Alchemy

by Marie S. Crosswell

  "I got a few for ya," Davey says.

  "Give me someone who knows what he's doing," Sherlock tells him, then slinks away to the cramped single bathroom and locks herself inside.

  She sticks her mouth guard into her mouth and starts to wrap her hands, right before left. She hears the crowd of men roar on the other side of the door, as the fight reaches its climax. When she's finished wrapping her hands, she looks up at herself in the mirror, at her sharp cheekbones and cool blue eyes. She's been avoiding her reflection since the first homeless murder, as if maybe she'll see something in her own face she can't stomach. But now, staring at herself without flinching or glancing away, she doesn't see the guilt she's been feeling. She hadn't realized she felt guilty, and she's annoyed at herself for being so irrational, even if just for a few days. The guilt evaporates, and a cold, sharp rage replaces it. Rage for herself, for the two murder victims, for the inevitable third yet to fall.

  Sherlock clenches her jaw in the mirror and exits the bathroom, making a beeline for the fighting ring and hoping Davey calls her up next. She bounces on her feet, anticipation already pumping through her body. She's not afraid of the pain or harm she might experience in the fight—she lost that sense of fear after her first one—but she's steeling herself for it mentally. It's been months since she was down here in this basement.

  Davey's voice fills the room through his megaphone: "Next up, Black Horse's favorite underdog Sherlock Holmes goes up against Alfie Chapman in tonight's first light middleweight match!"

  Sherlock pushes her way through the crowd of men and climbs into the ring. She knows without having to check that she's fielding some disbelieving looks from the male spectators, ones who have never seen her fight or aren't aware of her reputation, who heard her name and assumed she was a man. Some of them get shifty, expecting to see her beat to a pulp or else knocked out in the first five seconds. They're unsure if they supposed to enjoy watching this the way they enjoyed every other fight they've seen tonight. The room goes a bit quiet, as Sherlock and Alfie take their places in diagonally opposite corners of the square ring.

  Before she met Watson, before her and Lestrade's professional relationship turned into friendship, Sherlock spent all of her free and sober time training. She divided her days between work, the boxing gym, and cocaine. After she quit drugs, boxing became a way for her to stay clean despite the boredom and loneliness that always swept over her in between cases. She doesn't train as much now because she has friends, but she remains a formidable fighter.

  Sherlock looks at the man under the white light, sizing him up as he does the same to her. She feels the heat of the lamp on her bare shoulders, the heat of the men surrounding the ring, the cold void in her heart. In her rational mind, she knows Alfie Chapman has nothing to do with the homeless being murdered in Sherlock's name—but as she watches him and waits for the first bell, she feels a deepening desire to lay him out on the mat and pummel him into oblivion. He may think, like so many men before him, that he can beat her without breaking a sweat because he's a man and she's a woman. But what he doesn't know, what he doesn't have, is her rage.

  *~*~*

  Sherlock's in her chair next to the fireplace when Watson comes home, sitting in silence and darkness. None of the lights are on in the flat. She cracks her good eye open as Watson hangs her coat on the rack, the left one already swelling, and waits for Watson to notice her.

  Watson starts toward the kitchen, then stops short when she recognizes Sherlock's shape in the chair. "Sherlock? What are you doing in the dark?" she says and goes to switch on the tall floor lamp standing behind her own empty chair opposite Sherlock's. "Are you in one of your moods?"

  Sherlock squints in the light, shielding her eyes with one hand, and turns her head away enough to hide the left side of her face in shadow. She hears Watson's soft gasp when she lowers her hand and figures the bruising on the right half of her face must now look worse than it feels.

  "Christ," Watson says, lowering her voice as if the other woman has a migraine. "Why didn't you call me?"

  She goes to her best friend and takes Sherlock's head in both hands, tilting it back to examine Sherlock's face. Sherlock shuts her eyes again and feels the gentleness of Watson's touch, the coolness in her fingers quickly melting away. Watson has good hands. Sherlock has read them many times since they first met, and they remain one of Watson's most telling physical features. It was Watson's hands that gave her away as a lesbian within five minutes of her and Sherlock's introduction.

