Fic for mistyzeo: Cameo
Dec. 7th, 2012 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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holmesticeTitle: Cameo
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistyzeo
Author:what_alchemy
Beta/Brit Pick:notboldly and tweedisgood
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
Word count: ~8,300
Rating: Mature
Warnings: case-related violence and description of mutilation, non-graphic depictions of the aftermath of childbirth
Summary: Holmes and Watson become embroiled in a case Scotland Yard refuses to acknowledge. A soulmate AU.
Cameo
Sherlock Holmes had been without a case for five weeks, and the air in 221B Baker Street was suffering for it.
“How about this one, Holmes?” Watson asked from his wingback, raising the paper so Holmes could see the headline. “‘Madman Escapes from Asylum,’” he read. “One of the Forsaken, naturally.”
Two tendrils of smoke rose from the silk-clad lump on the settee before it let out a grunt.
“That is not a case, Watson, that is merely a wandering soul even the Yard should be able to find.”
Watson laid the paper in his lap.
“Does it not disturb you to think of what damage such a lunatic could wreak upon the general public?”
Holmes rolled with enviable grace into a sitting position, and Watson could see then that he smoked two pipes at once, thin lips flexing at each corner to puff away. Watson dropped his gaze back down to the paper, fussed with its wrinkles and lines.
“What disturbs me, Watson, is the English predilection to diagnose, fear, and hide away all suggestion of difference. What medical evidence is there to support that the Forsaken are more prone to psychosis and crime than the average man whose cameo is present?”
“You know the evidence as well as I, Holmes,” Watson said. He snapped his paper open to obscure Holmes from his sight — to obscure himself from Holmes’s. He quoted the prevailing medical literature, voice unwavering, “‘Seventy-eight percent of Deviants and the Forsaken commit a crime by age twenty-five, forty-three percent of which are violent.’”
Holmes harrumphed. “Deviants,” he scoffed, “who would not be committing crimes were their very natures not outlawed by the High Courts of a society which would shackle God for the rain, if given the chance. Do not speak to me of Deviants, Watson.” He rose in a flurry of silk and smoke and retired to his own quarters, where Watson hoped he would see fit to dress himself.
Watson passed a palm over his brow. He wondered, not for the first time, if Holmes himself were a Deviant. Whose profile peeked outward from Holmes’s skin? Watson had never chanced upon it, neither in witnessing Holmes’s boxing matches nor in his capacity as Holmes’s physician. It was hidden away as cleverly, it seemed, as Holmes’s own desire to find his match.
Watson rubbed absently at his clavicle through his shirt. When his dear Mary had died, he had expected one of two things: first, that her visage would remain there above his breast, a bittersweet reminder of love lost; second, that another delicate face would fill the oval and he would remarry when he found her. He had not expected Deviance. He had especially not expected the high and unmistakable lines of his dead friend to rise from his skin like the cruellest semaphore. He broke his mirror a day after Mary’s funeral when he caught sight of Holmes’s hawk nose, his sharp jaw, his high forehead where Mary’s softer features used to be. Then, knuckles bleeding, he knelt to clean the mess and wept.
When Holmes returned, a miracle, Watson had swooned. He woke to a familiar angular face and an uncharacteristic apology. “My dear Watson,” Holmes had said, contrite, “I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.” Thus were Watson’s ideas of his being Holmes’s match quashed — Watson may not have shared Holmes’s powers, but his mind was neither feeble nor lax. No man would believe his match unaffected by three years’ absence. Someone else took up residence on Holmes’s skin. Such things were not unheard of. Or perhaps, Watson thought, Holmes had long ago found and lost his match. It would explain some of his friend’s more eccentric behaviours towards the fairer sex. Watson had resigned himself to a life of hiding his own Deviance and basking in the intimate company of his friend. His friend and nothing more. Watson moved back to Baker Street with little fanfare.
Mrs. Hudson startled him from his reverie, a telegram in hand.
“I shall fetch Holmes,” he said, halfway risen. Surely Lestrade wanted Holmes on the case of the missing Forsaken.
“Dr. Watson, it’s not for Mr. Holmes,” said the venerable lady, handing him the telegram. “It’s for you.”
He opened the missive to find he was being summoned to the Kensington home of one Mr. Lawrence Price-Davison whose wife had gone into labour. He had seen Mrs. Price-Davison a fortnight ago; a small woman with slim hips carrying a baby likely to weigh a good nine pounds even then, weeks before it was due for arrival. He had been concerned immediately, and now his presence was requested most urgently by a midwife out of her depth. He leapt up for his hat and medical bag, the telegram fluttering forgotten to the seat of his chair.
—
Several hours later found Watson stitching carefully the emergency episiotomy he had performed on Mrs. Price-Davison. The afterbirth had arrived whole and meaty as the midwife cleaned, weighed, and measured the child, and Watson, satisfied, reached for his sterile needle and thread.
The midwife had placed the child in Mrs. Price-Davison’s arms and she cooed at her as Dr. Watson worked. He was thankful she seemed disinclined to gasp and squirm at each pass of the needle. He could not risk providing her with another dose of ether.
“Dr. Watson?” she piped up suddenly.
“Yes, madam?”
“Should her cameo be so… muddled?”
The child’s cameo was for now but a smudge behind her ear. It was as expected and would not become a clear image until adolescence, though its appearance on infants seemed always to take parents by surprise, no matter how many times they were reassured.
“She is perfect, Mrs. Price-Davison,” Watson said in soothing tones. “Ten fingers, ten toes, and the good sense not to have a cameo in the middle of her forehead.”
Mrs. Price-Davison gave a weak laugh that pained her, if Watson deduced that wince correctly, and he fancied he did. He finished up his stitching and stood, draping a sheet over her to preserve her modesty. After he washed his hands in a basin, he came around to the head of the bed and peered into the child’s face. She was red and lumpy, smash-faced as infants are. He ventured a stroke of his hand across her downy crown.
“Thank you Dr. Watson,” Mrs. Price-Davison said. “I shouldn’t be here but for you.”
“I am pleased to have been of service, madam,” Watson replied.
“Perhaps I could remember you in her middle name, Doctor? Emmaline Joanna Price-Davison?”
Watson, dumbstruck, uttered but a single nonsense syllable. He looked down at mother and child, the picture of beatific exertion, and felt an overwhelming sadness that he would never have this with Mary. He swallowed through the thickness in his throat and deliberately thought nothing of Holmes.
“Mrs. Price-Davison, I would be honoured beyond measure.”
Mrs. Price-Davison smiled at him, a tired sort of softness, and the midwife guided him away so she could teach the new mother how to nurse.
“There is a gentleman here to see you, Dr. Watson,” she said as she ushered him out the door. “He is being quite insistent.”
Watson sighed.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Thank you for your assistance, Mrs. Wooliver.”
She nodded at him, handed him his medical bag, the contents of which she had cleaned and packed, and closed the door.
Watson found Holmes in the sitting room partaking of one of Mr. Price-Davison’s celebratory cigars. He set it down and stood when Watson entered, seeming to forget all about the new father sitting opposite him, upon whose hospitality he had so infringed.
“Watson! The midwife came by ages ago to inform us of the birth, and yet you dallied until now. Come along, we have a proper case.”
Watson favoured Holmes with a put-upon look and bypassed him to reach for Mr. Price-Davison’s hand.
“Congratulations, my good man,” he said. “You have a beautiful daughter, and your wife is hale and healthy.”
Mr. Price-Davison stood and shook Watson’s hand. Watson got a glimpse of the edge of his cameo, tucked just behind an ear like his daughter’s.
“I cannot thank you enough, Doctor. Surely you can spare the time for a drink and a cigar?”
Holmes inserted himself between them and said, “I’m afraid we have a most pressing engagement indeed, Mr. Price-Davison. Congratulations, et cetera, but we really must be off.”
He swept past them towards the door. Watson hefted his medical bag up.
“I do apologise for my friend, Mr. Price-Davison. He is most excitable. I should go where I am summoned, lest he do himself injury in cursing me so frantically.”
“I hope you will not take offence, Dr. Watson, if I say your accounts of him pale in comparison to meeting the man in person.”
Watson chuckled and shook his head. “I am not sure my meagre words will ever do him justice. Good night, sir, and congratulations once again.”
They shook hands a final time, and Watson took his leave.
Holmes was waiting on the pavement with a hansom cab.
“Watson, really,” he said when Watson clambered in. “Why must you waste your time and mine with empty social niceties?”
“Some of us would like to be able to show our faces in polite society, Holmes.” Watson settled his bag at his feet and laced his fingers together in his lap. “Now, what’s got you in such a lather? Arriving at a patient’s door, Holmes, have you no shame?”
“None,” Holmes replied crisply. His grey eyes gleamed in the half-light of the cab. He produced a cigarette from his greatcoat and took the time to light it and take a deep lungful before offering one to Watson. Watson waved it off.
“Well?”
“A most interesting case indeed, Watson. Not something for the Yard, of course. It seems someone has been making off with cameos.”
“‘Making off?’”
“I have yet to speak to a victim; that is where we are going. I should like to inspect the wounds as well; the manner of maiming does say so much about the perpetrator.”
“How ghastly!” Watson gasped. “And you say Scotland Yard is not involved? Why would the victim come to you first, Holmes?”
“Victims, Watson,” Holmes corrected him with exaggerated sibilance. “There have been at least four, and we are investigating it only now because so-called ‘Deviants’ know better than to come to the Yard with their ills.”
Watson’s stomach gave a hollow quiver.
“Holmes, this must be connected to the Forsaken who escaped the asylum.”
He heard Holmes heave a great sigh and imagined the matching roll of his eyes.
“And just what would a Forsaken want with someone else’s cameo? Come now, Watson.”
“Jealousy, Holmes!” Watson cried. “The root of so many vicious crimes! A cameo represents the normality a Forsaken lacks. Of course a Forsaken would want cameos — the ultimate symbol of a partnered life a Forsaken can never have.”
“And heartbreak?” Holmes cut in. “What of that? Would you not trade your pain at Mrs. Watson’s passing for the clarity of a life free of such encumbrances? And what of those whose cameo-mates betray them, or those who live with the cold reality of mismatch, of unrequited feeling? Do you think they would consider themselves ‘forsaken’ never to have felt the sting of love at all?”
Watson quieted, watching Holmes as well as he could in the dark. Yes, Holmes had loved and lost. Watson ached for him.
“Yes,” he said softly after a tense interval of silence. “And no, I would not trade my pain for a lack of love. Mary enriched my life, Holmes. I am better for having had her in it, however briefly.”
“Then you are a fool,” Holmes spat. He turned from Watson to look out into the darkened London streets. “We are all us ‘Favoured’ fools.”
Watson was silent for some time. Finally, he said, “It is not like you to ignore a lead like this, Holmes. Even if it is as you say, and the criminality of the Forsaken population is both manufactured and exaggerated, we cannot forget this particular Forsaken is a man who has spent his life institutionalised and likely angry. He is at the very least half-mad from that alone.”
