The Watches of the Night

by Darcy Lindbergh

  There was a figure in the window at Baker Street.

  At first I thought it was another of Holmes' bust tricks, but after a moment, it lifted a violin to its shoulder and set a bow against the strings. I wished I could hear what he was playing, but there was only the silence of the last three years.

  I hadn't seen him since his resurrection, six weeks ago; I'd ignored his telegrams, declined his invitations. Yet I knew he would play for me if I asked. He would play until I slept, and then wake me with his hand on mine, or perhaps my cheek, with a soft smile and a suggestion in his eyes.

  It frightened me, how much I wanted that. There had been so many lies, so many years, and still I wanted that. I wished I could have felt only what I ought to have in the wake of his many betrayals, but Holmes was alive, playing me a song from the first floor window, and that was more than any man before me had dared to dream of.

  I wasn't sure about anything else, but our friendship, at least – yes. I could offer that.

  I squared my shoulders and stepped forward, reaching for the last of my bravery.

  He apologised, of course.

  Perhaps he could see the strain his resurrection had had on me – I could certainly see it in the mirror myself. I'd lost weight over the last six weeks; I'd slept little and eaten less. I hardly meant to showcase my grief, but Holmes always had been able to see through me; I did not appreciate the reminder.

  But he did apologise, and he didn't attempt to offer excuses. 'I'm sorry,' he had said plainly. 'I am so sorry to have caused you pain, John.'

  As if he hadn't expected me to have suffered. As if he hadn't expected me to blame myself.

  I had asked him once, long ago, how he would have felt if I'd risked my life, and then he said he would have understood – if it were for the case. It had felt like a dismissal then; I understood now that it had been a warning.

  But he apologised, and I could not help myself. I didn't want to. I accepted.

  'I have my own life now,' I said, a bit coldly. 'So our acquaintanceship can be renewed, but I'm afraid I have time for little else.'

  'Of course,' Holmes agreed quickly. I looked away, avoiding his eyes as he lowered them with gratitude, as his cheeks turned red with an embarrassed blush.

  I ought to have known that Holmes would begin taking clients again as soon as he was able, but I was still surprised when I arrived at Baker Street one evening days later to find him in consultation with an elderly gentleman wearing a clerical collar.

  'My apologies,' I said to them both, ducking back. 'Holmes, I shall wait downstairs.'

  'If you wouldn't mind, actually,' he said quickly, jumping up to stop me before I could close the door, 'I could use your assistance, Doctor Watson.'

  An irrational anxiety flooded through me: the last case I'd been on with Holmes had ended with his death. I hesitated, but the client was waiting, so all I said was, 'I'm afraid I'm quite unable. The work no longer suits me.'

  Holmes squinted in confusion, reading what I would not say; I allowed it, and soon a terrible understanding dawned in his eyes. 'Oh,' he said. 'Oh, I see.'

  Regret flashed hotly over the apprehension in my stomach. He hid his remorse and shame over his deception quite well, but I knew him better than he remembered, and could see what others would not. 'Well, perhaps I could stay and hear the gentleman's story,' I offered finally. 'Just the story, mind.'

  He hurried to agree. 'Of course,' he said, but he was smiling brilliantly.

  There were arms. The length and strength of arms, the smell of tobacco smoke, a breath falling upon my ear. I could almost hear the voice in it, leaning in, straining in, and suddenly I was straining against, straining with, rocking into his heat –

  I woke with a start. There were tears in my eyes.

  I rolled over, burying my face in the pillows and willing my prick to soften. I refused to frig myself to the memories of a body I thought I'd never touch again – a body that was now within my reach, if only I dared to hold out my hand.

  I saw it in Holmes, sometimes: the heat that had once burned so easily between us. I saw aborted movements towards me, his hands closing around themselves as though he longed for something warm to fill their emptiness. I did not remember him having been so obvious.

  Part of me wanted desperately to give in, to breathe my relief into his skin and feel the life in him with all the life in me – but whenever I saw that desire in his eyes, I remembered how it felt to wake up without him, that morning after the terrible falls.

