Fic: Bel Canto - 15/16 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Bel Canto
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4.7k out of 127k
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement. (AU through a Phantom of the Opera lens.)
Warnings: Violence, internalized homophobia, character death
Op. 20, No. 1
Op. 20, No. 2
Op. 20, No. 3
Op. 20, No. 4
Op. 20, No. 5
Op. 20, No. 6
Op. 20, No. 7
Op. 20, No. 8
Op. 20, No. 9
Op. 20, No. 10
Op. 20, No. 11
Op. 20, No. 12
Op. 20, No. 13
Op. 20, No. 14
Op. 20, No. 15
Op. 20, No. 16
His feet know the way regardless of the dark. Revolver in one hand, the other tracing the wall, he follows the turns until the guidance of memory is exhausted. Standing in the tunnel, he fishes out his matches, hissing as his knuckles brush against the inside of his jacket. He lights a match and assures himself of his bearings. Vernet’s chambers are on his right.
He listens at the door to the chambers but hears nothing. Before he shakes out his match, he glances at his knuckles, the skin red and scraped. It takes him a moment of venturing forward to remember punching Beaumont. He has other things on his mind.
Going forward into the dark, his footsteps echo. They’ll hear him coming regardless of what he does. He can only hope it won’t force Zucco’s hand. Any man who commits murder in cold blood can only be more dangerous with his back against the wall.
The tunnel turns. The butt of his revolver in his mouth, John lights a few more matches to check his course. There are forks as well as turns, and John has only been this way once before. He starts down one fork, uncertain, and rats scatter out of his way. A few steps farther and he turns back. He sets down the other fork and no rats flee from his path, already frightened away before him. At the next fork, there are no animals present in either direction.
Following the sounds of water and the stench of filth, John presses on with his heart in his mouth alongside his gun. When his jaw aches, he gives in and pockets it for the sake of his light. Without a hand cupped around the flame, it goes right out. He berates himself with every step for not taking a lantern. If he has to fire, he’ll have to drop his matchbox or his match. Either way, he’ll soon be left in the dark. Any shot will have to count.
More echoes from ahead now, though those might be only his own, distorted by the tunnels. He sees it in this moment of doubt: a skid mark in the slime. Someone slipped here. And there, on the wall: the slide of a hand against the grime and mould. And there, ahead, even better: someone brushed his arm here. It’s metal, a metal bar in the wall, a strange and rusted feature in this tunnel of stone and brick and concrete.
A moment of peering at it explains the mystery. This was to be a gate. John passes through it and the tunnel widens immediately. No, not widens. It opens into a great chamber. He lifts his tiny light as high as he dares. To his right, a wide doorway set into the long wall. Before him, unknown space. To his left, the darkness looms even further. The stink fights its way into nostrils he’d thought desensitized.
He steps into the new chamber with an unexpected splash. Freezing water instantly floods into his shoes. He swears once, reflexively, and the curse echoes off wall and water until he might as well have shouted. The profanity drowns out the trickling and dripping of water. He tries to take a step forward but the water merely sloshes, well over his ankles.
The echo changes, distorts, a curse deformed into a laugh. Inexcusable seconds pass before John realises this is no trick of the tunnels but a true laugh at his expense.
“Look, my dear: we have a guest!”
Zucco’s voice echoes through the great chamber, bouncing off the walls until it might come from any direction at all. Knowing it can’t be from his right or behind him, John performs a quarter turn to his left, revolver aimed chest high into the darkness beyond the reach of his tiny, flickering light. He adjusts his fingers, the tips of them close to singed.
“I had hoped you would come,” Zucco continues, his voice dripping from a thousand sodden bricks. “I must say, you’ve made my night so much easier.”
“Let him go,” John speaks quietly into the dark. Their words mingle in the damp air, but John’s die first.
Zucco laughs. “The pet defends the master. How sweet!”
“John, run!”
The shout anchors John instantly. He pinpoints the source. Holmes is far, far to the left of the entrance John had used, and John would wager much that Zucco is close beside him.
“Let me see him,” John orders.
“Be my guest, Doctor. By all means, come closer.”
John’s match burns out. He drops it and the last red glow vanishes with a tiny hiss. “You didn’t come this far in the dark,” John says. “Light your lantern.”
“Hmmm... No. I don’t think I will.”
“Good,” John says. “The longer you keep standing there, the longer the police have to find the exits.”
Zucco giggles, a high-pitch noise doubtlessly calculated to disorient. It bounds off the ceiling and John looks up automatically before Zucco says, “No, I don’t think that will happen either.”
“If Holmes knows them, his brother does, and he’ll have told the police by now.”
“I’m sure he has. I’m also sure the police are just a bit busy with the great big fire upstairs.”