Holmes flapped a hand at him without turning back to him.
“The Forsaken escaped last night, old boy,” he said. “The disfigurations began one week ago.”
Watson clenched his jaw. “You might have mentioned that before we spoiled the ride with a row.”
In the shadows, Holmes’s mouth curved faintly upward.
“How else would I amuse myself, Watson?”
Watson shook his head, but could not contain the smile that threatened. He tucked his chin inward, but the damage was done — Holmes gazed out of the cab with a decided curl to his lips.
—
Watson recognised the locale at which Holmes had the hansom stop. In low moments before Holmes’s return, Watson had paced this district, nerves a-rattle, but had never had the gumption to enter a pub.
“Holmes,” Watson hissed, gripping harshly the handle of his medical bag. “This is a den of iniquity!”
Holmes paid the driver and stepped up to Watson on the kerb before the establishment in question, looking for all the world as innocent as an altar boy.
“Is it, Watson?” he asked, and swept past him to enter.
Watson followed helplessly. Inside, it looked like any pub — hazy with smoke, men gathered round tables hiding their cards, spines lax and cheeks pinked from drink, conversation a low din. No one looked up at Watson’s entrance; no one raised an accusatory finger and named him for all to hear; no one was committing illegal acts upon anyone else in shadowy corners. Watson swallowed and joined Holmes at the bar just in time for the barman to gesture with a jerky nod of his head towards a room in the back. Holmes strode away without a word of thanks, but the barman seemed not to notice, so Watson merely trailed after Holmes. As ever, he thought with a shake of his head.
“Mr. Holmes,” said a slender man with a well-waxed moustache nestled beneath his aquiline nose as he rose to greet them. He was of a height with Holmes’s shoulder, but he held himself upright and square-shouldered, not diminished for his stature. “And Dr. Watson, a pleasure.” When Holmes did not take his hand, Watson shook it instead, and the man levelled a crooked, pleasant smile at him. “My name is Bernard Temple.” Watson murmured his own greeting. Seated behind Temple were three other men who regarded them both with varying shades of suspicion. “And these are Nigel Crenshaw, St. John Lawrence, and Edward Aspin.” Crenshaw made an abortive gesture to stand and shakes hands, but Holmes stayed him with one raised hand.
“No need, sir, unless you must attain the vertical to show me your wound.” Holmes turned to Temple. “I must see them all, of course. In chronological order, if you please.”
Temple’s smile faltered, but he gave one sharp nod and began to roll up his shirtsleeve.
“I was the first that we know of,” he said. He eased the crisp fabric over his elbow with a slow exhale, only to reveal a thick, clean bandage he had to unravel.
“Good God,” Watson exclaimed when Temple revealed the wound at last. It was deep, a significant chunk of flesh carved hastily away, the skin around it torn and ragged. A week old, it had scabbed thickly, and the scar tissue that would eventually result would be angry, red, and aching. His arm would never recover any of its former aesthetic integrity, and he would be lucky if he regained full use and freedom from pain. Holmes produced a magnifying glass from his voluminous greatcoat and began to inspect it whilst Watson rummaged in his medical bag for a salve. “When you are quite finished, Holmes, I should like to apply something to ease the pain.”
Temple’s gaze cut to him in surprise, dark eyes bright. He gave a tight smile of gratitude before turning his attention to Holmes’s inspection. Watson felt his heart swell beneath his breast, as it so often did when he was faced with the victim of a heinous crime. These men were relying on Holmes to bring forth a justice denied them by the strictures of a law designed to exclude them. A tightness he carried about his shoulders eased, and when Holmes straightened and pulled away, Watson took his place with a medicinal balm.
Lawrence’s wound, on his shoulder, was next, and then Crenshaw’s on his hip, and finally Aspin’s, just below his sternum. All were crude, messy affairs which marred the body irreparably. Aspin had incurred his wound just the night before, and still it bled and oozed. Wildly, Watson imagined the culprit had torn out the very heart of this man, had left him but a walking husk. Who would keep poor Aspin company now? Watson resisted the urge to rub at his own cameo, placed so similarly to Aspin’s. He was suddenly restless to get back to Baker Street, to undress behind closed doors, to stare into the mirror and be certain his dear friend’s face was still emblazoned on his skin.
“Tell me everything you can recall,” Holmes said. “Sounds, smells, impressions; leave nothing out.”
The four men, wounds dressed and shirts now tucked neatly into trousers and smoothed flat, told their stories jaggedly, with liberal interjections to correct, add, or dispute this or that detail. Through the dizzying conversation, they all agreed their attacker was a large man with a broken, gravelly voice who reeked of alcohol and the docks, but none of them had got a clear look at his features. He had assaulted them in this very district, knocked them senseless, and stripped them of their clothing until discovering where they kept their cameos. Each man recalled a softer touch first on his face and then on the edges of his cameo before the attacker became enraged and tore it from him with as much finesse as a wolf rends meat from bone.
“Thank you gentlemen,” Holmes said when they finished their tale. “I shall be in touch. Do keep me abreast of any new developments.” He swept past them towards the door. “Come along, Watson.” Watson snapped his case shut and hefted it to his side to follow.
“Rest assured,” he told them in parting, “Holmes is unparalleled in the science of deduction. He will bring this man to justice.”
Lawrence gave a bitter snort. “There is no such thing for the attacker of Deviants, Dr. Watson.”
“There would be only rejoicing in the High Court,” Crenshaw added. “A medal and a parade for the man in question.”
Watson pressed his lips together, but found he could not dispute their claims.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, making his way to the exit.
“Dr. Watson,” Aspin called at his back, voice thin and nervous. Watson paused and turned to face him. “Do you think my cameo will come back? After healing?”
Aspin could not have been older than twenty-two. He had a high, elegant brow, a long nose, and a damningly gentle nature. His eyes, deep-set and blue even in the dim lighting, glittered with hope. Lawrence clasped his shoulder, a grim set to his mouth, and Watson felt the grip of a fist around his heart.
“We cannot be sure,” he replied gruffly. “But do not lose hope, lad. The resilience of the body is a magnificent thing.”
He hastened from the pub and into the hansom Holmes had waiting. There, Holmes clasped his hands together before his mouth and shut his eyes. He did not speak. Watson passed some time watching the poor light throw deep shadows across the prominent bones of Holmes’s face. When an ache arose within him to reach out and smooth away the furrows in his brow, Watson turned away to watch London pass silently by them.
—
Once they were again ensconced in the warmth of 221B Baker Street, Holmes wasted no time in filling one of his pipes, stretching out on the settee, and puffing away contemplatively. Watson, recognising when his presence was more hindrance than help, retreated to his own quarters, where he divested himself of his day clothes. Before he put on his nightclothes, however, he positioned his mirror such that he could see properly his cameo, the bare details of the lines of Holmes’s face indelible on his skin. He traced the sharp little profile gently before pressing his palm over the whole of the cameo. The resultant man he saw in the mirror was ordinary, pale with but a smattering of golden hair on his chest. The firmness it once boasted had given way to gravity, middle age, and hearty meals. Cameoless, he loved no one. Cameoless, he was not loved.
“Forsaken indeed,” he murmured, and dropped his hand. Holmes, unsmiling, peered out from his chest. Watson patted him and turned to pull on his nightshirt and dressing gown. He could write down the details of the day longhand instead of disrupting Holmes’s process with the clacking of his typewriter. And, if his admiration for the great man came out more prominently in script than by type, no one, especially the object of his affections, would have cause to come and find it in his personal effects.
—
FORSAKEN ON THE PROWL
Watson flattened out the newspaper and pointedly avoided all articles to do with the Forsaken. Morning found him sipping Earl Grey and partaking of Mrs. Hudson’s signature spread, but Holmes was in precisely the same position Watson had left him in the night before. Watson left the flat for the day to see patients and run errands, and when he returned in the evening, Holmes persisted in the same state. Watson even wondered whether the man had been to the toilet in all that time, but that was a low subject on which he refused to dwell.
“Any leads, Holmes?” he ventured when he took his place in the sitting room.
Holmes roused as if snapped from a trance. Grey eyes pinned him.
“What did those men have in common, Watson?” he asked.
“Hm?”
“The victims, Watson, do keep up. If one were to target them on the basis of their similarities, what would those similarities be?”
Watson heated under his collar. He abhorred giving an obvious answer to Holmes, who could only think the less of him for it. But he was asking, and Watson had no answers beyond the obvious.
“They are Deviants,” he said with a tentative lilt at the end of his utterance.
“Pah,” Holmes scoffed with a swipe of one fine-boned hand. “What else, Watson, what did you observe about them?”
Watson went over the previous night in his mind, tried to remember details of Temple — a pleasing smile, self-confident but not arrogant; Crenshaw — in his forties, developing crow’s feet and a paunch; Lawrence — reining in a smouldering anger in dark eyes and the twist of thin lips; and finally Aspin — young, soft, and hurting, eyes like the sea as they gazed up at him with so much trust.
“Holmes, I am not you—”
“Think, Watson!”
Watson huffed and crossed his arms over his chest.
“They are gentlemen, I suppose — well educated and connected but not of the gentry.”
A light blazed in grey eyes.
“No calluses. Go on,” Holmes urged him. Watson licked his lips.
“They all have straight, dark hair, though Crenshaw’s is thinning and grey at the temples.”
“More,” Holmes prompted him, eyes sharp on Watson’s own.
Watson clenched his fists under his arms in order not to hit his armrests in a fit of frustration. What more was there? The victims were as ordinary a group of Englishmen as he’d ever seen, save for the one distinguishing feature Watson had blurted out first.
And yet. The cameo on Watson’s own chest declared him a Deviant. There was a difference between being Deviant and enacting Deviance — a distinction even the Offences Against the Person Act recognised. One would not know the victims were Deviants if one were simply to pass them on the street — any street save the one Holmes and Watson had visited the previous night.
“They must frequent the Deviant districts enough to be targeted in the first place,” Watson said.
Holmes sprang to his feet and loomed over Watson’s wingback. Watson blinked up at him helplessly.
“Precisely, Watson,” Holmes said, and in a flurry he disappeared into his own bedroom. When he emerged again, neat and natty as ever, he left the flat without a word, and Watson awaited his return for so long he fell asleep in his chair.
—
FORSAKEN SPOTTED IN PECKHAM
Holmes was always there in the morning, and he lounged about smoking and thinking all day, but come evening he would be off, and no amount of questioning on Watson’s part would reveal his whereabouts afterward. Watson knew he must be gathering evidence and seeking the attacker, but he never asked Watson to accompany him and never said a word about his activities by light of day.
On the fourth night of Holmes’s solitary pursuits, Mrs. Hudson let in a caller, and Watson found himself face to face once more with Bernard Temple.
“Good evening, Dr. Watson,” he said, shaking Watson’s hand and offering a dimmed version of his arresting smile.
