Chapter Text
Finality
(A Sequel to Fragility)
By L.A. Adolf
Prologue:
Leukerbad, Switzerland
Late May, seven months after the conclusion
Of the Case of the Abominable Lord Blackwood
From the Diary of John H. Watson:
The bullet wound, while far from minor, was the least of the matter. Shot from a distance by a rifle, the projectile had fenestrated through and through, resulting in, paradoxically, less damage that it would have had it lodged in bone and tissue…
Note: Holmes had pointed that remarkable detail out to me in the early days of our association, when he still haunted the dissecting rooms with some regularity and I, enthralled by his methods, had been a willing pupil of the macabre.
{why is this notation smeared and stained…oh, exhaustion and worry play tricks with me even as I write this, tears are falling onto the page that I’m not even cognizant of shedding…}
The wound, debrided surgically before I had ever arrived, was in fact, healing well. At least as well as could be expected in one so worn and run down, so obviously already quite ill before its infliction.
Of larger concern had been and continued to be the complete and total collapse, both physical and mental that had occurred almost simultaneously with the gunshot wound, the genesis of which was well established before the physical mishap. Said collapse had resulted in a brain fever which had proved systemic and which now threatened the life of the patient most immediately.
Switzerland boasts some of the most advanced medical thought of our time and the care given had been exemplary, so much so that there seemed little to do once I arrived. Control the fever which had become chronic, attempt to force fluid and sustenance into a body already wasted and wanting from overwork before the advent of illness…
{I could have prevented this! Perhaps affected the outcome before his ever having left London. Why did I not see this when he came to me in the night, afraid of air guns, full of dark tales and convoluted plans to lure Moriarty out into the open?}
… Calm an agitated patient so far into the clutches of prolonged delirium that he recognized no one in the immediate vicinity, calling out repeatedly and plaintively for those who already sat vigil at his bedside.
{Why did I not see that his request for my assistance was a mere double blind for what he really intended, that the promise to meet in Newhaven was a sham for a departure by privately contracted ship from another port entirely.}
John Watson looked up from his notebook, ignoring the crick in his neck and the cramping in fingers that held his pen too tightly, his gaze deliberately skittering across details of the sickroom before settling on the figure in the bed.
{Why was it not I who was there at Reichenbach Falls--on the Continent at all for that matter --when this long building situation came to its dramatic and tragic head?}
Sherlock Holmes, gaunt with injury and illness, was peaceful for a change, profoundly unconscious in a way that left the observer hoping that perhaps, finally, a healing rest was being obtained.
It was largely, Watson mused, bitterly, a pretty conceit. Nothing but a quiet phase in course of illness marked by remitting fever, waxing and waning delirium and a steady, implacable deterioration.
“You should be prepared,” they’d told him, his Swiss colleagues, with their sympathetic faces and understanding voices in lightly accented English, “his system cannot tolerate this strain for too much longer. It is only a matter of time now. You may want to consider saying your farewells, letting nature take its course…”
John Watson threw his notebook across the room, broke his pen in half, mindless of the spots of dark ink that erupted from the fountain and stained clothing and bedding.
He jumped up, perched on the edge of Holmes’s sick bed, leaned close, and grasped the wan face between two hands which were exquisite in their gentleness in marked contrast to the violence in the voice that broke the stillness of the sickroom.
“I. Will. Not. Say. Goodbye! Holmes, do you hear me? Damn it you will hear me!! You will not die! I will not allow it. I expect better of you, the best and wisest man I have ever known!
Watson panted, focusing all his energy on willing the eyelids, bruised looking bits of onionskin thin above sunken and dark hued eye sockets, to open.
“I am here, Holmes. Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me.”
Sobbing, Watson laid his cheek to the fevered forehead for a moment, willing himself to find the reserves of strength to put the force of his conviction into his words. “I am here. I love you. And I will NOT. Let. You. Go.”
The barest of movement, eyelashes fluttering against the skin of his jaw.
Watson reared back a few inches, loathe to relinquish that magical bit of response, but eyes hungry for proof that it was more than involuntary muscle spasm.