  Watson sighs and lets go of Sherlock's face. "It's not as bad as the last time, I guess I should be thankful for that," she says. "You need to ice."

  She turns around and heads for the refrigerator in the kitchen without giving Sherlock a chance to answer. She comes back with one of the ice packs she bought for Sherlock after it became clear to her the other woman had no intention of permanently quitting the fights. Sherlock takes it without protest and presses it to her black eye.

  Watson sits in her own chair facing Sherlock and looks at her with a mix of disapproval and concern. "Are you concussed?" she says.

  "No," says Sherlock.

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm sure."

  "God. Why do you do this? Nobody's lucky forever, Sherlock."

  "Luck. Is that it?"

  "Unless you had a religious conversion you haven't told me about and want to credit God, yeah, I'd say luck is the only explanation for why you aren't dead or in a coma or worse."

  "What happened to being a good boxer? Why is that not an option?" Sherlock says, still pressing the ice pack to her left eye and feeling the condensation against her skin.

  Watson doesn't answer, just stares at Sherlock with her mouth in a grim line. They're quiet for a while, looking at each other. Watson has her legs folded up on the seat cushion of her chair, her shoes on the floor below her and her socks still on her feet. Sherlock takes her all in, without making any real effort to deduce where she was, who she was with, and what she was doing all evening. Her natural blonde curls are cut to a short bob. Her eyes are a different shade of blue than Sherlock's, darker and greener. She has a pretty face with a softness to it her time in Iraq failed to steal. Watson was an army medic who served two tours before receiving honorable discharge when she was wounded. After she returned to London, she completed medical school and worked as an emergency doctor until her PTSD made it impossible to do.

  Jane H. Watson has become a decent detective since moving in with Sherlock three years ago. She's now something of a writer, too, keeping a journal of the cases she and Sherlock solve and writing mystery fiction as a hobby. She has recovered almost completely from the PTSD, despite her ex-therapist's caution that being around the dead bodies of murder victims could trigger her the way her medical patients did. She has made Sherlock's life better than Sherlock ever imagined it could be, and if Sherlock is honest with herself, Watson has made her more human, too.

  When they'd first met, Sherlock was hard, despite Lestrade's influence. She had lived alone for a decade, and she'd never had any friends during that time. Her relationship with her brother was prickly at best, and Lestrade was primarily a professional colleague, despite her affection for Sherlock. Her twenties had disappeared in a blur of cocaine addiction and escalating workaholism, followed by rehab and sobriety she'd half-assumed would be temporary. Once clean, her loneliness felt colder than it did before. It made her bitter and ornery, enough that Lestrade noticed. Sherlock got into more fights, snapped at Mycroft every time she spoke to him, saw Lestrade less because she didn't want to be mean to her.

  Watson seemed oblivious to her demeanor when she'd showed up to take a look at the flat for the first time. She was kind to Sherlock, as hardly anyone is, despite Sherlock's chilly demeanor. After moving into 221B, Watson went out of her way to become Sherlock's friend, not just a roommate, and that was before they started working together. Sherlock has always assumed her friendship with Lestrade is the direct product of thei
r professional connection, but Watson—Watson was Sherlock's friend first, working partner second. While Lestrade wasted her time with her last ex-boyfriend and socialized with friends she knew outside the police force, Watson became Sherlock's constant companion, despite the fact she clearly had other, older friends and went on the occasional date.

  Watson proved to Sherlock that she is lovable, not just good at her job. More than useful, more than smart. She had an irrational faith in Sherlock's goodness from the beginning—and it made Sherlock want to prove her right, by softening and living up to Watson's voice in her conscience.

  "We're going to get him, Sherlock," Watson says. "We'll find him and we'll stop him."

  "When?" Sherlock replies. "After he's killed ten people? Twenty? There are plenty homeless in this city, and they're easy targets. He could murder one a day for the next two weeks straight and at the end of it, we still won't have a clue who he is unless he leaves his fucking driving license behind."