“Do come in, Mr. Temple,” Watson said. “Mrs. Hudson, would you oblige us with some tea? Thank you.” Mrs. Hudson closed the door behind her.
Watson and Temple took seats opposite one another, and Watson felt a cold trickle of dread at the back of his neck as he watched Temple pass a tired hand over his face. For a fleeting moment, with his moustache obscured, there was something about his carriage that reminded Watson of Holmes.
“Or,” Watson ventured, “perhaps you require something a bit stronger than tea? “Brandy?”
“Please,” Temple said, and Watson fetched a pair of glasses.
Temple visibly stilled his hand when he accepted the glass and took a sip of the spirits.
“Are you quite all right, Mr. Temple?” Watson asked.
Temple nodded at him, and when Watson met his gaze he found Temple’s eyes ringed with red, though he suspected it was not from the burn of the mild brandy.
“There’s been another,” Temple said. “A friend of mine. Archie Maxwell. Only his cameo was on his neck, and he bled to death.” Temple drained his glass and reached heedless of etiquette to pour himself another.
Watson’s heartbeat stumbled. He slumped back into the chair, and Temple splashed more brandy into his glass as well.
“Have you spoken to the Yard?” There had not been a mention of it in the paper, but perhaps it was tomorrow’s news.
Temple barked out a humourless laugh.
“You know what Yarders say about victims in Deviant quarters, Dr. Watson.” He shook his head, and Watson remained silent. Indeed, he had heard the saying junior officers often muttered to each other, snickering. Only good Deviant’s a dead Deviant. “No,” Temple went on, “we all stayed as far from that lot as possible. And we’re spreading the word: don’t come out until Sherlock Holmes gets his man once again.” With a decisive nod, he tucked once more into his brandy.
Watson tipped a generous amount back before setting his glass down. He opened his mouth to assure Temple that Holmes was on the job, the finest detective in all of England, but Temple spoke before Watson could take a breath.
“But it is so lonely, Dr. Watson. So many of us — we weigh the risk against the coldness of solitude and isolation, and the latter comes up short. We venture into these places the Yard has abandoned, places good folk condemn, places killers stalk. We risk it all for the chance at finding our likeness on another man’s skin.” Temple threw back the last of his second glass and stood. “You’ll tell Mr. Holmes, won’t you?”
Dumbstruck, Watson nodded.
“Thank you, Dr. Watson. For your shoulder and your brandy.” And then Temple was gone.
—
FORSAKEN ELUDES CAPTURE; CITIZENS ADVISED TO REMAIN INDOORS
“Are you sure I cannot accompany you, Holmes?” Watson asked on the sixth night of Holmes’s jaunts. He had spent the night before pacing the flat until Mrs. Hudson had come up and admonished him. “I daresay I am a good fellow to have at your back.”
Holmes, one glove on and one foot out the door, turned back to look upon Watson with something akin to awe.
“My dear man,” he said. “There is no one I could rely upon more.”
Watson stood and gestured at Holmes’s attire.
“Then if you will exercise a bit of patience, Holmes, I can be ready to join you in but a moment.” With my service revolver at hand, he thought.
Holmes stepped forward and placed a hand lightly on Watson’s shoulder.
“This is something I must do alone, Watson. Would that it were not so, and I could have you at my side.”
Watson swallowed and straightened, meeting Holmes’s gaze steadily.
“When have I ever sabotaged your surveillance activities, Holmes? When have I ever been less than a boon to you?”
Holmes dropped his gaze and then his hand, and with it pulled on his remaining glove. He stepped fully into the doorway before the seventeen steps into their flat.
“This case is different, Watson. Good evening.”
“Holmes.”
Holmes paused.
Watson floundered for something to say. He finally settled on a flimsy pronouncement of, “You will be careful, won’t you?”
Holmes tilted a half smile at him.
“I’m always careful, old boy.”
Watson listened as he made quick work of the steps and shut the door to the house with heavy finality. Watson stood beside his wingback and stared unseeing through the Oriental rug for some time. Though he knew it to be a trick of his mind, he fancied his cameo burned. He brought up a hand and pressed it to his breast to ease the sting. Then, he shook himself from his reverie before fetching his revolver, donning a little-used coat and a hat with a suitably wide brim with which to obscure his face, and following Holmes out into the night.
—
Watson started at the pub where he and Holmes first met Temple & Co. The publican, a different man from the barman who had been there on Watson’s first visit, had not seen Holmes. Watson felt a hot tension gathering at the back of his neck; how was he to find Holmes if Holmes were disguised beyond recognition, as was his habit? And he must have anticipated Watson’s fancy, for in the flat he never let Watson see anything but his own familiar mien. Silently Watson cursed his friend before making his way to the next establishment, and the next, and the next.
“A gentleman,” he said to the fourth barman, weariness at the repetition entering his voice. “Tall and slim, of high brow and prominent nose and chin. Clean shaven, with deep-set grey eyes and an inquisitive nature.”
“Oh, aye,” said the barman. “I know where’s you can find someone just like that.”
“Oh!” Watson brightened, leaning his hands on the bar. “You have my gratitude, sir.”
The barman flashed a grin full of crowded teeth at him.
“You’ll go to the end of this street and turn left,” he said. “You’ll find what you’re looking for — there’s one of them fancy electric lanterns just above the door.”
Watson thanked him and left, only to find the building he had been sent to was a brothel. He cursed the barman, Holmes again, and himself for good measure.
“Gullible fool,” he muttered. He loitered awkwardly about the entrance to the brothel until a hulking sort came out, arms crossed, and addressed him.
“You coming in or not, mate?” The man was immense and wore a fearsome scowl. Watson managed to swallow a mouthful of saliva before nodding. “You’ll have to show me your mark.”
“My mark,” Watson echoed.
The man’s eyes narrowed. “You Yard?” he asked. His body seemed to tighten as if readying to throw Watson bodily into the pavement.
“No,” Watson said, and cleared his throat. “No, thank you, I’ll leave.” He turned and left at a quick step, but he felt eyes on him until he turned a corner.
Holmes would not be in that establishment anyway, Watson reasoned. Temple and his friends were all attacked in alleyways and deserted streets, and they had been quite alone. Watson yanked his collar up against the cold and picked up his pace.
It was some time later when Watson found himself in a dizzying labyrinth of narrow, unnamed closes and alleys that he heard a scuffle, and then a chorus of shouts. He pitched without thought into a sprint, and when he came upon the scene he found three men in a tangle: Holmes on the ground in a state of undress and bleeding lightly from a wound on his thigh, arms wrapped around the legs of a burly, blood-spattered man in filthy clothes, and another man, wasted-thin and ineffectual, on the assailant’s back attempting to choke the life from him. Watson registered a wicked knife with a slick of blood on the blade a yard away from the struggle, and he kicked it further away before drawing his revolver and entering the fray.
He threw himself against the great, stinking beast of a man and together with the Samaritan on his back they stumbled sideways and away from Holmes. Watson pushed the Samaritan off the assailant to keep him safe, and he clattered like a sack of bones against the brick. When he was out of range, Watson placed the barrel of his revolver against the back of the attacker’s head. He stilled but for the heaving of his laboured breath. In his peripheral vision, Watson saw Holmes stagger to his feet and hitch up his trousers.
The Samaritan laughed, a manic, high-pitched grate across the eardrum.
“Got you got you,” he cried, and clapped his hands. Watson frowned, but dared not risk looking away from the attacker.
“You’ll be charged with assault and murder,” Watson said. The muscles of the attacker’s back tensed, and the Samaritan’s tinkling laugh echoed in the alleyway. “Do not move.”
Holmes, pale but dressed, approached them. Watson ventured a glance at him. Their eyes met and Holmes gave a short nod. The constriction around Watson’s heart eased. It was then that the attacker twisted, the Samaritan’s laughter transformed into a wailing siren, and Watson found his throat locked in the vice of the attacker’s grip. Watson tried to gasp, but stars mottled his vision and the attacker wrenched his revolver from his hand. He saw Holmes start forward, eyes huge and stricken. He stopped short when the attacker ran the barrel of the gun down the side of Watson’s face.
“Look here,” came the rough voice. “I know this face. Now wherever could I have seen it before?”
“Please,” Holmes said. “You may take my cameo — just leave him.”
“You pathetic swine,” the attacker snarled. “I would rather take him from you forever. Yes — yes.”
Watson’s vision began to fade just as he felt the hard press of the front sight against his temple. And then, a weight landed upon them as if dropped from the heavens, the attacker howled, and Watson dropped to the ground, sprawled and gasping. He coughed and panted and through the bleary return of his vision he saw the Samaritan dangling from the attacker’s head by his teeth and Holmes picking up and aiming Watson’s revolver.
“Move, Perkins,” Watson heard Holmes say, and the Samaritan dropped into a crouch and covered his ears before three shots rang out. The attacker lay on the ground whimpering, and the Samaritan sprung up to loom over him, a bloody grin splitting his face.
“Holmes,” Watson rasped, struggling to sit up.
Holmes knelt beside him and placed a hand on his back as support.
“Do not fret, Watson — I merely maimed him.”
“I should — check,” Watson said, still trying to heave breath into his lungs.
“Watson—”
“I must check.”
Holmes helped him up, and Watson moved clumsily to the thwarted attacker. The Samaritan — Perkins, Holmes had called him — stepped back and began to hum a tuneless song and to sway in a graceless dance. He unsettled Watson, but for the moment Watson could not bring himself to recoil from the man.
The attacker sustained wounds to the shoulder, the hand, and the leg. He could not seem to catch his breath, but his pulse was strong and he was able to fix Watson with a black, hateful gaze.
The hem of his shirt had ridden up to reveal a pale strip of hairy stomach, and the edge of a cameo. Watson leant down and pushed the fabric up to reveal it, ignoring the attacker’s snarling, wordless protest. There to the right of his navel were the bare lines of a man with a Roman nose, sharp chin, deep eyes and high forehead. It could almost be Holmes, if one were not intimately familiar with the particular bump of Holmes’s nose, the exact slope of his jaw and brow, the dramatic widow’s peak. If one did not have Holmes painted across one’s own flesh. The man in the attacker’s cameo resembled Holmes as much as Temple did — or, Watson realised, Lawrence, or Crenshaw, or even poor young Aspin.
“Ah.” Watson stepped back. He inhaled a deep, shaking breath. “Oh, Holmes, you have the very worst plans.”
Holmes did not look at him, but turned to address Perkins.
“You should go,” he said. “The authorities will be here soon — I need not mention your involvement.”
Perkins ceased his humming and rocking and peered curiously into Holmes’s face.
“Where would I go?” he asked. “I escaped only because he did first, and I had to stop him after what he did to poor Braithwaite. I have friends in the asylum, Mr. Holmes. Do not pity me.”
“Believe me,” Holmes muttered. “I do not.”
