Master Horologist who treated London – perhaps the Empire – as a grand and intricate pocket watch in whose smooth running he took a keen interest, if for no other reason than it was there, and so was he, and to let it run down or keep incorrect time in his company was a poor reflection on his skill.
(On his brighter, kinder, days – of which the constable had many – he admitted he did Holmes a disservice, and the man likely did all he did in the name of Justice too. Simply a slightly stranger and less orderly cousin to Clarky's own paragon.)
But whether it was Justice or Pride, it had always been abundantly clear the watchmaker had no time for the mangled but still-functioning cogs of the shattered lives left behind. If they were not clogging up the gears, if the watch still ran, it was not within his remit and certainly far beyond his concern.
"I've had my fair share of giving the news sir. Passing on condolences and such. Watching as some poor bastard's missus makes the tea, four littl'uns running underfoot. Watching as she struggles t'stay tough as nails, but I can see in her eyes she's fragile as bone-china sir, and's got no notion of how she'll cope with no man, no money, and the littl'uns needing t'be fed. Sir." There is emotion in his eyes but it isn't easy to categorise, caught as it is somehow between pity and irritation. "You never saw none of that, seeing as how you stop taking note when the case has been solved. But I do – we do at the Yard – we have to. I never minded seeing the corpses so much m'self, sir. It was always the families after I found hard."
He stares at the man on the chaise, the man with his sloppy and infuriating habits but brilliant deductions, with his wild hair and unfocused eyes, and hopes – prays – that he is making an impression despite the opium smoke.
It's hard to tell.
In truth Holmes looks puzzled – as if he'd known he was likely to be confused at some point but he hadn't expected it to happen so quickly. What's quizzing him is how Watson turned out not to be Watson at all, but Constable Clark. To be honest he is uncertain which of them is real – if either – and at what point during his stumbling confession the switch took place. He ought to be worried that he has told such a tale to the policeman (supposing charitably that it is the policeman and not a hat stand or somesuch) but he cannot, in just the same way that one lying at the bottom of a lake cannot bring themselves to care overmuch that it is raining.
Clarky doesn't sigh a third time, although he's fuelled his lungs to do so. He shakes his head instead, a small gesture which speaks eloquently of all his discomfiture with the whole situation. If Lestrade knew what he was about to say, he wouldn't just pull him up for double time - he'd have his guts as a bloody neck-tie.
His voice is steady when he puts breath to it, which surprises him, even if the one who ought to be surprised is too far gone to note it. "As a man of the Yard I can't condone what you've done, not a bit of it sir." He tries desperately not to fidget. He should not be saying this aloud: as a policeman he searches always for the truth, but as someone with more than half a brain he knows some truths are dangerous and better left unsaid.
Plainly put: "As a man, with a wife and a son, who knows what it does to a family when someone's murdered... Well..." He hasn't said the words yet but his tone and attitude already declare him guilty – and he is. The last of it comes out not quite in a rush but almost and with a flippancy he can't help. For the love of Christ – Sherlock Holmes may find it easy to admit to murder when half out of his skull on opium, but Clarky (although head-spun) is sober – and he can see why the yen or a touch of Dutch courage would be a boon. "Let's just say there have been less corpses troubling us since Moriarty took that little jaunt to Switzerland and I'm very grateful to you for that." He stops speaking, his words crashing into each other as if they braked too soon to avoid an interruption.
He glances down at the man, but despite the many clever remarks which should have been forthcoming, none emerge. That, for reasons he can't quite put his finger on, worries the Constable. Worries him considerably in fact. "Now sir," he says in his best let's-be-having-you tone, drawing himself up boxwood-straight. "What d'you say to coming back to Baker Street, eh?" He's aware he's being condescending – also that he's doing it on purpose – trying to goad that imperious wit into taking a swipe back at him for his cheek.
No wit, nor reaction of any kind occurs.
For not the first time that evening Clarky wonders if he is as out of his depth as he fears – or is in fact far further. A sincere token of unease bends his brows and tightens the muscles of his face.
Having Lestrade as a superior means he's quite good at arguments, when he has to be. Arguments of the grimy and grittier sort where winning means the added reward of a verbal cuff round the ear and more paperwork. It's hard to have an argument, he is finding - or even to start one - with someone who remains persistently silent.
"Mr Holmes, sir?" he tries again. "It don't do to have one such as yourself wallowing here." He lifts a hand awkwardly to smooth the neat parting of his hair, knowing full well it is a nervous gesture and nothing more. Damn it – even in real life there is a appropriate dramatization of events. There's been a confession, he's given absolution as best he can, now there is a conclusion – an exit. (Followed, one can only hope, by resolution provided by Watson – because really, the detective could not haunt London in his current state.) Reminded of his earlier thoughts of horologists and pocket watches, Clarky blurts out, "London needs you!" as if that is the magic phrase all earlier argument had been lacking.
In response Holmes mutters something which sounds suspiciously foreign ('fichu portemanteau, mon dieu,') raises an unsteady hand which clasps a dark bottle in a break-neck-vice, and swigs messily from it, most of the liquid escaping his numb and blue-tinged lips.
NOTES
Labouchere's Amendment - Also known as Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, made 'gross indecency' a crime in the UK. No definition of 'gross indecency' was given; the law was used to prosecute male homosexuals when actual sexual activity (which would count as assault) couldn't be proven.
Requiéscant in pace – Latin: may they rest in peace
Pessundation – this may or may not be a word. Pessundate is a verb meaning to cast down or ruin.
Fichu portemanteau, mon dieu – French: damned hatstand, my god...