Chapter Text
Epilogue
… the secret of a spirit…
In which Sherlock Holmes receives a visitor, and much is seen.
Sherlock Holmes:
Baker Street is quiet at last. It had been days since I have been able to spend a moment alone. Mycroft’s expert, a Doctor Moore Agar, has been quite diligent in his ministrations. Persistent, even. I recognized the scientific curiosity in the man, well-leashed but still present behind a genuine concern for my welfare, and did my best to tolerate both, but I have limits even on the best of days.
These have not been the best of days.
Even if he had not been so attentive, I would not have been alone. Watson has been at my side practically every minute. At first it had been a relief; after everything, I had hardly wanted him out of my sight. Truthfully, that much has not changed, but the weight of Watson’s worries (he attempts to conceal them, but he cannot, not from me) has grown difficult for me to bear.
Difficult enough that I lost my temper a few hours ago, and Watson left for his club, to give us both a few hours of privacy. In my case, it also gave me time to reflect.
My thoughts are not the best companions today.
I was not expecting to hear these particular footsteps on the stairs. For a brief moment I wonder if I am dreaming, or hallucinating. Common sense reasserts itself as my brother makes his monumental, and highly unusual, appearance in the sitting-room doorway.
“Mycroft,” I greet him briefly. “You have news?” That is the most likely reason for my brother to have deviated from his habitual rounds.
That is a half-truth. I know it, and as he glances as me, taking in my dressing-gown-clad state, my chair by the fire, the pipe in my hand, and everything else around me, I know he knows it too. He is here to share something he has learned with me, but he is also here to see me, and he is not happy about what he sees. He knows exactly how little I have managed to sleep, how poor my appetite has been. He cannot help but know, any more than I can help knowing how much this distresses him.
I have often been grateful for my brother’s powers of observation. It is something of a relief to know that there is at least one other person in the world who sees as I do, who understands what it is to observe. That does not mean that there are not times when I wish I could hide from that all-knowing gaze, such as now.
“Yes,” he says aloud, answering my initial question as if that is the only thing we have said to each other in the seconds since he entered the room. “I have learned a great deal about Baroness Maupertuis. I thought it best to come directly to you.”
The two sentences sound connected, as if they are part of the same thought. They are in fact only tangentially related.
“Doctor Watson is at his club?” It is phrased as a question, but Mycroft knows perfectly well that Watson is not here, and his club is one of the few places he would be likely to go at this point.
He would not have gone anywhere, had I not driven him to it.
King’s bullet had done little more than leave a long furrow along Watson’s side. He had ignored it, prioritizing my health and condition more than his own.
His side still pains him. The pain I feel about it is a different kind, but just as real.
“Sherlock.”
My name brings my wandering attention back to my brother. He has taken the other chair and sits with his eyes fixed firmly upon me.
He already knows. He always does. That knowledge alone makes it possible for me to speak, for I am not saying anything we do not both already realize. “King missed because Watson moved to put himself in front of me. Killing him, with me helpless to do anything but watch… It would have been his greatest torture, and his greatest triumph.” My throat feels tight, but I force out the words we both know are true. “I would not have survived that.”
“He failed,” Mycroft points out deliberately, needlessly – except there is a need, my need.
“Only because he underestimated Watson.” He always had, both in our first encounter, and in this one. So many people did. “And because Watson is an excellent shot. King did not expect Watson and Lestrade to be able to track him to the house. His plan to shoot Watson and escape through the priest’s-hole during the confusion was a last-minute improvisation. And yet still it very nearly worked.”
Lestrade had told me how that little curtained alcove, a relic of chamber-pot days, had contained a hidden door. The ladder behind it led to a tiny concealed room on the ground floor, one that also had a door. Given the relative shortage of men Lestrade had been able to bring, it was entirely possible King could have managed an escape.
“He did shoot Watson.” Mycroft’s words are a deliberate goad, meant to make me speak further. It gives me permission to do exactly what I wish.
“Yes, but not fatally, as he intended.” Those minutes, knowing my friend was shot, bleeding, and helpless to do anything about it; knowing no one else knew or had even noticed, were the ones more than any others that kept haunting me at night, stealing away slumber. How could Lestrade, who had otherwise surpassed himself in this affair, not have noticed all the signs – the hole in Watson’s coat, the blood on Watson’s waistcoat when his coat gapped to show it? How could he have not marked Watson’s failure to help lift me onto the litter or carry one end of it? How could he not have drawn the inevitable conclusions from such an uncharacteristic set of actions? But he hadn’t, any more than he had seen King until after the first shots rang out, and no one else there – Bradstreet, White, Wiggins, Cartwright – had seen it either. “There are not many men whom, when seeing a gun, will not attempt to dodge away from where it is pointing. King misjudged – or rather judged him as he would other men. His last mistake.”
“Try not to be too angry at him for that.”
Of course I was – am – angry, and naturally Mycroft sees it, even if Watson has not realized the true source of my outbursts. My friend thinks I am still haunted by what King did. I am, as much as I wish I could say otherwise. I can still hear that wretched, gleeful voice telling me all his plans for Watson. I can still see how excited he was at the prospect, how intensely he lingered over every horrible detail. How narrowly Watson escaped that fate, thanks entirely to the early arrival of a baby.