—
Perkins was content to wait for the asylum authorities himself. Holmes had alerted them to his plans when he first implemented them, and they were at the ready to collect both their charges each night. Watson had neither the breath nor the energy to castigate Holmes for not keeping him apprised of his machinations when all and sundry were apparently privy to them. Back in Baker Street, Watson installed Holmes on the settee for his usual smoke. He went to change into his nightclothes, but when he returned, he found Holmes in a swoon.
“Holmes!” he cried, and went to his knees before the settee. He placed two fingers at the pulse point on Holmes’s neck and found him clammy. “How much blood did you lose, Holmes? Do you require a transfusion?” He would tap his own vein to see Holmes well, and he did not need to say it for Holmes to know his intention.
“No, no, Watson,” he said. “It is no bother. Do not put yourself out. I had merely a rather taxing night.”
Watson could not stifle a snort. “Taxing indeed,” he murmured. “You must eat a something — a bit of broth and toast, perhaps. And allow me to check the wound, Holmes. I will stitch it up and dress it properly. No protests.”
“Watson, no.” Holmes sat up with some difficulty. “I will eat if it will appease you, but my wound is fine, I assure you.”
“Of course it is fine — and when I wake up in the morning it will be gangrenous and I will have to amputate my greatest friend’s entire leg. No, Holmes, I insist. I will go knock up poor Mrs. Hudson to feed you, and then I will ready my kit. Come, let us put you in your bedroom.”
“Watson.” Holmes clutched at him, and Watson was bewildered to see fear in his eyes. “Please. My wound is fine.”
Watson chose his words carefully. “Holmes, I will not judge the contents of your cameo. I am your friend above all else.”
Holmes’s mouth had thinned into a mournful white line, and his face was tinged with grey. He shook his head.
“Holmes, you are not well,” Watson said gently. “I am putting you to bed, getting broth in you, and cleaning and dressing your wound, whether you like it or not.”
“It will be the end of our friendship,” Holmes snapped, and Watson reeled back. “If you do this, I will remove myself from this flat, do you hear me?”
Watson swallowed past a sudden thickness at the base of his throat.
“Holmes,” he said. “I would rather have you alive and away from me than dead in the room next door.”
The battle seemed to leave Holmes’s body, and bonelessly he allowed Watson to lift and steer him bodily into his bedroom. Watson told him quietly to change into his nightshirt, and then he left to fetch Mrs. Hudson and his medical bag, ignoring the roiling of his gut.
Holmes was silent as Watson watched him take his broth, and he would not look at Watson in turn.
“I should like to hear your feats of deduction,” Watson said to no avail. Holmes merely swallowed the last of the broth and set the bowl down too hard on Watson’s tray. Watson sighed and stood to switch the tray for some carbolic acid and his sterile needle and thread. He was a proponent of germ theory and prized cleanliness in his tools. “Holmes. Do not be stubborn. I wish only to help you.” When he got no response, he eased back the duvet and sheet himself. Holmes’s pale, lean legs with their dusting of dark hair stuck out bony from his nightshirt, and Watson could see the crust of blood which had dried around his knee and even now stained Mrs. Hudson’s fine sheets. “I am going to lift your nightshirt only enough to tend the wound.” And he did so slowly, even as Holmes tensed, even as Holmes’s breath quickened, even as his actions revealed a detached flap of flesh bearing a man’s face. Watson’s face.
Watson swallowed, and all of Holmes’s muscles were taut. He ventured a glance at upward, only to find Holmes’s eyes screwed tightly shut. Watson let out a slow, measured breath to calm the thundering of his heart.
“The thigh is a lucky place to have a wound of this nature, if one must have a wound at all,” Watson said, keeping his tone light. “It does not bleed overmuch. And see here — our criminal did not get the chance to make anything more than a shallow slice, though his blade must have been serrated by the look of these edges. I must clean and stitch this, which may be uncomfortable, but I can give you a bit of balm and it should heal without fanfare. There is no permanent injury here, Holmes. You are very fortunate.”
Holmes said nothing and did not open his eyes as Watson made quick work of the stitching and spread a salve containing a touch of morphine across the neat needlework. Watson lingered, rubbing it into the flesh until the hair stuck to the skin and the lines of Holmes’s cameo shone. He never thought to see his visage like this again, and yet it looked different from Mary’s — older, perhaps. More solid. Mary’s cameo had been the picture of a younger man, while Holmes’s seemed to reflect who Watson saw in the mirror now. He remembered once, in the first days of their acquaintance, Holmes burst into his chambers whilst he was dressing and caught a glimpse of the girl in Watson’s cameo. He had left without a word, and Watson had, at the time, put it down to another of Holmes’s myriad peccadillos, but now it made his heart ache to think of Holmes waiting for so long without even the slightest hope.
Watson drew away and wiped the balm from his hands before putting his medical bag back in order. He took a breath and turned back around to sit at the head of Holmes’s bed again.
“I am going to leave it uncovered for now,” he said. “Holmes, look at me.”
Holmes shook his head, frown a perfect arc, and a small laugh bubbled up from Watson’s belly.
“You are incorrigible,” he said, and took Holmes’s resistant hand. At this Holmes cracked one suspicious eye and cast it sourly in Watson’s direction. “I have something to show you.”
He placed Holmes’s hand back on the mattress and undid the buttons of his own shirt until he could part it enough to reveal his own cameo. Holmes’s one narrowed eye roved over it, and then both snapped open and he shifted to sit upright against his pillows. He reached out as if to pull the fabric further away from Watson’s chest, but he hesitated and met Watson’s eyes. At Watson’s soft smile, Holmes reached out and traced his cameo before pressing his hand to the muscle of Watson’s pectoral.
“When?” he asked.
“Just after Mary passed away.” When both his beloveds were dead and he had nothing. “I don’t — Holmes, I do not wish to speak of it.”
Holmes nodded absently, eyes trained on Watson’s cameo as if mesmerised. He rubbed the edges of the oval with his thumb. Watson brought his own hands up to clasp Holmes’s to his chest. Holmes met his eyes again and smiled.
“I never hoped to have this,” Holmes confessed.
“Nor I,” Watson said.
A sly smile curved Holmes’s lips. “Thought about it,” he said.
“Wicked,” Watson chided him, and closed the distance between them with a kiss. Holmes’s lips were firm and warm, and Watson could feel the light roughness of stubble against his own chin. It was a foreign sensation, but heady nonetheless. Holmes rumbled out a low groan and wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled him into bed. “Holmes! We mustn’t jostle your wound.”
“And we won’t, dear man. Just — be close to me.”
Watson settled at Holmes’s side and toed off his shoes. Holmes took the opportunity to push half of Watson’s shirt off his shoulder to expose his cameo, and Watson laughed.
“Eager,” he said.
“Watson, I have waited fourteen years for this. Or forty-one, by another count. I have no compunction against fetching my magnifying glass and inspecting you for hours. In fact…” Holmes stood and disappeared into the sitting room only to return with his favourite tool in hand.
“Oh, Holmes, really,” Watson huffed, though there was no heat to it. Holmes merely gave him his small smile and climbed back into bed. He pushed at Watson’s shoulder so he lay flat, and then he leaned over him, inspecting his cameo under the glass.
“I have never had the opportunity to view one on a living model,” he said. “You know how the cameos of corpses fade so quickly.”
“Quite,” Watson said faintly, and submitted to Holmes’s scrutiny.
Holmes examined the cameo for interminable minutes, and Watson in turn observed him. He allowed his hands the freedom to stroke Holmes’s back, his hair, and to trace the line of his cheek, his nose, his jaw. Holmes was not precisely a handsome man, but he had inspired an unparalleled devotion in Watson from the first, and since returning from beyond the grave, he had compelled the blood in Watson’s veins as if by thrall. Watson wished to take all Holmes was into himself, soak in the elements of him, merge their cores. It did not feel low or deviant. He felt an abiding peace and lightness. He rose up, thwarting Holmes’s inspection, and cradled his head in his hands.
“Would you ever have broken your silence?” he asked. “Or would we have gone on as we were until we were in our dotage?”
The magnifying glass dropped to the mattress beside him, and Holmes folded himself around Watson in a great tangle he was content to remain in always.
“I am sure on my deathbed I would have had nothing left to lose,” Holmes said against Watson’s neck.
“Hush,” Watson said. “Do not speak so.”
“Kiss me again, then.”
Watson did, and did, and did.
*
Later, tracing the lines of Watson’s cameo once more, Holmes asked, “And you, my dear? How long would it have taken you?”
Watson, drowsy with contentment and warmth, hummed in consideration.
“Surely you would have deduced it the next time you did something dear and infuriating and I could no longer hold back from kissing you.”
“My powers of observation are indeed great, Watson.”
“There, you see? You would have sorted it out forthwith.”
“I’m afraid I love you most acutely, Watson.”
“And I you, Holmes. Do you still envy our Forsaken friend?”
“He gets to solve crimes done by madmen; of course I do, a bit.”
“Holmes, however shall I put up with you?”
“You must — it is written on your skin.”
Watson caught Holmes’s hand hovering again over his heart and pressed his lips to the centre of his palm.
“It is the blood in my veins and the beat of my heart, Holmes,” he said. “Nothing so impermanent as skin ties me to you.”
Holmes turned his hand over to cup Watson’s cheek and to rub his thumb over Watson’s kiss-swollen lips.
“This happiness, Watson. I am not certain I can bear it.”
Watson smiled sleepily and drew Holmes down to his chest.
“We will muddle through.”
Holmes settled on Watson’s breast. The last thing Watson was conscious of before he succumbed to sleep was the flutter of Holmes’s eyelashes against his cameo.
Recipient:
mistyzeoAuthor:
what_alchemyBeta/Brit Pick:
notboldly and tweedisgoodPairing: Holmes/Watson
Word count: ~8,300
Rating: Mature
Warnings: case-related violence and description of mutilation, non-graphic depictions of the aftermath of childbirth
Summary: Holmes and Watson become embroiled in a case Scotland Yard refuses to acknowledge. A soulmate AU.
Sherlock Holmes had been without a case for five weeks, and the air in 221B Baker Street was suffering for it.
“How about this one, Holmes?” Watson asked from his wingback, raising the paper so Holmes could see the headline. “‘Madman Escapes from Asylum,’” he read. “One of the Forsaken, naturally.”
Two tendrils of smoke rose from the silk-clad lump on the settee before it let out a grunt.
“That is not a case, Watson, that is merely a wandering soul even the Yard should be able to find.”
Watson laid the paper in his lap.
“Does it not disturb you to think of what damage such a lunatic could wreak upon the general public?”
Holmes rolled with enviable grace into a sitting position, and Watson could see then that he smoked two pipes at once, thin lips flexing at each corner to puff away. Watson dropped his gaze back down to the paper, fussed with its wrinkles and lines.
“What disturbs me, Watson, is the English predilection to diagnose, fear, and hide away all suggestion of difference. What medical evidence is there to support that the Forsaken are more prone to psychosis and crime than the average man whose cameo is present?”