  It was better to restrain myself, I thought, than to give him another chance to leave me behind.

  I hardened myself with caution; I felt I had to.

  'It would be the most logical arrangement,' Holmes said, coming to the end of his speech. 'As well as the most economical.'

  He was carefully nonchalant, but he apparently hadn't realised that his caution gave him away. It wasn't the first time over the last year he'd hinted at wanting me to move back, but his insistence was draining us both. I gave the same response I'd given before. 'I cannot abandon my practice.'

  There was a long silence, then he threw down his instruments with a clatter. 'You mean you can't abandon your penitency,' he said bitterly.

  I was shocked at his vehemence. 'Perhaps some penance would do you good,' I returned, defensive and insulted. 'For myself, I can't so easily forget my grief.'

  'It's not grief,' Holmes snapped. 'It's nothing but guilt and punishment for my death, which you did not cause, and Mary's, which you couldn't have prevented, and I'd see you free from the pain of it.'

  I got to my feet, my face hot and hands shaking. 'You know nothing of the pain I've felt,' I said, quiet and fierce. 'You've relinquished your say in what I do and how I feel. There are limits now, Holmes. I will not allow you to cross those boundaries.'

  As a dozen times before, I should have stayed away from Baker Street after that. I should've avoided Holmes and his awkward company, his mournful eyes, his attempts to give me a reason to come more often, to stay into the evenings. I should've immersed myself once more in my practice, or perhaps in the writing of a medical treatise, or even joined a new club, but I did not.

  Instead I accepted his every invitation, and made some of my own, even though our interactions remained strange and stilted. I took him to restaurants that had sprung up in the years he'd been gone, where we'd eat in silence; he took me to concerts and ballets where we said not a word beyond hello to one another all evening. I went to Baker Street and picked newspapers off his desk to read; he sent me gifts of pipe tobacco and books and never included a note.

  I resented it, this weakness in me. The discomfort in my belly that grew and grew when I'd not seen him for several days, when I'd not heard from him. I resented it, but I did not stop myself.

  I was desperate to be near Holmes, and I only hoped that these little tastes of him would be enough to continue holding me back.

  The next evening had an uneasy, sour feeling to it; the spaces between us seemed as wide as they had ever been. Several times I thought to leave, but could not make myself. Uneasy silences between Holmes and I still seemed better than the empty silences of a night alone.

  Finally, it seemed, Holmes could take the unrest no longer. He cleared his throat. 'I thought I ought to say,' he said, still staring, unseeing, at his papers. 'I did not hear of Mary's death until I had landed back in London. That you were alone, all that time – I didn't know. I was so sorry to hear it.'

  There was a long, awful pause as I understood his meaning: that he didn't know he would condemn me to years of solitude. That he had thought, in leaving, that he was freeing me from the misery of my divided heart. 'Would it have made a difference, had you known?'

  He still couldn't look up at me. 'Yes,' he admitted softly. 'I was trying to spare you, John. I did not mean to leave you to face your grief alone.'

  I nodded, straining against the sudden knot in my throat. 'Thank you,' I managed, an
d though the rest of the night passed in silence, a new understanding between us began to blossom.

  His violin spoke in the silence when we could not. It was soft at first, so soft I barely noticed it begin. Holmes stayed in the shadows, just beyond the reach of the flickering light of the fire as though to hide himself. The music gentled over us both, easing the night into the room; something hot and fluttering settled beneath my breast, seeing him so familiar and foreign at once. He swayed with the music the way he had hundreds of times before, but he played a tune I didn't know.

  I missed him still, I realised. Only feet away, and I missed him desperately, and suddenly I understood that I was in danger of losing something precious if I did not act.

  I took a deep breath. 'I've missed hearing you play.'

  Holmes turned to look at me, surprise in his eyes, but slowly, tentatively, the song began to shift and slow, resettling into something sweetly, terribly familiar, like something from long ago, something I'd forgotten in a dream. I have missed playing for you, the melody said.

  Our eyes met, and I saw what neither of us had dared to say: I have missed you.