  "It won't come to that."

  "Why not? Is he going to stop at five and disappear?"

  "Sherlock."

  Sherlock exhales and drops the ice pack from her face, holding it between her knees. She must look pitiful, because it's obvious Watson feels sorry for her now.

  "I keep having these dreams," she says. "I'm underwater. It's dark, mostly dark, but if I look up at the surface, I can see daylight coming through. Usually, I'm alone, and I'm never afraid. But the other night, Moriarty was there. He came up at me like some kind of deep sea monster, like the man version of an angler fish. Smiling. He was smiling at me."

  Watson frowns at her, and Sherlock can see her body tense at the mention of Moriarty's name. They never talk about him, not since his trial and sentencing a year ago, but Sherlock knows he haunts Watson just as he haunts her. Even if Watson doesn't think about him specifically, she's left with the emotional memory of terror at what he almost did to Sherlock. She used to have dreams too—dreams of Moriarty pushing Sherlock off a precipice, dreams of pulling her body from the frozen Reichenbach Lake. Sherlock would find her asleep in a cold sweat, not quite whimpering, or slipping into Sherlock's bed in the middle of the night.

  "Do you think he has something to do with this?" Watson says. "With the murders?"

  Sherlock glances at her with one blue eye. "It's a possibility," she says. "God knows being in prison won't stop him from working. But the dreams started months ago, not after the beginning of this case."

  "You didn't dream about him until this case."

  "True."

  They fall into silence for a long beat, Sherlock staring into space and Watson watching her. The truth is, Moriarty never crossed Sherlock's mind as a possible connection to this homeless homicide case. These murders are beneath him. Too ordinary, too crass. If he was going to go through the trouble of maneuvering past prison security and Mycroft's surveillance to orchestrate a crime for Sherlock, he would be far more elegant and subtle than this. He wouldn't make it immediately obvious to her that the crime is for her. It was always mind games and riddles between them. He never made it easy for her, or anyone else, to identify him as the brains behind a crime. Carving Sherlock's name into the bodies—that's not James. That's an act of uncontrollable rage, of which he seems incapable.

  But if he's aware Sherlock understands him well enough to know this, what if he decided to act contrary to his style, just to fool her?

  Sherlock doesn't put much stock in dreams or anything other than empirical evidence, but she does trust her intuition—and now, it's pointing her toward her archnemesis.

  "I'm sorry this is happening to you," Watson says.

  Sherlock meets her gaze.

  "It's happening to you, too," she says.

  "It's not my name on the victims' bodies."

  Sherlock pauses. "No. It's not."

  *~*~*

  The following night, after Watson's gone to bed, Sherlock works in the sitting room, determined not to sleep until she has an epiphany. The crime scene photos, mostly of the victims themselves, are pinned up on the corkboard hung on the wall, along with yet another map of London marked with red pen. Sherlock's constantly buying the paper fold-out maps of London sold at tube stations, petrol stations, and tourist shops, marking them up for cases and throwing them out once she's finished. Her notes on the homeless murders are spread around the desk and the coffee table, along with a bunch of old case files she and Watson have been rifling through, looking for a connection. A face.

  Sherlock sits on the back of the sofa that faces the corkboard on the wall, her feet on the seat cushions. She looks at the collage of photos, snatches of map, loose notes, and thinks about making more tea. Having a cigarette, though she quit smoking a few years ago. She's starting to wither in the void. She doesn't have a name, a suspect, a trail to follow. All she has is two dead bodies, her name cut into their flesh, and the certainty there will be a third if she doesn't figure out who the killer is and stop him in time.

  Her mobile phone lights up and buzzes on the coffee table, and she hops down from the back of the sofa to get it.

  A text from Lestrade: Are you awake? I'm outside your building.

  Sherlock replies: I'm awake. Come up.

  She listens as Lestrade lets herself in on the first floor, then comes up the stairs to 221B and pauses just outside the flat door. Sherlock wonders why Lestrade hesitates, almost goes to the door to open it, waits for another text. But after a moment, the DI comes in, shutting the door carefully behind her.