“You know the evidence as well as I, Holmes,” Watson said. He snapped his paper open to obscure Holmes from his sight — to obscure himself from Holmes’s. He quoted the prevailing medical literature, voice unwavering, “‘Seventy-eight percent of Deviants and the Forsaken commit a crime by age twenty-five, forty-three percent of which are violent.’”
Holmes harrumphed. “Deviants,” he scoffed, “who would not be committing crimes were their very natures not outlawed by the High Courts of a society which would shackle God for the rain, if given the chance. Do not speak to me of Deviants, Watson.” He rose in a flurry of silk and smoke and retired to his own quarters, where Watson hoped he would see fit to dress himself.
Watson passed a palm over his brow. He wondered, not for the first time, if Holmes himself were a Deviant. Whose profile peeked outward from Holmes’s skin? Watson had never chanced upon it, neither in witnessing Holmes’s boxing matches nor in his capacity as Holmes’s physician. It was hidden away as cleverly, it seemed, as Holmes’s own desire to find his match.
Watson rubbed absently at his clavicle through his shirt. When his dear Mary had died, he had expected one of two things: first, that her visage would remain there above his breast, a bittersweet reminder of love lost; second, that another delicate face would fill the oval and he would remarry when he found her. He had not expected Deviance. He had especially not expected the high and unmistakable lines of his dead friend to rise from his skin like the cruellest semaphore. He broke his mirror a day after Mary’s funeral when he caught sight of Holmes’s hawk nose, his sharp jaw, his high forehead where Mary’s softer features used to be. Then, knuckles bleeding, he knelt to clean the mess and wept.
When Holmes returned, a miracle, Watson had swooned. He woke to a familiar angular face and an uncharacteristic apology. “My dear Watson,” Holmes had said, contrite, “I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected.” Thus were Watson’s ideas of his being Holmes’s match quashed — Watson may not have shared Holmes’s powers, but his mind was neither feeble nor lax. No man would believe his match unaffected by three years’ absence. Someone else took up residence on Holmes’s skin. Such things were not unheard of. Or perhaps, Watson thought, Holmes had long ago found and lost his match. It would explain some of his friend’s more eccentric behaviours towards the fairer sex. Watson had resigned himself to a life of hiding his own Deviance and basking in the intimate company of his friend. His friend and nothing more. Watson moved back to Baker Street with little fanfare.
Mrs. Hudson startled him from his reverie, a telegram in hand.
“I shall fetch Holmes,” he said, halfway risen. Surely Lestrade wanted Holmes on the case of the missing Forsaken.
“Dr. Watson, it’s not for Mr. Holmes,” said the venerable lady, handing him the telegram. “It’s for you.”
He opened the missive to find he was being summoned to the Kensington home of one Mr. Lawrence Price-Davison whose wife had gone into labour. He had seen Mrs. Price-Davison a fortnight ago; a small woman with slim hips carrying a baby likely to weigh a good nine pounds even then, weeks before it was due for arrival. He had been concerned immediately, and now his presence was requested most urgently by a midwife out of her depth. He leapt up for his hat and medical bag, the telegram fluttering forgotten to the seat of his chair.
Several hours later found Watson stitching carefully the emergency episiotomy he had performed on Mrs. Price-Davison. The afterbirth had arrived whole and meaty as the midwife cleaned, weighed, and measured the child, and Watson, satisfied, reached for his sterile needle and thread.
The midwife had placed the child in Mrs. Price-Davison’s arms and she cooed at her as Dr. Watson worked. He was thankful she seemed disinclined to gasp and squirm at each pass of the needle. He could not risk providing her with another dose of ether.
“Dr. Watson?” she piped up suddenly.
“Yes, madam?”
“Should her cameo be so… muddled?”
The child’s cameo was for now but a smudge behind her ear. It was as expected and would not become a clear image until adolescence, though its appearance on infants seemed always to take parents by surprise, no matter how many times they were reassured.
“She is perfect, Mrs. Price-Davison,” Watson said in soothing tones. “Ten fingers, ten toes, and the good sense not to have a cameo in the middle of her forehead.”
Mrs. Price-Davison gave a weak laugh that pained her, if Watson deduced that wince correctly, and he fancied he did. He finished up his stitching and stood, draping a sheet over her to preserve her modesty. After he washed his hands in a basin, he came around to the head of the bed and peered into the child’s face. She was red and lumpy, smash-faced as infants are. He ventured a stroke of his hand across her downy crown.
“Thank you Dr. Watson,” Mrs. Price-Davison said. “I shouldn’t be here but for you.”
“I am pleased to have been of service, madam,” Watson replied.
“Perhaps I could remember you in her middle name, Doctor? Emmaline Joanna Price-Davison?”
Watson, dumbstruck, uttered but a single nonsense syllable. He looked down at mother and child, the picture of beatific exertion, and felt an overwhelming sadness that he would never have this with Mary. He swallowed through the thickness in his throat and deliberately thought nothing of Holmes.
“Mrs. Price-Davison, I would be honoured beyond measure.”
Mrs. Price-Davison smiled at him, a tired sort of softness, and the midwife guided him away so she could teach the new mother how to nurse.
“There is a gentleman here to see you, Dr. Watson,” she said as she ushered him out the door. “He is being quite insistent.”
Watson sighed.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Thank you for your assistance, Mrs. Wooliver.”
She nodded at him, handed him his medical bag, the contents of which she had cleaned and packed, and closed the door.
Watson found Holmes in the sitting room partaking of one of Mr. Price-Davison’s celebratory cigars. He set it down and stood when Watson entered, seeming to forget all about the new father sitting opposite him, upon whose hospitality he had so infringed.
“Watson! The midwife came by ages ago to inform us of the birth, and yet you dallied until now. Come along, we have a proper case.”
Watson favoured Holmes with a put-upon look and bypassed him to reach for Mr. Price-Davison’s hand.
“Congratulations, my good man,” he said. “You have a beautiful daughter, and your wife is hale and healthy.”
Mr. Price-Davison stood and shook Watson’s hand. Watson got a glimpse of the edge of his cameo, tucked just behind an ear like his daughter’s.
“I cannot thank you enough, Doctor. Surely you can spare the time for a drink and a cigar?”
Holmes inserted himself between them and said, “I’m afraid we have a most pressing engagement indeed, Mr. Price-Davison. Congratulations, et cetera, but we really must be off.”
He swept past them towards the door. Watson hefted his medical bag up.
“I do apologise for my friend, Mr. Price-Davison. He is most excitable. I should go where I am summoned, lest he do himself injury in cursing me so frantically.”
“I hope you will not take offence, Dr. Watson, if I say your accounts of him pale in comparison to meeting the man in person.”
Watson chuckled and shook his head. “I am not sure my meagre words will ever do him justice. Good night, sir, and congratulations once again.”
They shook hands a final time, and Watson took his leave.
Holmes was waiting on the pavement with a hansom cab.
“Watson, really,” he said when Watson clambered in. “Why must you waste your time and mine with empty social niceties?”
“Some of us would like to be able to show our faces in polite society, Holmes.” Watson settled his bag at his feet and laced his fingers together in his lap. “Now, what’s got you in such a lather? Arriving at a patient’s door, Holmes, have you no shame?”
“None,” Holmes replied crisply. His grey eyes gleamed in the half-light of the cab. He produced a cigarette from his greatcoat and took the time to light it and take a deep lungful before offering one to Watson. Watson waved it off.
“Well?”
“A most interesting case indeed, Watson. Not something for the Yard, of course. It seems someone has been making off with cameos.”
“‘Making off?’”
“I have yet to speak to a victim; that is where we are going. I should like to inspect the wounds as well; the manner of maiming does say so much about the perpetrator.”
“How ghastly!” Watson gasped. “And you say Scotland Yard is not involved? Why would the victim come to you first, Holmes?”
“Victims, Watson,” Holmes corrected him with exaggerated sibilance. “There have been at least four, and we are investigating it only now because so-called ‘Deviants’ know better than to come to the Yard with their ills.”
Watson’s stomach gave a hollow quiver.
“Holmes, this must be connected to the Forsaken who escaped the asylum.”
He heard Holmes heave a great sigh and imagined the matching roll of his eyes.
“And just what would a Forsaken want with someone else’s cameo? Come now, Watson.”
“Jealousy, Holmes!” Watson cried. “The root of so many vicious crimes! A cameo represents the normality a Forsaken lacks. Of course a Forsaken would want cameos — the ultimate symbol of a partnered life a Forsaken can never have.”
“And heartbreak?” Holmes cut in. “What of that? Would you not trade your pain at Mrs. Watson’s passing for the clarity of a life free of such encumbrances? And what of those whose cameo-mates betray them, or those who live with the cold reality of mismatch, of unrequited feeling? Do you think they would consider themselves ‘forsaken’ never to have felt the sting of love at all?”
Watson quieted, watching Holmes as well as he could in the dark. Yes, Holmes had loved and lost. Watson ached for him.
“Yes,” he said softly after a tense interval of silence. “And no, I would not trade my pain for a lack of love. Mary enriched my life, Holmes. I am better for having had her in it, however briefly.”
“Then you are a fool,” Holmes spat. He turned from Watson to look out into the darkened London streets. “We are all us ‘Favoured’ fools.”
Watson was silent for some time. Finally, he said, “It is not like you to ignore a lead like this, Holmes. Even if it is as you say, and the criminality of the Forsaken population is both manufactured and exaggerated, we cannot forget this particular Forsaken is a man who has spent his life institutionalised and likely angry. He is at the very least half-mad from that alone.”
Holmes flapped a hand at him without turning back to him.
“The Forsaken escaped last night, old boy,” he said. “The disfigurations began one week ago.”
Watson clenched his jaw. “You might have mentioned that before we spoiled the ride with a row.”
In the shadows, Holmes’s mouth curved faintly upward.
“How else would I amuse myself, Watson?”
Watson shook his head, but could not contain the smile that threatened. He tucked his chin inward, but the damage was done — Holmes gazed out of the cab with a decided curl to his lips.
Watson recognised the locale at which Holmes had the hansom stop. In low moments before Holmes’s return, Watson had paced this district, nerves a-rattle, but had never had the gumption to enter a pub.
“Holmes,” Watson hissed, gripping harshly the handle of his medical bag. “This is a den of iniquity!”
Holmes paid the driver and stepped up to Watson on the kerb before the establishment in question, looking for all the world as innocent as an altar boy.
“Is it, Watson?” he asked, and swept past him to enter.
Watson followed helplessly. Inside, it looked like any pub — hazy with smoke, men gathered round tables hiding their cards, spines lax and cheeks pinked from drink, conversation a low din. No one looked up at Watson’s entrance; no one raised an accusatory finger and named him for all to hear; no one was committing illegal acts upon anyone else in shadowy corners. Watson swallowed and joined Holmes at the bar just in time for the barman to gesture with a jerky nod of his head towards a room in the back. Holmes strode away without a word of thanks, but the barman seemed not to notice, so Watson merely trailed after Holmes. As ever, he thought with a shake of his head.