But I am also haunted – if to a lesser degree – by the memory of what Watson did, and by what Lestrade, Cartwright, Wiggins, and Watson himself have told me of his actions while I was King’s captive. There was very little in what they said, and in what I surmised, that was surprising; at least not about Watson and his actions. That Cartwright and Wiggins had adhered themselves to Watson’s side at the first hint of trouble, and everything they had done in the flimsy pretext of looking for a story (Cartwright) or with no pretext at all (Wiggins)…well. Cartwright now has two highly sensationalized, and one almost entirely fictious, stories to his credit in his paper. A scant recompense for all he did, but more of a reward than Wiggins has had, at least publicly. I have thanked them both, privately, as has Watson. We can – I can – never truly repay them for what they did, but they seem to think the same about us.
Everything they told me is exactly in line with how I myself have seen Watson act, time and again. And yet…
“He was reckless.”
“Not really.” Mycroft contradicts my words with ease, and I cannot help but agree with him, for I know it is the truth, even though I just said otherwise. “No more than he ever is, when others are in danger, except that he will take more risks when it is you.” Mycroft’s expression remained bland, almost indifferent, but I felt the keenness of his gaze. “As you do, when it is him.”
I cannot refute the truth of that statement, either. It lies at the crux of the problem, one I can no longer pretend I do not see.
After a moment’s silence, Mycroft continues. Most unusually, there is something almost hesitant in his voice and manner, something almost unprecedented. “Perhaps this is something you should discuss together before we begin our campaign to bring down the Baroness. She seems in most ways to be much more subtle in action than her husband. There are only the faintest hints of what she might be doing. We might not have detected her misdeeds for years, if at all, had she not acted so aggressively against you. Or rather, had she not picked so problematic a tool for her revenge.” A slight frown creases my brother’s brow as his eyes grow distant. “You and Watson will need to be very cautious, and very much in sync, to be successful in bringing her to justice. Unless, of course, you intend to leave Watson out of it entirely, as you did with the Baron.”
The case against Baron Maupertuis took months. Building a case against the Baroness could take even longer, possibly years. It will be investigation and infiltration, finding weaknesses in her organization and exploiting them. Not areas where Watson’s strengths naturally find use.
I should leave him out of this.
I am not going to.
Leaving Watson behind – leaving unspoken what I have learned in the wake of my helplessness, and what Watson has faced and acknowledged in the awareness of his own – that would be as poisonous as any of Junian King’s other words and actions. I will not give King that victory in death, any more than I would have allowed him to live, had he survived Watson’s well-aimed shots.
It is time, and past time, that I make sure Watson understands his importance to me. That he must never again put my welfare before his, for they are one and the same.
And I will have to give up the pretence that the converse is not also true.
“I will speak to him.”
My brother smiles; a small but warm expression, one I rarely see. “Then I will leave you with what notes I have accumulated thus far and return to discuss them with you another day. I look forward to hearing about your conversation with your friend.”
I heard the street door open when Mycroft did, so I am not surprised by his words, or the sound of Watson’s footsteps on the stair. “Thank you, Mycroft.”
I do not explain all of what I am thanking him for. Mycroft knows. His nod and the gentle approval in his gaze tell me as much.
Watson is visibly taken aback by Mycroft’s presence in our sitting-room. That confusion swiftly changes to concern as Mycroft smoothly evades all of Watson’s conversational gambits and makes (for him) a relatively swift departure. He turns to me as soon as my brother is gone. “Holmes? Is something the matter? You told me yourself once that Mycroft never comes here except on matters of urgency, and he left very quickly. If there’s something you two wish to discuss in private, only say so at once. I can still catch him before he hails a cab and return to my club.”
You could catch him possibly even before he reaches the bottom of our stairs, I cannot help but think, but do not say so. Humour would simply deflect Watson and provide a ready excuse for evasion. “Do not trouble yourself, my dear fellow. Mycroft simply wished to observe how I was faring for himself.”
I meant to reassure, but Watson merely raises an eyebrow. “You would normally go to him, rather than the reverse.”
And there it is, a perfect opportunity. Even so, I hesitate. This is a thousand times more difficult than talking to Mycroft, for Mycroft already knew much of what I told him. Watson is entirely different, at least in the matters of observation and inference.
Watson is no Mycroft. But Watson’s great heart – it is as amazing, and as observant and wise in its own way, as my brother’s abilities are in the intellectual realm. What can I say that he too does not know, at least in some way?
“That is true. I have not been myself these last days, and for that, I must apologize.”
Watson shakes his head and steps forward, instinctively reaching out to grip one of my shoulders. “My dear Holmes, no apologies are needed. You have - ”
I reach up and clasp that hand where it rests on my shoulder, cutting him off. “No. You might not feel it necessary, but I know it is. I owe you many apologies, and even more, I owe you an explanation.” I squeeze his hand and then reluctantly release it. “Please sit, my dear fellow, and let us talk.”
And we do.