“You left a bomb in the opera house,” John half-assumes, half-realises.
“What, did you think I wouldn’t?” Zucco’s voice comes abruptly from John’s right. John fights down the urge to aim his gun on the far wall. “I’ll admit, it is a disappointment you keep surviving. You’re very annoying.”
“So’s arson.”
Zucco laughs as if delighted. Holmes remains silent.
“Holmes?” John calls. “Are you all right?” Is there a noose about his neck or a gun trained upon his back?
“Fine,” Holmes says, one word and one alone, regardless of how it echoes. John waits for more, aches for more, and then Holmes adds, “Don’t shoot. The curvature of the tunnel will cause a ricochet, and it’s not unheard of for bullets to bounce off of water.”
John doesn’t lower his revolver for a moment. “Zucco, let him go.”
“You can’t possibly believe that’s my real name.”
“I don’t care what your name is. Let him go.”
“Watson, go back,” Holmes instructs in a thin voice. “I have the situation under control. Go back.”
“Which does he have on you?” John asks. “Gun or knife?”
He hears a sharp inhalation and sloshes forward without thinking. The freezing damp splashes up to his knees.
“John, no! Go back. Exit the platform the same way you came in.”
Platform? John mouths. His eyes widen as he realises where he is, as he realises what the large archway on his right had been when he entered. That was the Underground tunnel itself, not another path for foot traffic. This is the loading platform. What John had mistaken for a great, rectangular room with a submerged floor is actually a great, rectangular room with a sudden, gaping drop hidden beneath black, glassy water.
Zucco needs Holmes to guide him out. Holmes will need light to guide him out. If Zucco has light, John can shoot him. As long as they remain in the dark, they remain stalemated-unless Zucco decides to hurt Holmes. Perhaps John can stall Zucco here until the police manage to track them down, but if there is a knife to Holmes’ back and ricochet is a danger, John’s not sure he wants to risk the police.
Considering all of these things, John makes his choice.
He shifts back toward the wall. He keeps his left hand out toward the wall. His fingertips find damp stone. If he glides his foot forward, still underwater, it still makes noise, but much less noise.
To cover the sound, he calls out, “What is your real name, then? You’ve burnt down my house and my workplace now-I’d like something in return.”
“Oh, I’m just Jim,” Zucco answers, his voice lilting rapidly into an Irish accent. “After all, I might let you live after this, for a bit. Be a shame to let you know.”
“O’Brien, Moriarty, or MacDonald,” Holmes rattles off. “The former owner, Mr O’Connell, had no legitimate children, but he did have an eye for Irish chorus girls. The moment they would begin to show, he would sack them.”
Zucco laughs. “Oh, good! And how long have you been working on that?”
“When I realised how strange it was for someone to seek revenge on a patron who swooped in and saved this opera house. The more I dug into the records, the more mismanagement I found. Mycroft paid your father off handsomely. More handsomely than he deserved, is that it?”
The longer Holmes keeps talking, the longer John has before his silence arouses suspicion or his voice gives his position away. The closer John creeps, the better an idea he gathers of where Zucco is. Not too much farther ahead. He hopes. He thinks.
“He drank himself to death with it before I could kill him,” Zucco explains, his tone bordering on conversational. Without warning, his honeyed voice breaks into a roar: “I had to go all the way to Australia!”
The shout echoes. Hand on the wall guiding him, John eases forward in the din. His hand finds metal, the bars of another gate, another barrier set into the wall.
“I imagine you were transported there easily enough,” Holmes quips. “Returning must have been the issue.”
“Oh, I hate boats, Mr Holmes.” Zucco’s voice laughs down at them from every angle. “For some reason, being on them is always absolute murder.”
Holmes grows very, very quiet. John’s sloshing turns abruptly audible. Faint, but audible. John keeps his breathing steady, free of gasps or cursing.
“You didn’t need to kill her,” Holmes says, voice low.
“Technically, I don’t need to kill anyone, but where’s the fun in that? Oh, no, no, no. Don’t be boring. I’ve only kept you alive because you’re not boring. You wouldn’t want to spoil that now, would you?”
A loud splash and Zucco laughs. Holmes hisses in the dark, presumably from having fetid water splashed at him, but the water and laughter echo wildly over him.
Under the cover of this noise, John sloshes forward to where he thinks Holmes is, revolver still aimed torso-high.
“A childish murderer, how quaint.”
Zucco splashes again, unexpectedly close, and the water smacks against John’s knees. “There he is!” Zucco shouts.
John turns toward his voice, turns and turns again, unable to see, unable to shoot, and then, with a rough scrape down the entirety of his face, a rope seizes about his neck. Zucco grunts and the rope drags John backward, banging him against a metal gate and pulling inexorably upward.