“Mr. Holmes,” said a slender man with a well-waxed moustache nestled beneath his aquiline nose as he rose to greet them. He was of a height with Holmes’s shoulder, but he held himself upright and square-shouldered, not diminished for his stature. “And Dr. Watson, a pleasure.” When Holmes did not take his hand, Watson shook it instead, and the man levelled a crooked, pleasant smile at him. “My name is Bernard Temple.” Watson murmured his own greeting. Seated behind Temple were three other men who regarded them both with varying shades of suspicion. “And these are Nigel Crenshaw, St. John Lawrence, and Edward Aspin.” Crenshaw made an abortive gesture to stand and shakes hands, but Holmes stayed him with one raised hand.
“No need, sir, unless you must attain the vertical to show me your wound.” Holmes turned to Temple. “I must see them all, of course. In chronological order, if you please.”
Temple’s smile faltered, but he gave one sharp nod and began to roll up his shirtsleeve.
“I was the first that we know of,” he said. He eased the crisp fabric over his elbow with a slow exhale, only to reveal a thick, clean bandage he had to unravel.
“Good God,” Watson exclaimed when Temple revealed the wound at last. It was deep, a significant chunk of flesh carved hastily away, the skin around it torn and ragged. A week old, it had scabbed thickly, and the scar tissue that would eventually result would be angry, red, and aching. His arm would never recover any of its former aesthetic integrity, and he would be lucky if he regained full use and freedom from pain. Holmes produced a magnifying glass from his voluminous greatcoat and began to inspect it whilst Watson rummaged in his medical bag for a salve. “When you are quite finished, Holmes, I should like to apply something to ease the pain.”
Temple’s gaze cut to him in surprise, dark eyes bright. He gave a tight smile of gratitude before turning his attention to Holmes’s inspection. Watson felt his heart swell beneath his breast, as it so often did when he was faced with the victim of a heinous crime. These men were relying on Holmes to bring forth a justice denied them by the strictures of a law designed to exclude them. A tightness he carried about his shoulders eased, and when Holmes straightened and pulled away, Watson took his place with a medicinal balm.
Lawrence’s wound, on his shoulder, was next, and then Crenshaw’s on his hip, and finally Aspin’s, just below his sternum. All were crude, messy affairs which marred the body irreparably. Aspin had incurred his wound just the night before, and still it bled and oozed. Wildly, Watson imagined the culprit had torn out the very heart of this man, had left him but a walking husk. Who would keep poor Aspin company now? Watson resisted the urge to rub at his own cameo, placed so similarly to Aspin’s. He was suddenly restless to get back to Baker Street, to undress behind closed doors, to stare into the mirror and be certain his dear friend’s face was still emblazoned on his skin.
“Tell me everything you can recall,” Holmes said. “Sounds, smells, impressions; leave nothing out.”
The four men, wounds dressed and shirts now tucked neatly into trousers and smoothed flat, told their stories jaggedly, with liberal interjections to correct, add, or dispute this or that detail. Through the dizzying conversation, they all agreed their attacker was a large man with a broken, gravelly voice who reeked of alcohol and the docks, but none of them had got a clear look at his features. He had assaulted them in this very district, knocked them senseless, and stripped them of their clothing until discovering where they kept their cameos. Each man recalled a softer touch first on his face and then on the edges of his cameo before the attacker became enraged and tore it from him with as much finesse as a wolf rends meat from bone.
“Thank you gentlemen,” Holmes said when they finished their tale. “I shall be in touch. Do keep me abreast of any new developments.” He swept past them towards the door. “Come along, Watson.” Watson snapped his case shut and hefted it to his side to follow.
“Rest assured,” he told them in parting, “Holmes is unparalleled in the science of deduction. He will bring this man to justice.”
Lawrence gave a bitter snort. “There is no such thing for the attacker of Deviants, Dr. Watson.”
“There would be only rejoicing in the High Court,” Crenshaw added. “A medal and a parade for the man in question.”
Watson pressed his lips together, but found he could not dispute their claims.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, making his way to the exit.
“Dr. Watson,” Aspin called at his back, voice thin and nervous. Watson paused and turned to face him. “Do you think my cameo will come back? After healing?”
Aspin could not have been older than twenty-two. He had a high, elegant brow, a long nose, and a damningly gentle nature. His eyes, deep-set and blue even in the dim lighting, glittered with hope. Lawrence clasped his shoulder, a grim set to his mouth, and Watson felt the grip of a fist around his heart.
“We cannot be sure,” he replied gruffly. “But do not lose hope, lad. The resilience of the body is a magnificent thing.”
He hastened from the pub and into the hansom Holmes had waiting. There, Holmes clasped his hands together before his mouth and shut his eyes. He did not speak. Watson passed some time watching the poor light throw deep shadows across the prominent bones of Holmes’s face. When an ache arose within him to reach out and smooth away the furrows in his brow, Watson turned away to watch London pass silently by them.
Once they were again ensconced in the warmth of 221B Baker Street, Holmes wasted no time in filling one of his pipes, stretching out on the settee, and puffing away contemplatively. Watson, recognising when his presence was more hindrance than help, retreated to his own quarters, where he divested himself of his day clothes. Before he put on his nightclothes, however, he positioned his mirror such that he could see properly his cameo, the bare details of the lines of Holmes’s face indelible on his skin. He traced the sharp little profile gently before pressing his palm over the whole of the cameo. The resultant man he saw in the mirror was ordinary, pale with but a smattering of golden hair on his chest. The firmness it once boasted had given way to gravity, middle age, and hearty meals. Cameoless, he loved no one. Cameoless, he was not loved.
“Forsaken indeed,” he murmured, and dropped his hand. Holmes, unsmiling, peered out from his chest. Watson patted him and turned to pull on his nightshirt and dressing gown. He could write down the details of the day longhand instead of disrupting Holmes’s process with the clacking of his typewriter. And, if his admiration for the great man came out more prominently in script than by type, no one, especially the object of his affections, would have cause to come and find it in his personal effects.
FORSAKEN ON THE PROWL
Watson flattened out the newspaper and pointedly avoided all articles to do with the Forsaken. Morning found him sipping Earl Grey and partaking of Mrs. Hudson’s signature spread, but Holmes was in precisely the same position Watson had left him in the night before. Watson left the flat for the day to see patients and run errands, and when he returned in the evening, Holmes persisted in the same state. Watson even wondered whether the man had been to the toilet in all that time, but that was a low subject on which he refused to dwell.
“Any leads, Holmes?” he ventured when he took his place in the sitting room.
Holmes roused as if snapped from a trance. Grey eyes pinned him.
“What did those men have in common, Watson?” he asked.
“Hm?”
“The victims, Watson, do keep up. If one were to target them on the basis of their similarities, what would those similarities be?”
Watson heated under his collar. He abhorred giving an obvious answer to Holmes, who could only think the less of him for it. But he was asking, and Watson had no answers beyond the obvious.
“They are Deviants,” he said with a tentative lilt at the end of his utterance.
“Pah,” Holmes scoffed with a swipe of one fine-boned hand. “What else, Watson, what did you observe about them?”
Watson went over the previous night in his mind, tried to remember details of Temple — a pleasing smile, self-confident but not arrogant; Crenshaw — in his forties, developing crow’s feet and a paunch; Lawrence — reining in a smouldering anger in dark eyes and the twist of thin lips; and finally Aspin — young, soft, and hurting, eyes like the sea as they gazed up at him with so much trust.
“Holmes, I am not you—”
“Think, Watson!”
Watson huffed and crossed his arms over his chest.
“They are gentlemen, I suppose — well educated and connected but not of the gentry.”
A light blazed in grey eyes.
“No calluses. Go on,” Holmes urged him. Watson licked his lips.
“They all have straight, dark hair, though Crenshaw’s is thinning and grey at the temples.”
“More,” Holmes prompted him, eyes sharp on Watson’s own.
Watson clenched his fists under his arms in order not to hit his armrests in a fit of frustration. What more was there? The victims were as ordinary a group of Englishmen as he’d ever seen, save for the one distinguishing feature Watson had blurted out first.
And yet. The cameo on Watson’s own chest declared him a Deviant. There was a difference between being Deviant and enacting Deviance — a distinction even the Offences Against the Person Act recognised. One would not know the victims were Deviants if one were simply to pass them on the street — any street save the one Holmes and Watson had visited the previous night.
“They must frequent the Deviant districts enough to be targeted in the first place,” Watson said.
Holmes sprang to his feet and loomed over Watson’s wingback. Watson blinked up at him helplessly.
“Precisely, Watson,” Holmes said, and in a flurry he disappeared into his own bedroom. When he emerged again, neat and natty as ever, he left the flat without a word, and Watson awaited his return for so long he fell asleep in his chair.
FORSAKEN SPOTTED IN PECKHAM
Holmes was always there in the morning, and he lounged about smoking and thinking all day, but come evening he would be off, and no amount of questioning on Watson’s part would reveal his whereabouts afterward. Watson knew he must be gathering evidence and seeking the attacker, but he never asked Watson to accompany him and never said a word about his activities by light of day.
On the fourth night of Holmes’s solitary pursuits, Mrs. Hudson let in a caller, and Watson found himself face to face once more with Bernard Temple.
“Good evening, Dr. Watson,” he said, shaking Watson’s hand and offering a dimmed version of his arresting smile.
“Do come in, Mr. Temple,” Watson said. “Mrs. Hudson, would you oblige us with some tea? Thank you.” Mrs. Hudson closed the door behind her.
Watson and Temple took seats opposite one another, and Watson felt a cold trickle of dread at the back of his neck as he watched Temple pass a tired hand over his face. For a fleeting moment, with his moustache obscured, there was something about his carriage that reminded Watson of Holmes.
“Or,” Watson ventured, “perhaps you require something a bit stronger than tea? “Brandy?”
“Please,” Temple said, and Watson fetched a pair of glasses.
Temple visibly stilled his hand when he accepted the glass and took a sip of the spirits.
“Are you quite all right, Mr. Temple?” Watson asked.
Temple nodded at him, and when Watson met his gaze he found Temple’s eyes ringed with red, though he suspected it was not from the burn of the mild brandy.
“There’s been another,” Temple said. “A friend of mine. Archie Maxwell. Only his cameo was on his neck, and he bled to death.” Temple drained his glass and reached heedless of etiquette to pour himself another.
Watson’s heartbeat stumbled. He slumped back into the chair, and Temple splashed more brandy into his glass as well.
“Have you spoken to the Yard?” There had not been a mention of it in the paper, but perhaps it was tomorrow’s news.
Temple barked out a humourless laugh.