  Lestrade stands just within the scope of the lamplight, hands in her coat pockets, voluminous curls fanning out around her head like a golden brown halo. She's wearing the camelhair coat, Sherlock's favorite because it brings out the luminescence of Lestrade's skin. She always looks particularly beautiful in that coat.

  Lestrade doesn't usually keep her distance the way she does now, and that means something, though Sherlock doesn't know what.

  "Watson's asleep," Sherlock tells her.

  Lestrade nods, her eyes sliding away from Sherlock and roaming around the room, landing on Sherlock's paperwork. "You been working all night?" she says.

  "More or less. You haven't."

  "Nothing new since yesterday. No point in torturing myself past five o'clock." Lestrade gives Sherlock a tight, brief smile.

  "So you aren't here to help me," Sherlock says, looking at the corkboard with her hands on her hips.

  Lestrade huffs. "No, I'm not here after midnight to work, Sherlock."

  Sherlock looks at her, sensing there's something Lestrade wants to tell her, something important enough that it couldn't wait until tomorrow or be said in a text.

  "I went on a date tonight," Lestrade says.

  Sherlock tenses, just for a moment. "Well, clearly, it didn't work out," she replies.

  Lestrade smiles a little. "I haven't been on a date in a really long time. I've had a couple men who asked, but I turned them down because I wasn't interested. I didn't think anything of it. Women get asked out by men they aren't attracted to quite often."

  She stops, and Sherlock waits for her to continue. When she doesn't, Sherlock says, "So you were attracted to the man you saw tonight. Otherwise, you wouldn't have agreed to the date."

  Lestrade looks at her with a strange expression in her eyes, something Sherlock hasn't seen before and can't interpret. "Last night, I went for a drink, alone. He was sitting at the bar, next to me. He asked if I wanted to have dinner, and I said yes because—because he was nice and decent looking and I felt like shit. I guess I thought I needed a distraction. And the date went well. But when it came time to invite him up to my flat or set up a second date, I didn't. I realized I wasn't interested at all."

  Sherlock feels a bit of relief but doesn't show it. Now that Lestrade has made it clear she isn't pursuing a romantic relationship with the mystery man, Sherlock doesn't understand why she told her about the date. She waits for the her to explain.

  But Lestrade doesn't speak, almost as if she
expects Sherlock to say something, to respond to the story in a certain way. A bout of silence passes between them, and Sherlock has no idea what Lestrade's expecting or trying to communicate.

  "Sherlock, what are we?" Lestrade says.

  Sherlock looks at her from across the room. "What do you mean?" she says.

  "I mean, we work together and spend time together like we always have, but we also cuddle for hours and sometimes you sleep in my bed. We obviously have something we don't have with other people. Something most grown women don't have with their friends."

  Sherlock wants to point out that she cuddles with Watson sometimes, which Lestrade knows, but she can tell that would be the wrong thing to say now. She looks at Lestrade's face, sees the anxious hope and confusion glittering in her eyes.

  "What do you want us to be?" Sherlock says.

  "I don't know," says Lestrade.

  "I think you do. You're here because it bothers you that you don't want anything to do with your date, even though there's nothing about him that warrants your rejection. You've made some connection between our relationship and your disinterest in the man. So tell me what it is."

  Lestrade stares at her, hesitating, and Sherlock realizes she's afraid. In the ten years they've known each other, Sherlock has only ever seen Lestrade afraid in life or death situations.

  "Sherlock—" she starts. "I think I'm in love with you. I haven't wanted anything from men in months, and I think it's because I have you."

  Sherlock doesn't answer. She lingers on Lestrade's face, then looks down with a sinking feeling. She's suspected this for a while, but she couldn't be sure she was right.

  "You don't—you don't feel the same way," Lestrade says, her voice fragile.

  Sherlock looks up at her again. "It's not that I don't feel the same way," she replies, her tone lowered. "I don't think I can give you what you want."