John grabs at the noose. The frantic splashing of his legs swallows the sound of his revolver dropping into the water. His back hits again against the gate, a metal bar above his head serving as a pulley.
“John!” Holmes shouts.
Red spots flare in the darkness, blooming inside John’s eyes. Forced high, straining on tiptoe, John chokes on his little remaining air. The rough rope digs into his neck as if set on burrowing through his skin to reach his very spine. Grabbing at the rope over his head only tightens the knot, but he realises this all too belatedly.
“We are going to discuss this very quickly, Mr Holmes,” Zucco states, cold and calm and another man entirely. “Same deal, new incentive.”
“John, stop thrashing!” Against Zucco’s chill, Holmes is heated panic, and John is all too willing to join him.
John grabs at the gate, tries to climb it, but Zucco takes out the slack as quickly as John can claim it. Each inch he climbs only creates a longer fall when his arms give out. His feet no longer brushing the floor, his arm on the gate giving out, John struggles to free the scissors from his inner coat pocket.
“Go on,” Zucco urges. “You can save him. It isn’t difficult.”
“Yes!” Holmes spits. “Yes, fine!”
Zucco adds a few inches of slack and John drops back into the water. He manages one rattling gasp before Zucco hauls the line tight once more. Just barely, John doesn’t drop the scissors.
“You do realise there’s a flaw in the plan now?” Zucco asks.
“Only one?” Holmes counters dryly. His returned poise gives John something to hold onto. His voice, even echoing as it does in the darkness, is a well-known comfort. Vernet in the dark. Always Vernet in the dark.
One miniscule sip of air at a time, John continues to breathe. Then, his hand shaking, he eases the scissors open and reaches above his head.
“The way out was worth the letter,” Zucco says, and John’s heart begins to pound even more wildly in his throat against the rope. He’d thought there was nothing incriminating in the letter. He’d made certain of it, or he’d thought he had. God, what if he hadn’t?
“Buy his freedom with my own,” Zucco continues. “A simple exchange. Now, what is the rest of his life worth to you?”
“If you want to stick me in a basement and force me to write for you, I can promise it won’t work. Believe me, I have tried that before.”
In the darkness there is the pause and impatient sigh of a man rolling his eyes. For that pause, John stops his slow, ineffectual sawing. “Your opera would say otherwise,” Zucco says.
“Dr Watson happens to be integral to my process. Therefore, strangling him to death would be counterproductive in the extreme.”
“Mm, I don’t think so. I will say, I did like the idea of hiding you away and letting your brother think you dead. Such a shame we have a witness now.” The rope tightens once more, and John digs the edge of the blade into the rope. “I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all, my dear.”
The blade catches, begins to pull down with John’s weight beneath it. He’ll shave the rope at this rate, not cut through it. He keeps trying anyway, straining for breath and knowing it will still come to nothing. Holding the scissors open means holding a blade and handle both in one hand, and the edge cuts into his skin.
Holmes steps forward.
“Ah, ah,” Zucco chides. “No. You stay where you are. I only need one hand for him. Unlike your precious soldier, I still have my gun.”
“You won’t shoot me,” Holmes says. He does not step forward again.
“I won’t want to shoot you,” Zucco allows. “I didn’t want to kill Miss Adler either, but I’m sure you understand there are simply some things an artist must do for his art. To destroy anything, you must take out its heart, do you understand? To destroy your opera house, remove Miss Adler. To destroy your brother? Here you are.”
“You don’t know my brother very well.”
Zucco tugs on the rope, jerking John higher and into an involuntary thrash. “I’m willing to take that risk.”
Zucco says something more, but John’s attention wanders as colours bloom into the dark, a rosy and violet swirl. Twitching, trembling, John’s arm tries to fall. His hand hurts. He might be bleeding, the blade in his palm. He thinks he’s bleeding. This is a terrible place for an open wound. Can’t get it wet. Infection.
Vernet’s voice in the dark. Holmes’. Theirs, his.
John’s arm fights to fall. His fingers twitch about the scissors.
Another tug on the rope and he feels it, he feels the tear, the pulling away. Relief hovers out of sight in the endless subterranean night.
“What’s this?” Zucco shouts into John’s haze. “What have you done now?”
John crashes to his knees. A wave of cold floods his trousers, startling him as close to consciousness as he can climb. Did the rope snap? A renewed tug on his neck answers this question in the negative. Zucco let him fall. Why...? To force him to stand anew or die in the attempt?
A hand finds his in the dark, his bleeding hand wrapped tight about the scissors. A hand smaller than his own, weaker than his own, and yet it pulls the scissors away from him with absolute ease. John’s arm falls and, once dropped, refuses to again be raised. The fingers of his other hand attempt without success to work their way beneath the noose. Tingling and uncoordinated, they’re far too large.