The brown eyes were but tiny slits in that ghastly, pale face, but they held a small degree of what might have been recognition, and the voice, heard in nothing but mindless raving for so many weeks, seemed at least a passable spectre of its usual self.
“W-Watson?”
***
Chapter 1:
To Catch the Conscience of the King
Mycroft Holmes:
The occasion of the marriage of John Hamish Watson to Miss Mary Morstan, which I attended in the company of my younger brother, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, was a solemn affair, less in the mode of a celebration and more in the tone of a wake if not a funeral.
My sibling could hardly be considered at fault for the mood of the proceedings, for he was in fine fettle, charming as only he could be when he set his mind to it, leading the toasts to the new couple and even serenading the newlyweds on his violin after the ceremony proper. He even commandeered his dear friend’s mother in law for a spirited reel about the dance floor at the post nuptial fete.
He was everything that was proper, solicitous and comradely; remarkable really, given his own feelings about Watson and the circumstances swirling about his own safety at that time.
Moriarty, feeling the heat of my brother’s dogged pursuit had responded by setting any number of his thugs against his enemy with deadly intent. My sibling had experienced several close escapes in the weeks before and after his former fellow lodger’s marriage. And Sherlock being Sherlock he quite seemed to thrive on the excitement and danger.
My nerves, on the other hand, were close to being shot clear through--and I do pride myself on being a man of imperturbable sensibilities.
I had, through my influence in the corridors of power, and thereby the new Home Secretary, managed to get Constable Clark assigned to my brother on an on-going basis. The move, though personal, bore with it some official justifiability. Moriarty and his minions were perceived as a potential public threat in the wake of the Blackwood affair, and the circumstance of the missing piece to his infernal machine was of prime interest to the government.
Clark was officially a liaison between my brother and Scotland Yard in the Moriarty matter, for my purposes the attempts on Sherlock’s life had necessitated the drafting of Clark, as replacement for the stalwart Watson. At least in the sense of an able bodied, intelligent assistant in investigations, a strong fighting arm and covert bodyguard.
Clark had proved himself invaluable during the Blackwood case, saving Sherlock’s reputation and life more than once during the course of the pursuit of the nefarious Lord. He was a hard working, dependable soul with more intelligence than any five other Yarders put together. That my brother genuinely liked Clark and thought well of his abilities, was an added bonus.
But of course, no one could truly replace the good doctor in other respects. Quite apart from whatever private feelings the two might have for each other, the loss of his influence on the rougher aspects of Sherlock’s personality and the gravitational properties that kept my brother centered was keenly felt
Where Watson had helped keep my brother’s eccentricities from overwhelming his sanity, it almost seemed that his removal from the intimacy of Sherlock’s daily life removed all the stops.
My brother, it is true, had never been particularly assiduous in his concern for his own safety. After Watson’s marriage, he became markedly less so. He also set himself a punishing lifestyle, cramming every waking hour with --if not the Moriarty case, then any and every other matter, no matter how trifling, that would keep his attention focused and his mind engaged. He took on ever larger and more fearsome opponents at the Punchbowl. Spent altogether too much time, in disguise and out, haunting the worst possible areas of London and its outliers, and less in the pursuit of clues than in forms of physical punishment.
And worse, seemed to take an almost fiendish delight in drawing Moriarty’s henchman out and upon his trail.
I had a physician --not Watson out of consideration for the man’s newlywed state and his own equilibrium --on a permanent retainer to help patch my brother back up again and again. Suffice to say that the man had a leg up on an early retirement by the spring following the events of the Blackwood case.
Things were drawing to a head with the Moriarty case in late April of that year. Sherlock had rather masterfully spun a web that would shortly ensnare not only Moriarty, but his entire organization. It wanted only a few more days and a few more details, and the case would reach a triumphal conclusion.
It was then, that word came to us, that the Professor was, as cowards are ultimately wont to do, about to abandon his fellows and make his escape to the Continent, possibly to seek asylum among the secretive and neutral Swiss.
So it was that a plan, dangerous and daring, was born, and the end of the Napoleon of crime was begun.
***