“You know what Yarders say about victims in Deviant quarters, Dr. Watson.” He shook his head, and Watson remained silent. Indeed, he had heard the saying junior officers often muttered to each other, snickering. Only good Deviant’s a dead Deviant. “No,” Temple went on, “we all stayed as far from that lot as possible. And we’re spreading the word: don’t come out until Sherlock Holmes gets his man once again.” With a decisive nod, he tucked once more into his brandy.
Watson tipped a generous amount back before setting his glass down. He opened his mouth to assure Temple that Holmes was on the job, the finest detective in all of England, but Temple spoke before Watson could take a breath.
“But it is so lonely, Dr. Watson. So many of us — we weigh the risk against the coldness of solitude and isolation, and the latter comes up short. We venture into these places the Yard has abandoned, places good folk condemn, places killers stalk. We risk it all for the chance at finding our likeness on another man’s skin.” Temple threw back the last of his second glass and stood. “You’ll tell Mr. Holmes, won’t you?”
Dumbstruck, Watson nodded.
“Thank you, Dr. Watson. For your shoulder and your brandy.” And then Temple was gone.
FORSAKEN ELUDES CAPTURE; CITIZENS ADVISED TO REMAIN INDOORS
“Are you sure I cannot accompany you, Holmes?” Watson asked on the sixth night of Holmes’s jaunts. He had spent the night before pacing the flat until Mrs. Hudson had come up and admonished him. “I daresay I am a good fellow to have at your back.”
Holmes, one glove on and one foot out the door, turned back to look upon Watson with something akin to awe.
“My dear man,” he said. “There is no one I could rely upon more.”
Watson stood and gestured at Holmes’s attire.
“Then if you will exercise a bit of patience, Holmes, I can be ready to join you in but a moment.” With my service revolver at hand, he thought.
Holmes stepped forward and placed a hand lightly on Watson’s shoulder.
“This is something I must do alone, Watson. Would that it were not so, and I could have you at my side.”
Watson swallowed and straightened, meeting Holmes’s gaze steadily.
“When have I ever sabotaged your surveillance activities, Holmes? When have I ever been less than a boon to you?”
Holmes dropped his gaze and then his hand, and with it pulled on his remaining glove. He stepped fully into the doorway before the seventeen steps into their flat.
“This case is different, Watson. Good evening.”
“Holmes.”
Holmes paused.
Watson floundered for something to say. He finally settled on a flimsy pronouncement of, “You will be careful, won’t you?”
Holmes tilted a half smile at him.
“I’m always careful, old boy.”
Watson listened as he made quick work of the steps and shut the door to the house with heavy finality. Watson stood beside his wingback and stared unseeing through the Oriental rug for some time. Though he knew it to be a trick of his mind, he fancied his cameo burned. He brought up a hand and pressed it to his breast to ease the sting. Then, he shook himself from his reverie before fetching his revolver, donning a little-used coat and a hat with a suitably wide brim with which to obscure his face, and following Holmes out into the night.
Watson started at the pub where he and Holmes first met Temple & Co. The publican, a different man from the barman who had been there on Watson’s first visit, had not seen Holmes. Watson felt a hot tension gathering at the back of his neck; how was he to find Holmes if Holmes were disguised beyond recognition, as was his habit? And he must have anticipated Watson’s fancy, for in the flat he never let Watson see anything but his own familiar mien. Silently Watson cursed his friend before making his way to the next establishment, and the next, and the next.
“A gentleman,” he said to the fourth barman, weariness at the repetition entering his voice. “Tall and slim, of high brow and prominent nose and chin. Clean shaven, with deep-set grey eyes and an inquisitive nature.”
“Oh, aye,” said the barman. “I know where’s you can find someone just like that.”
“Oh!” Watson brightened, leaning his hands on the bar. “You have my gratitude, sir.”
The barman flashed a grin full of crowded teeth at him.
“You’ll go to the end of this street and turn left,” he said. “You’ll find what you’re looking for — there’s one of them fancy electric lanterns just above the door.”
Watson thanked him and left, only to find the building he had been sent to was a brothel. He cursed the barman, Holmes again, and himself for good measure.
“Gullible fool,” he muttered. He loitered awkwardly about the entrance to the brothel until a hulking sort came out, arms crossed, and addressed him.
“You coming in or not, mate?” The man was immense and wore a fearsome scowl. Watson managed to swallow a mouthful of saliva before nodding. “You’ll have to show me your mark.”
“My mark,” Watson echoed.
The man’s eyes narrowed. “You Yard?” he asked. His body seemed to tighten as if readying to throw Watson bodily into the pavement.
“No,” Watson said, and cleared his throat. “No, thank you, I’ll leave.” He turned and left at a quick step, but he felt eyes on him until he turned a corner.
Holmes would not be in that establishment anyway, Watson reasoned. Temple and his friends were all attacked in alleyways and deserted streets, and they had been quite alone. Watson yanked his collar up against the cold and picked up his pace.
It was some time later when Watson found himself in a dizzying labyrinth of narrow, unnamed closes and alleys that he heard a scuffle, and then a chorus of shouts. He pitched without thought into a sprint, and when he came upon the scene he found three men in a tangle: Holmes on the ground in a state of undress and bleeding lightly from a wound on his thigh, arms wrapped around the legs of a burly, blood-spattered man in filthy clothes, and another man, wasted-thin and ineffectual, on the assailant’s back attempting to choke the life from him. Watson registered a wicked knife with a slick of blood on the blade a yard away from the struggle, and he kicked it further away before drawing his revolver and entering the fray.
He threw himself against the great, stinking beast of a man and together with the Samaritan on his back they stumbled sideways and away from Holmes. Watson pushed the Samaritan off the assailant to keep him safe, and he clattered like a sack of bones against the brick. When he was out of range, Watson placed the barrel of his revolver against the back of the attacker’s head. He stilled but for the heaving of his laboured breath. In his peripheral vision, Watson saw Holmes stagger to his feet and hitch up his trousers.
The Samaritan laughed, a manic, high-pitched grate across the eardrum.
“Got you got you,” he cried, and clapped his hands. Watson frowned, but dared not risk looking away from the attacker.
“You’ll be charged with assault and murder,” Watson said. The muscles of the attacker’s back tensed, and the Samaritan’s tinkling laugh echoed in the alleyway. “Do not move.”
Holmes, pale but dressed, approached them. Watson ventured a glance at him. Their eyes met and Holmes gave a short nod. The constriction around Watson’s heart eased. It was then that the attacker twisted, the Samaritan’s laughter transformed into a wailing siren, and Watson found his throat locked in the vice of the attacker’s grip. Watson tried to gasp, but stars mottled his vision and the attacker wrenched his revolver from his hand. He saw Holmes start forward, eyes huge and stricken. He stopped short when the attacker ran the barrel of the gun down the side of Watson’s face.
“Look here,” came the rough voice. “I know this face. Now wherever could I have seen it before?”
“Please,” Holmes said. “You may take my cameo — just leave him.”
“You pathetic swine,” the attacker snarled. “I would rather take him from you forever. Yes — yes.”
Watson’s vision began to fade just as he felt the hard press of the front sight against his temple. And then, a weight landed upon them as if dropped from the heavens, the attacker howled, and Watson dropped to the ground, sprawled and gasping. He coughed and panted and through the bleary return of his vision he saw the Samaritan dangling from the attacker’s head by his teeth and Holmes picking up and aiming Watson’s revolver.
“Move, Perkins,” Watson heard Holmes say, and the Samaritan dropped into a crouch and covered his ears before three shots rang out. The attacker lay on the ground whimpering, and the Samaritan sprung up to loom over him, a bloody grin splitting his face.
“Holmes,” Watson rasped, struggling to sit up.
Holmes knelt beside him and placed a hand on his back as support.
“Do not fret, Watson — I merely maimed him.”
“I should — check,” Watson said, still trying to heave breath into his lungs.
“Watson—”
“I must check.”
Holmes helped him up, and Watson moved clumsily to the thwarted attacker. The Samaritan — Perkins, Holmes had called him — stepped back and began to hum a tuneless song and to sway in a graceless dance. He unsettled Watson, but for the moment Watson could not bring himself to recoil from the man.
The attacker sustained wounds to the shoulder, the hand, and the leg. He could not seem to catch his breath, but his pulse was strong and he was able to fix Watson with a black, hateful gaze.
The hem of his shirt had ridden up to reveal a pale strip of hairy stomach, and the edge of a cameo. Watson leant down and pushed the fabric up to reveal it, ignoring the attacker’s snarling, wordless protest. There to the right of his navel were the bare lines of a man with a Roman nose, sharp chin, deep eyes and high forehead. It could almost be Holmes, if one were not intimately familiar with the particular bump of Holmes’s nose, the exact slope of his jaw and brow, the dramatic widow’s peak. If one did not have Holmes painted across one’s own flesh. The man in the attacker’s cameo resembled Holmes as much as Temple did — or, Watson realised, Lawrence, or Crenshaw, or even poor young Aspin.
“Ah.” Watson stepped back. He inhaled a deep, shaking breath. “Oh, Holmes, you have the very worst plans.”
Holmes did not look at him, but turned to address Perkins.
“You should go,” he said. “The authorities will be here soon — I need not mention your involvement.”
Perkins ceased his humming and rocking and peered curiously into Holmes’s face.
“Where would I go?” he asked. “I escaped only because he did first, and I had to stop him after what he did to poor Braithwaite. I have friends in the asylum, Mr. Holmes. Do not pity me.”
“Believe me,” Holmes muttered. “I do not.”
Perkins was content to wait for the asylum authorities himself. Holmes had alerted them to his plans when he first implemented them, and they were at the ready to collect both their charges each night. Watson had neither the breath nor the energy to castigate Holmes for not keeping him apprised of his machinations when all and sundry were apparently privy to them. Back in Baker Street, Watson installed Holmes on the settee for his usual smoke. He went to change into his nightclothes, but when he returned, he found Holmes in a swoon.
“Holmes!” he cried, and went to his knees before the settee. He placed two fingers at the pulse point on Holmes’s neck and found him clammy. “How much blood did you lose, Holmes? Do you require a transfusion?” He would tap his own vein to see Holmes well, and he did not need to say it for Holmes to know his intention.
“No, no, Watson,” he said. “It is no bother. Do not put yourself out. I had merely a rather taxing night.”
Watson could not stifle a snort. “Taxing indeed,” he murmured. “You must eat a something — a bit of broth and toast, perhaps. And allow me to check the wound, Holmes. I will stitch it up and dress it properly. No protests.”
“Watson, no.” Holmes sat up with some difficulty. “I will eat if it will appease you, but my wound is fine, I assure you.”
“Of course it is fine — and when I wake up in the morning it will be gangrenous and I will have to amputate my greatest friend’s entire leg. No, Holmes, I insist. I will go knock up poor Mrs. Hudson to feed you, and then I will ready my kit. Come, let us put you in your bedroom.”
“Watson.” Holmes clutched at him, and Watson was bewildered to see fear in his eyes. “Please. My wound is fine.”