“A pair of scissors?” Zucco asks. “Really, Doctor? Ugh, you’ve bled all over them!” He tsks and pulls, and John staggers back to his feet, swinging and swaying. He hears the scissors snap shut. He hears the rapid splashes of movement. He hears these things without registering them, and then he falls back to the submerged floor, his knees blazing in pain against the tile.
Dazed, confused, lights pulsing before his eyes, John hugs his hand against his chest. Can’t get it wet. Infection. He remembers air almost as an afterthought. He pulls and fumbles, the pounding in his head almost overpowering the sounds of splashing, of thrashing.
Holmes, Zucco. Grappling. John tries to stand, tries to help, and can only continue to kneel. Even that, he only just manages. Water hits his face as the pair struggles, unseen.
Blackness looms behind darkness, a rounder, deceptively warm blackness against the cold dark. John keeps fumbling at the noose. He pulls the knot to the front, holds it beneath his chin, and manages to work it looser. Not loose, but looser.
Air. A sip of it. A mouthful in this vacuum.
Light blazes, a sudden burst of light between eye and eyelid, between John and utter blaskness. His head swims. His left hand, his non-bleeding hand, searches the water at his side. His fingers touch tile rather than his revolver.
A joint shout heralds a loud splash before him. Again, water strikes his face. He tightens his injured hand on his waistcoat. Gunpowder, he thinks sluggishly. His gunpowder will be wet. Can’t shoot. Can’t help.
Wobbling on his knees, sitting on his legs, he listens for the fight only to realise he can’t. He can’t hear it. Splashes echo, but only splashes, small ones now.
He is damnably slow to piece the sounds together: they’ve fallen. Off the platform, into the void. An occasional slap hits the water. John hears someone break the surface, hears a single, desperate gasp, and hears no more.
The gasp echoes, echoes, and dies.
Off the walls, off the arched ceiling, off the water, John’s harsh breathing returns to him, filling up his straining ears. His pounding heart hides any subtler sounds. He breathes and waits, body shaking, mind numb.
Inch by reluctant inch, he pulls the noose off his head. He looks to the water, to the gap between the platforms, although he can see nothing.
He hears it instead. The abrupt, flailing splash. The heaving gasp.
John sits and he shakes with shivers and strain, and he waits, noose in hand, to know which one it is.
“John...!”
John tosses him the noose. It falls short, pathetically so, but when John reaches for the other end of the rope, he feels it grow taut. The pulley effect of the metal gate is the only reason he has enough strength to act as ballast to Holmes.
“Are you all right?” Holmes demands. “Tell me, are you all right?”
Holmes crashes into him in the dark, his knee hitting John’s shoulder, and a wet slap of cloth hits John’s cheek. John frowns, utterly confused, only to realise what this is.
He begins to giggle.
He cannot stop. He cannot breathe, but he cannot stop.
Ice cold and dripping, Holmes’ hands go to his neck, to the sides of his face, and back to his neck. The spreading damp seeps into John’s collar. “Can you breathe? What’s wrong?”
In reply, John reaches up with a shaking hand and tugs at Holmes’ costume. The giggles continue.
At first stunned into silence, Holmes too begins to laugh. It’s a quiet sound, a nearly silent snicker. It is, without question, the most charming, most comforting, warmest sound Holmes has ever made, be it through voice or bow. John loves it utterly. There is nothing to do but to love it utterly.
“Suitably dramatic attire for being blackmailed by an arsonist,” Holmes says by means of explanation. “By which I mean, he didn’t let us stop and change. Greatcoats only, but I’m afraid mine is waterlogged at the moment.”
John rasps in his attempt to respond. He nods instead, but it comes out as more of a lolling than a deliberate nodding. It must, because Holmes holds his head still for him. John shudders involuntarily in the cold, clammy grip.
“Do you still have matches?” Holmes asks.
John nods again, his head shifting between Holmes’ palms. Holmes’ fingers curl against his scalp. John’s hand fumbles into his pocket. His matchbox is wet on one side, but, a minor miracle under the circumstances, the match heads all lie upon the other side.
His hands shake together, the right stinging terribly across the palm, and Holmes takes the matches from him when John fails to light them. Holmes strikes a match. The sudden light blazes between them, absolutely blinding. Even once John blinks his eyes clear, Holmes’ face remains half-shadow, rendered all the stranger by the remains of greasepaint and water.
John forces out his question in a rough mumble.
“I’m looking for it,” Holmes says, as if this is an answer. He hands John the matchbox and, the tiny light in one hand, gropes about beneath the water with the other. “Ah! Your revolver.”