  It was suddenly too much; I looked away, ashamed but unable to stop myself. I wasn't yet ready to lay myself so bare.

  'It's just a scratch,' Holmes repeated to himself, once we were back at Baker Street and I was settled into my chair. I had appropriated a shawl from Nathan Garrideb's curious rooms to protect my modesty where Holmes had cut up my trousers, but now he untied the makeshift covering and laid bare the minor injury to my thigh.

  Holmes slowly got to his knees before me, where he cleaned the wound carefully, examining it at every angle; his touch was almost clinical, as brief and steady as my own hands had been against many such wounds.

  If it weren't for my own hands – capable as they were, and by far the more suited to the cleaning and dressing of a scratch – I might have thought Holmes was merely seeing to me out of professional interest. As it was, though, he could not seem to stop repeating himself, it's just a scratch, and his eyes were rimmed with pink.

  I let him apply the bandage, wondering when last I had seen such a look of naked affection for me on another's face – if I had ever seen such a look on his. I couldn't remember, and it seemed suddenly like the failing was mine, not Holmes', and I thought that maybe I simply hadn't known how to look at him before.

  He took to watching me, as he was now, standing in firelight, elbow propped on the mantel.

  My breath caught when I finally noticed. I'd never before seen such a look on Holmes, one of longing and hopelessness, as though my very presence pained him but he could not look away.

  I wanted to go to him. I wanted to take his face in my hands and smooth away those lines. I wanted to kiss his mouth – taste the lingering smoke of his pipe, feel for myself his warmth, his breath. I went so far as to grip the arms of my chair, ready to lift myself, when I remembered that I could not do any of these things by my own edicts.

  I couldn't now remember why I had made them.

  'Can you ever forgive me?' he asked softly. 'Can you ever truly forgive me the grief I caused you, Watson? Can you ever see past that horrible act and see me, as a man, standing before you?'

  I felt this was the most important question Holmes had ever asked me. 'What would happen if I did?' I asked in return. 'What would happen if I did not?'

  He looked back into the fire. 'I will never ask you again,' he finally said. 'I cannot heal what has been broken.'

  Very slowly, I stood. 'No,' I said. 'You cannot. You've not lived with the loss I have, Holmes. It hardly matters to me that you stand here tonight alive, because I'm still reliving the horror of realising your loss every day, even as you breathe before me. No amount of revelations and resurrections is ever going to take away the day I lost you.'

  Holmes' head lowered; he did not look to me. 'I didn't understand what I was doing,' he said finally. 'I am sure I still don't understand what I've done. I can only say that I'm so sorry for having done it. I didn't understand your heart as clearly as I thought I did.'

  'I know,' I answered. 'I forgive you anyway.'

  His head jerked up; his eyes on me were wide, disbelieving. 'You – ? But why?'

  I took another step toward him. His hand, when I reached for it, was warm from the fire; the palm was sweating. 'I forgive you anyway,' I repeated, 'because it is causing me more pain to withhold it. I forgive you because it is causing you pain, and I can't bear it. I forgive you because I can do nothing else, Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I so very much forgive you.'

  'Watson,' he said, 'John,' and I finally stopped holding myself back.

  The kiss was barely more than a tremble, barely more than a thought and a breath, a brush of lip to uncertain lip. I waited, heart hammering around the sort of preternatural calm I could only ever remember feeling on the battlefield, the sort of eager patience that comes with readiness, with anticipation. I waited, feeling Holmes' every shivery breath against my cheek.

  'John,' he said finally, 'I confess I did not know you were going to do that.'

  I drank in the sight of him, and could not stop myself from breathing out a laugh. 'Neither did I.'

  The tentative smile on his mouth began to fade, and his eyes slid away. 'Did you mean it?' he asked, full of caution.

  I cupped his face with my hands. 'When you first came back, I never wanted to see you again,' I told him. 'But we two are bound, Sherlock Holmes. Permanently.' My thumbs smoothed over his cheeks. 'Yes, I meant it.'