Watson chose his words carefully. “Holmes, I will not judge the contents of your cameo. I am your friend above all else.”
Holmes’s mouth had thinned into a mournful white line, and his face was tinged with grey. He shook his head.
“Holmes, you are not well,” Watson said gently. “I am putting you to bed, getting broth in you, and cleaning and dressing your wound, whether you like it or not.”
“It will be the end of our friendship,” Holmes snapped, and Watson reeled back. “If you do this, I will remove myself from this flat, do you hear me?”
Watson swallowed past a sudden thickness at the base of his throat.
“Holmes,” he said. “I would rather have you alive and away from me than dead in the room next door.”
The battle seemed to leave Holmes’s body, and bonelessly he allowed Watson to lift and steer him bodily into his bedroom. Watson told him quietly to change into his nightshirt, and then he left to fetch Mrs. Hudson and his medical bag, ignoring the roiling of his gut.
Holmes was silent as Watson watched him take his broth, and he would not look at Watson in turn.
“I should like to hear your feats of deduction,” Watson said to no avail. Holmes merely swallowed the last of the broth and set the bowl down too hard on Watson’s tray. Watson sighed and stood to switch the tray for some carbolic acid and his sterile needle and thread. He was a proponent of germ theory and prized cleanliness in his tools. “Holmes. Do not be stubborn. I wish only to help you.” When he got no response, he eased back the duvet and sheet himself. Holmes’s pale, lean legs with their dusting of dark hair stuck out bony from his nightshirt, and Watson could see the crust of blood which had dried around his knee and even now stained Mrs. Hudson’s fine sheets. “I am going to lift your nightshirt only enough to tend the wound.” And he did so slowly, even as Holmes tensed, even as Holmes’s breath quickened, even as his actions revealed a detached flap of flesh bearing a man’s face. Watson’s face.
Watson swallowed, and all of Holmes’s muscles were taut. He ventured a glance at upward, only to find Holmes’s eyes screwed tightly shut. Watson let out a slow, measured breath to calm the thundering of his heart.
“The thigh is a lucky place to have a wound of this nature, if one must have a wound at all,” Watson said, keeping his tone light. “It does not bleed overmuch. And see here — our criminal did not get the chance to make anything more than a shallow slice, though his blade must have been serrated by the look of these edges. I must clean and stitch this, which may be uncomfortable, but I can give you a bit of balm and it should heal without fanfare. There is no permanent injury here, Holmes. You are very fortunate.”
Holmes said nothing and did not open his eyes as Watson made quick work of the stitching and spread a salve containing a touch of morphine across the neat needlework. Watson lingered, rubbing it into the flesh until the hair stuck to the skin and the lines of Holmes’s cameo shone. He never thought to see his visage like this again, and yet it looked different from Mary’s — older, perhaps. More solid. Mary’s cameo had been the picture of a younger man, while Holmes’s seemed to reflect who Watson saw in the mirror now. He remembered once, in the first days of their acquaintance, Holmes burst into his chambers whilst he was dressing and caught a glimpse of the girl in Watson’s cameo. He had left without a word, and Watson had, at the time, put it down to another of Holmes’s myriad peccadillos, but now it made his heart ache to think of Holmes waiting for so long without even the slightest hope.
Watson drew away and wiped the balm from his hands before putting his medical bag back in order. He took a breath and turned back around to sit at the head of Holmes’s bed again.
“I am going to leave it uncovered for now,” he said. “Holmes, look at me.”
Holmes shook his head, frown a perfect arc, and a small laugh bubbled up from Watson’s belly.
“You are incorrigible,” he said, and took Holmes’s resistant hand. At this Holmes cracked one suspicious eye and cast it sourly in Watson’s direction. “I have something to show you.”
He placed Holmes’s hand back on the mattress and undid the buttons of his own shirt until he could part it enough to reveal his own cameo. Holmes’s one narrowed eye roved over it, and then both snapped open and he shifted to sit upright against his pillows. He reached out as if to pull the fabric further away from Watson’s chest, but he hesitated and met Watson’s eyes. At Watson’s soft smile, Holmes reached out and traced his cameo before pressing his hand to the muscle of Watson’s pectoral.
“When?” he asked.
“Just after Mary passed away.” When both his beloveds were dead and he had nothing. “I don’t — Holmes, I do not wish to speak of it.”
Holmes nodded absently, eyes trained on Watson’s cameo as if mesmerised. He rubbed the edges of the oval with his thumb. Watson brought his own hands up to clasp Holmes’s to his chest. Holmes met his eyes again and smiled.
“I never hoped to have this,” Holmes confessed.
“Nor I,” Watson said.
A sly smile curved Holmes’s lips. “Thought about it,” he said.
“Wicked,” Watson chided him, and closed the distance between them with a kiss. Holmes’s lips were firm and warm, and Watson could feel the light roughness of stubble against his own chin. It was a foreign sensation, but heady nonetheless. Holmes rumbled out a low groan and wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled him into bed. “Holmes! We mustn’t jostle your wound.”
“And we won’t, dear man. Just — be close to me.”
Watson settled at Holmes’s side and toed off his shoes. Holmes took the opportunity to push half of Watson’s shirt off his shoulder to expose his cameo, and Watson laughed.
“Eager,” he said.
“Watson, I have waited fourteen years for this. Or forty-one, by another count. I have no compunction against fetching my magnifying glass and inspecting you for hours. In fact…” Holmes stood and disappeared into the sitting room only to return with his favourite tool in hand.
“Oh, Holmes, really,” Watson huffed, though there was no heat to it. Holmes merely gave him his small smile and climbed back into bed. He pushed at Watson’s shoulder so he lay flat, and then he leaned over him, inspecting his cameo under the glass.
“I have never had the opportunity to view one on a living model,” he said. “You know how the cameos of corpses fade so quickly.”
“Quite,” Watson said faintly, and submitted to Holmes’s scrutiny.
Holmes examined the cameo for interminable minutes, and Watson in turn observed him. He allowed his hands the freedom to stroke Holmes’s back, his hair, and to trace the line of his cheek, his nose, his jaw. Holmes was not precisely a handsome man, but he had inspired an unparalleled devotion in Watson from the first, and since returning from beyond the grave, he had compelled the blood in Watson’s veins as if by thrall. Watson wished to take all Holmes was into himself, soak in the elements of him, merge their cores. It did not feel low or deviant. He felt an abiding peace and lightness. He rose up, thwarting Holmes’s inspection, and cradled his head in his hands.
“Would you ever have broken your silence?” he asked. “Or would we have gone on as we were until we were in our dotage?”
The magnifying glass dropped to the mattress beside him, and Holmes folded himself around Watson in a great tangle he was content to remain in always.
“I am sure on my deathbed I would have had nothing left to lose,” Holmes said against Watson’s neck.
“Hush,” Watson said. “Do not speak so.”
“Kiss me again, then.”
Watson did, and did, and did.
*
Later, tracing the lines of Watson’s cameo once more, Holmes asked, “And you, my dear? How long would it have taken you?”
Watson, drowsy with contentment and warmth, hummed in consideration.
“Surely you would have deduced it the next time you did something dear and infuriating and I could no longer hold back from kissing you.”
“My powers of observation are indeed great, Watson.”
“There, you see? You would have sorted it out forthwith.”
“I’m afraid I love you most acutely, Watson.”
“And I you, Holmes. Do you still envy our Forsaken friend?”
“He gets to solve crimes done by madmen; of course I do, a bit.”
“Holmes, however shall I put up with you?”
“You must — it is written on your skin.”
Watson caught Holmes’s hand hovering again over his heart and pressed his lips to the centre of his palm.
“It is the blood in my veins and the beat of my heart, Holmes,” he said. “Nothing so impermanent as skin ties me to you.”
Holmes turned his hand over to cup Watson’s cheek and to rub his thumb over Watson’s kiss-swollen lips.
“This happiness, Watson. I am not certain I can bear it.”
Watson smiled sleepily and drew Holmes down to his chest.
“We will muddle through.”
Holmes settled on Watson’s breast. The last thing Watson was conscious of before he succumbed to sleep was the flutter of Holmes’s eyelashes against his cameo.
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Date: 2012-12-08 06:10 am (UTC)So many things to admire: the way you captured Holmes so well through Watson's eyes and observations, Watson's poor lovelorn heart and how he came to terms with his "Deviance," and especially the way you were able to weave your AU into the ACD universe without missing a step.
Though I have to say, the way my heart was pounding as Holmes's cameo was revealed, I mean, it couldn't have been anyone but Watson's profile, and yet I was worried! That's how well you sucked me into this. So wonderfully done.
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Date: 2013-01-05 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-08 06:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-05 03:04 pm (UTC)Thanks so much!
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Date: 2013-01-05 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-08 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-12-08 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 01:23 am (UTC)First of all, when I saw "soulmates AU" I squealed, because I'm so glad you took that part of my likes list and went with it. The notion of the cameos is so cool and eerie and lovely, and I love that they can appear and be replaced! Moar soulmates! I also loved the case, and the resemblance Holmes had to the other gents, and how he puts himself in danger AGAIN, and can't he trusted not do that?! I love it.
Thank you so much, anon! This fic is so wonderful, and so well tailored!
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Date: 2013-01-05 03:02 pm (UTC)I'm so glad you liked this. It was a blast to write, and I just had so much fun getting to build this universe. I might even revisit it someday ;)
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Date: 2013-01-05 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-08 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-05 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-08 05:41 pm (UTC)Anyway, this is so well written, gripping full of UST on both sides – and hey, Case!fic is the ultimate challenge anyway, isn't it? Your did great!
Two tendrils of smoke rose from the silk-clad lump on the settee before it let out a grunt.
LOL. Great imagery.
Watson did, and did, and did.
♥♥♥
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Date: 2013-01-05 03:13 pm (UTC)Yes, I find casefic impossible, but I really wanted this to have a plot beyond "getting together" and which used the soulmate elements such that they were germane to the story and not simply afterthoughts.
Thanks so much for such lovely words!
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Date: 2012-12-08 06:04 pm (UTC)Also, this line made me smile, because it's so very both of them: “Surely you would have deduced it the next time you did something dear and infuriating and I could no longer hold back from kissing you.”
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Date: 2013-01-05 03:16 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for telling me what you thought! I'm so glad you liked this story.
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Date: 2012-12-08 08:03 pm (UTC)Holmes' fear of discovery at the end was wonderful. *deep sigh* Oh, these boys. Lovely story with beautiful writing.
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Date: 2013-01-05 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-12-09 05:35 am (UTC)“It will be the end of our friendship,” Holmes snapped, and Watson reeled back. “If you do this, I will remove myself from this flat, do you hear me?”
Oh, my heart. Loved the suppression and romance of this fic and your characterizations of Watson and Holmes rang true for me.
Thanks!
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Date: 2013-01-05 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 06:47 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-12-12 09:24 am (UTC)Heart-wrenching.
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Date: 2013-01-08 10:14 pm (UTC)