John accepts it with a nod and somehow manages to pocket it. He repeats his question.
“He’s dead,” Holmes says, as if John couldn’t ascertain that for himself by the distinct lack of anyone else surfacing from the water.
John shakes his head. He tugs on the front of Holmes’ Roman uniform. The match goes out with a hiss as Holmes brings his ear to John’s mouth.
“Are you all right?” John manages.
Holmes pulls back and lights another match. He holds the flame higher this time, and John jerks his head back, squinting reflexively. Holmes peers at him oddly before stating, “I’m fine.”
“Didn’t hurt you?”
“Only threatened,” Holmes replies.
John nods, relieved and so abruptly drained. He could collapse on Holmes. He wants to. He wants to lie down. If this involved something other than putting his entire body in a freezing, dirty puddle, he would.
Holmes’ free hand returns to John’s shoulder. This is how John knows he was swaying. He only feels dizzy in hindsight.
“You’re bleeding,” Holmes says, as if this is a terrible and dire circumstance.
Letting go of his waistcoat, John shows Holmes his hand. Holmes brings the match near. It’s not that bad. Some stitching required. He wiggles his fingers, just in case, and they all respond. Not as well as they should, but none of him responds as well as it should.
Holmes touches John’s chest rather than his palm. “Is all the blood from your hand?”
Nearly falling forward, John nods. Holmes shifts accordingly. John sinks against Holmes’ side. He forces himself to keep his head up, to keep his airway open. Breathing is as sublime as it is exhausting.
The match burns out. Holmes doesn’t light another. All turns to quiet, two men breathing in the dark.
“We need to dry off,” Holmes whispers eventually. John may have fallen asleep on him, or perhaps he only drifted. “I’m freezing. Can you stand?”
“Letter,” John mumbles. “Blackmail?”
“What?”
“He said, a letter.”
“Still on his body, I’m afraid,” Holmes replies. “It should be quite illegible by now, or will be by the time anyone fishes him out. Come here, stand.” Somehow, they stagger onto their feet. John wraps an arm about Holmes’ shoulder. Holmes lights another match and finds his bearings. “I’ve no idea what you were thinking,” Holmes adds as they stagger off.
“What I was thinking?”
“Writing anything down, let alone leaving it out in the open.”
In a newspaper, John doesn’t have time to correct.
“He was going to show it to the police if they caught him, you realise,” Holmes continues. “I could hardly take it back from him while at gunpoint, so I agreed to show him the way out in exchange for it.”
“Show them what?” John rasps.
Holmes groans. “Your letter!”
“Did he even let you read it?”
“I saw it! You used the envelope, you used my scarf pin--”
“And I wrote ‘sorry I shouted’.”
Holmes very nearly drops him. As it is, they stumble at the step into drier tunnels and Holmes has to light another match. “You wrote what?”
Blinking at both the flame and the question, John asks, “Did I need to write anything?” The materials had no significance to anyone but him and Holmes.
Holmes stares at him in the flickering, infinitesimal light. “You... He bluffed.” Holmes takes so long to process this that he singes his fingers. Another match lit, Holmes says in a tone of dull despair and possible apology, “I’m an idiot.”
John nods. The motion is at last enough to exhaust his neck. Spent, he drops his head on Holmes’ shoulder. Holmes gathers him tighter against his side.
“I’ll never write you anything incriminating,” John whispers with effort.
“But you will write to me.”
Pressed so close, a nod could be mistaken for a nuzzle. John risks the motion all the same.
Holmes breathes as if he has only now surfaced from beneath the water. “And...if I were to visit Mrs Hudson on occasion?”
“I’d like to talk about that without bombs above us,” John says. His cold arms must be frozen around Holmes’ torso. It will be difficult to drag Holmes to safety at this rate.
“Was he lying about that, too, I wonder...? I suppose the ambient temperature will tell us.” With that, Holmes resumes his slow, careful shuffling. He shivers against John, so terribly underdressed for anywhere outside of the hot stage lights.
Staggering, supporting one another, they force themselves through an endless journey. Hope reshapes echoes into more promising sounds. They are nearly at Holmes’ old rooms before any of those promises are fulfilled.
“Holmes! Dr Watson!”
“Here!” Holmes shouts. “Here, Inspector!”
Inspector Lestrade rounds the corner with a pair of lamps and three policemen. Flanked by Hopkins and his fire axe, Miss Hooper follows on their heels. Lestrade swears at the sight of them. Miss Hooper immediately says “I’ll fetch a blanket!” and vanishes with one of the lanterns. With a worried wave to John, Hopkins vanishes after her.
“What happened?” Inspector Lestrade asks.