  I had not kissed him in more than three years. I leaned in again, promising myself that it would be worth the risk, worth any risk – worth prosecution or prison or even abandonment again – to have him now. I would kiss him as long as he would let me, and pay whatever price it cost to save our bond.

  His body was long and lean underneath mine, and I lost myself in him for a while, exploring every inch as though it were new ground.

  Sometimes, in fact, it was.

  There were scars on him I didn't recognise, evidence of injuries he had suffered that I hadn't been there to grumble over and to mend, scattered about his flesh like silvery-pink constellations. It was undeniable proof that his adventures over the last three years had sometimes veered away from fantastical and into treacherous, and I kissed every last wound, closing my eyes, wishing I could have spared him every one, wishing I could have borne the pain for him. 'I lost you,' I murmured into his damaged skin.

  Sherlock cupped the back of my head and held me close. 'I'm here,' he assured me. 'I'm alive, John. I came back.'

  I slipped up his body, finding his mouth with mine. 'Did you ever wonder if you might not?'

  'Sometimes,' he admitted. 'It was a rough-and-tumble time, John.'

  'Promise you'll never do it again.' I kissed his cheeks, his eyelids, begging without words.

  'I don't want to ever do it again, not without you,' he answered, and that was good enough for me. I lowered myself against him, pressing into him, until the lines between our two bodies began to blur.

  'You don't think I'm attached to you, do you?' Sherlock's voice was quiet in the dark. 'You think you're – what? Convenient?' I didn't answer. He was perfectly capable of deducing what I would say anyway, and I was naked enough already. 'You're not at all convenient, John Watson. Nothing about you is convenient.'

  I cleared my throat, wet my dry lips. 'It's not important.'

  'It's the most important thing in the world,' he said, almost irritably, 'because I am in love with you. I've always been in love with you, and you don't know it.'

  I blinked up at his bedroom ceiling, letting the words sink down into me. 'Oh,' I said finally. 'You never said.'

  He huffed, rolling to hide his face in my shoulder. Shy, I thought, marveling at the idea. Afraid, underneath all that bravado, and of me. 'I suppose I thought I was protecting myself.'

  I turned to face him, coaxing his eyes up. I could see now so many of the same uncertain
ties that had plagued me, the doubt and the disbelief. 'Sherlock,' I breathed, touching my forehead to his, 'I will vow to you now: you will never need protection from me.'

  I kissed him, and he sobbed a laugh against my mouth and he kissed me back, free and beautiful and absolutely, wondrously breathtaking.

  It was late by the time Holmes came home – late enough to almost be considered early. I was still sitting up, looking through some old case notes and waiting for him; he was clearly trying to be quiet enough to sneak by my room. A handkerchief was pressed to his forehead. 'Ah, Watson,' he said when he saw me. 'You're awake.'

  'Yes,' I said, getting to my feet. 'Are you all right?'

  'Oh, yes,' he answered, eying his handkerchief guiltily. I went to him, and eventually managed to get my hand around his elbow and guide him to a chair. 'This is nothing.'

  'Then you won't mind my having a look,' I reasoned, but he would not remove his handkerchief. 'Sherlock. I can obviously see that you've injured yourself. I'm a doctor, after all. You must be concussed as well, to think me so easily fooled.'

  Chagrined, he finally withdrew his hand. There was indeed a gash upon his forehead, still bleeding quite freely. 'You thought you'd hide this from me?' I asked incredulously.

  'I thought it might distress you,' he admitted. 'I wanted to spare you, if I could.'

  'I should think myself much more distressed at being lied to,' I chided softly, kissing his uninjured temple to reassure him, and he apologised softly as I reached for a bandage.

  We ran.

  It was like it had always been. London seemed to carry us as we flew down her streets and alleys after our quarry. If Holmes was right – and I trusted he was – the scoundrel would lead us right into the heart of one of the most secretive societies in Britain, like a spider leading us into the nest.

  It didn't really matter, I thought, my heart bursting and skin thrumming with adrenalin. I was step in step with Sherlock beside me, our feet striking one rhythm on the pavement, and I'd run forever next to him. I would run wherever he might lead me.