“Self-defence,” Holmes responds. He presents John in his bloody waistcoat as if as evidence. John comes close to falling down.
Lestrade eyes the tunnel behind them for a moment. “Dead?” he asks John.
John nods.
Lestrade nods back. “Let’s get you both upstairs.”
“No bomb?” Holmes asks.
“A few fires, but we did have the brigade standing by,” Lestrade answers.
John very nearly collapses, perhaps with relief, perhaps with simple exhaustion, and Holmes clutches him upright.
One of the officers steps forward. “I can take him, sir.”
“Let Dr Watson have his pride, Sergeant,” Holmes snaps, renewing his grip on John all the tighter. His hold nevertheless remains weak.
“It’s all right,” John says. Frankly, he could be carried out at this point and not mind.
Holmes doesn’t move as John leaves his side. Inspector Lestrade moves instead and takes hold of Holmes.
“Mrs Hudson will want to see you when you recover,” John adds as the sergeant takes him by the arm. John droops against the officer despite his best efforts.
“I’ll stop by,” Holmes agrees, sagging against Lestrade. Relief rivals the exhaustion in his voice.
Dripping less and bleeding lighter, they continue on into the world above.
previous | next
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4.7k out of 127k
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement. (AU through a Phantom of the Opera lens.)
Warnings: Violence, internalized homophobia, character death
Op. 20, No. 1
Op. 20, No. 2
Op. 20, No. 3
Op. 20, No. 4
Op. 20, No. 5
Op. 20, No. 6
Op. 20, No. 7
Op. 20, No. 8
Op. 20, No. 9
Op. 20, No. 10
Op. 20, No. 11
Op. 20, No. 12
Op. 20, No. 13
Op. 20, No. 14
Op. 20, No. 15
Op. 20, No. 16
His feet know the way regardless of the dark. Revolver in one hand, the other tracing the wall, he follows the turns until the guidance of memory is exhausted. Standing in the tunnel, he fishes out his matches, hissing as his knuckles brush against the inside of his jacket. He lights a match and assures himself of his bearings. Vernet’s chambers are on his right.
He listens at the door to the chambers but hears nothing. Before he shakes out his match, he glances at his knuckles, the skin red and scraped. It takes him a moment of venturing forward to remember punching Beaumont. He has other things on his mind.
Going forward into the dark, his footsteps echo. They’ll hear him coming regardless of what he does. He can only hope it won’t force Zucco’s hand. Any man who commits murder in cold blood can only be more dangerous with his back against the wall.
The tunnel turns. The butt of his revolver in his mouth, John lights a few more matches to check his course. There are forks as well as turns, and John has only been this way once before. He starts down one fork, uncertain, and rats scatter out of his way. A few steps farther and he turns back. He sets down the other fork and no rats flee from his path, already frightened away before him. At the next fork, there are no animals present in either direction.
Following the sounds of water and the stench of filth, John presses on with his heart in his mouth alongside his gun. When his jaw aches, he gives in and pockets it for the sake of his light. Without a hand cupped around the flame, it goes right out. He berates himself with every step for not taking a lantern. If he has to fire, he’ll have to drop his matchbox or his match. Either way, he’ll soon be left in the dark. Any shot will have to count.
More echoes from ahead now, though those might be only his own, distorted by the tunnels. He sees it in this moment of doubt: a skid mark in the slime. Someone slipped here. And there, on the wall: the slide of a hand against the grime and mould. And there, ahead, even better: someone brushed his arm here. It’s metal, a metal bar in the wall, a strange and rusted feature in this tunnel of stone and brick and concrete.
A moment of peering at it explains the mystery. This was to be a gate. John passes through it and the tunnel widens immediately. No, not widens. It opens into a great chamber. He lifts his tiny light as high as he dares. To his right, a wide doorway set into the long wall. Before him, unknown space. To his left, the darkness looms even further. The stink fights its way into nostrils he’d thought desensitized.
He steps into the new chamber with an unexpected splash. Freezing water instantly floods into his shoes. He swears once, reflexively, and the curse echoes off wall and water until he might as well have shouted. The profanity drowns out the trickling and dripping of water. He tries to take a step forward but the water merely sloshes, well over his ankles.
The echo changes, distorts, a curse deformed into a laugh. Inexcusable seconds pass before John realises this is no trick of the tunnels but a true laugh at his expense.
“Look, my dear: we have a guest!”
Zucco’s voice echoes through the great chamber, bouncing off the walls until it might come from any direction at all. Knowing it can’t be from his right or behind him, John performs a quarter turn to his left, revolver aimed chest high into the darkness beyond the reach of his tiny, flickering light. He adjusts his fingers, the tips of them close to singed.
“I had hoped you would come,” Zucco continues, his voice dripping from a thousand sodden bricks. “I must say, you’ve made my night so much easier.”
“Let him go,” John speaks quietly into the dark. Their words mingle in the damp air, but John’s die first.
Zucco laughs. “The pet defends the master. How sweet!”
“John, run!”
The shout anchors John instantly. He pinpoints the source. Holmes is far, far to the left of the entrance John had used, and John would wager much that Zucco is close beside him.
“Let me see him,” John orders.
“Be my guest, Doctor. By all means, come closer.”
John’s match burns out. He drops it and the last red glow vanishes with a tiny hiss. “You didn’t come this far in the dark,” John says. “Light your lantern.”
“Hmmm... No. I don’t think I will.”
“Good,” John says. “The longer you keep standing there, the longer the police have to find the exits.”
Zucco giggles, a high-pitch noise doubtlessly calculated to disorient. It bounds off the ceiling and John looks up automatically before Zucco says, “No, I don’t think that will happen either.”
“If Holmes knows them, his brother does, and he’ll have told the police by now.”
“I’m sure he has. I’m also sure the police are just a bit busy with the great big fire upstairs.”
“You left a bomb in the opera house,” John half-assumes, half-realises.
“What, did you think I wouldn’t?” Zucco’s voice comes abruptly from John’s right. John fights down the urge to aim his gun on the far wall. “I’ll admit, it is a disappointment you keep surviving. You’re very annoying.”
“So’s arson.”
Zucco laughs as if delighted. Holmes remains silent.
“Holmes?” John calls. “Are you all right?” Is there a noose about his neck or a gun trained upon his back?
“Fine,” Holmes says, one word and one alone, regardless of how it echoes. John waits for more, aches for more, and then Holmes adds, “Don’t shoot. The curvature of the tunnel will cause a ricochet, and it’s not unheard of for bullets to bounce off of water.”
John doesn’t lower his revolver for a moment. “Zucco, let him go.”
“You can’t possibly believe that’s my real name.”
“I don’t care what your name is. Let him go.”
“Watson, go back,” Holmes instructs in a thin voice. “I have the situation under control. Go back.”
“Which does he have on you?” John asks. “Gun or knife?”
He hears a sharp inhalation and sloshes forward without thinking. The freezing damp splashes up to his knees.
“John, no! Go back. Exit the platform the same way you came in.”
Platform? John mouths. His eyes widen as he realises where he is, as he realises what the large archway on his right had been when he entered. That was the Underground tunnel itself, not another path for foot traffic. This is the loading platform. What John had mistaken for a great, rectangular room with a submerged floor is actually a great, rectangular room with a sudden, gaping drop hidden beneath black, glassy water.
Zucco needs Holmes to guide him out. Holmes will need light to guide him out. If Zucco has light, John can shoot him. As long as they remain in the dark, they remain stalemated-unless Zucco decides to hurt Holmes. Perhaps John can stall Zucco here until the police manage to track them down, but if there is a knife to Holmes’ back and ricochet is a danger, John’s not sure he wants to risk the police.
Considering all of these things, John makes his choice.
He shifts back toward the wall. He keeps his left hand out toward the wall. His fingertips find damp stone. If he glides his foot forward, still underwater, it still makes noise, but much less noise.
To cover the sound, he calls out, “What is your real name, then? You’ve burnt down my house and my workplace now-I’d like something in return.”
“Oh, I’m just Jim,” Zucco answers, his voice lilting rapidly into an Irish accent. “After all, I might let you live after this, for a bit. Be a shame to let you know.”
“O’Brien, Moriarty, or MacDonald,” Holmes rattles off. “The former owner, Mr O’Connell, had no legitimate children, but he did have an eye for Irish chorus girls. The moment they would begin to show, he would sack them.”
Zucco laughs. “Oh, good! And how long have you been working on that?”
“When I realised how strange it was for someone to seek revenge on a patron who swooped in and saved this opera house. The more I dug into the records, the more mismanagement I found. Mycroft paid your father off handsomely. More handsomely than he deserved, is that it?”
The longer Holmes keeps talking, the longer John has before his silence arouses suspicion or his voice gives his position away. The closer John creeps, the better an idea he gathers of where Zucco is. Not too much farther ahead. He hopes. He thinks.
“He drank himself to death with it before I could kill him,” Zucco explains, his tone bordering on conversational. Without warning, his honeyed voice breaks into a roar: “I had to go all the way to Australia!”
The shout echoes. Hand on the wall guiding him, John eases forward in the din. His hand finds metal, the bars of another gate, another barrier set into the wall.
“I imagine you were transported there easily enough,” Holmes quips. “Returning must have been the issue.”
“Oh, I hate boats, Mr Holmes.” Zucco’s voice laughs down at them from every angle. “For some reason, being on them is always absolute murder.”
Holmes grows very, very quiet. John’s sloshing turns abruptly audible. Faint, but audible. John keeps his breathing steady, free of gasps or cursing.
“You didn’t need to kill her,” Holmes says, voice low.
“Technically, I don’t need to kill anyone, but where’s the fun in that? Oh, no, no, no. Don’t be boring. I’ve only kept you alive because you’re not boring. You wouldn’t want to spoil that now, would you?”
A loud splash and Zucco laughs. Holmes hisses in the dark, presumably from having fetid water splashed at him, but the water and laughter echo wildly over him.
Under the cover of this noise, John sloshes forward to where he thinks Holmes is, revolver still aimed torso-high.
“A childish murderer, how quaint.”
Zucco splashes again, unexpectedly close, and the water smacks against John’s knees. “There he is!” Zucco shouts.
John turns toward his voice, turns and turns again, unable to see, unable to shoot, and then, with a rough scrape down the entirety of his face, a rope seizes about his neck. Zucco grunts and the rope drags John backward, banging him against a metal gate and pulling inexorably upward.
John grabs at the noose. The frantic splashing of his legs swallows the sound of his revolver dropping into the water. His back hits again against the gate, a metal bar above his head serving as a pulley.
“John!” Holmes shouts.
Red spots flare in the darkness, blooming inside John’s eyes. Forced high, straining on tiptoe, John chokes on his little remaining air. The rough rope digs into his neck as if set on burrowing through his skin to reach his very spine. Grabbing at the rope over his head only tightens the knot, but he realises this all too belatedly.
“We are going to discuss this very quickly, Mr Holmes,” Zucco states, cold and calm and another man entirely. “Same deal, new incentive.”
“John, stop thrashing!” Against Zucco’s chill, Holmes is heated panic, and John is all too willing to join him.
John grabs at the gate, tries to climb it, but Zucco takes out the slack as quickly as John can claim it. Each inch he climbs only creates a longer fall when his arms give out. His feet no longer brushing the floor, his arm on the gate giving out, John struggles to free the scissors from his inner coat pocket.
“Go on,” Zucco urges. “You can save him. It isn’t difficult.”
“Yes!” Holmes spits. “Yes, fine!”
Zucco adds a few inches of slack and John drops back into the water. He manages one rattling gasp before Zucco hauls the line tight once more. Just barely, John doesn’t drop the scissors.
“You do realise there’s a flaw in the plan now?” Zucco asks.
“Only one?” Holmes counters dryly. His returned poise gives John something to hold onto. His voice, even echoing as it does in the darkness, is a well-known comfort. Vernet in the dark. Always Vernet in the dark.
One miniscule sip of air at a time, John continues to breathe. Then, his hand shaking, he eases the scissors open and reaches above his head.
“The way out was worth the letter,” Zucco says, and John’s heart begins to pound even more wildly in his throat against the rope. He’d thought there was nothing incriminating in the letter. He’d made certain of it, or he’d thought he had. God, what if he hadn’t?
“Buy his freedom with my own,” Zucco continues. “A simple exchange. Now, what is the rest of his life worth to you?”
“If you want to stick me in a basement and force me to write for you, I can promise it won’t work. Believe me, I have tried that before.”
In the darkness there is the pause and impatient sigh of a man rolling his eyes. For that pause, John stops his slow, ineffectual sawing. “Your opera would say otherwise,” Zucco says.
“Dr Watson happens to be integral to my process. Therefore, strangling him to death would be counterproductive in the extreme.”
“Mm, I don’t think so. I will say, I did like the idea of hiding you away and letting your brother think you dead. Such a shame we have a witness now.” The rope tightens once more, and John digs the edge of the blade into the rope. “I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all, my dear.”
The blade catches, begins to pull down with John’s weight beneath it. He’ll shave the rope at this rate, not cut through it. He keeps trying anyway, straining for breath and knowing it will still come to nothing. Holding the scissors open means holding a blade and handle both in one hand, and the edge cuts into his skin.
Holmes steps forward.
“Ah, ah,” Zucco chides. “No. You stay where you are. I only need one hand for him. Unlike your precious soldier, I still have my gun.”
“You won’t shoot me,” Holmes says. He does not step forward again.
“I won’t want to shoot you,” Zucco allows. “I didn’t want to kill Miss Adler either, but I’m sure you understand there are simply some things an artist must do for his art. To destroy anything, you must take out its heart, do you understand? To destroy your opera house, remove Miss Adler. To destroy your brother? Here you are.”
“You don’t know my brother very well.”
Zucco tugs on the rope, jerking John higher and into an involuntary thrash. “I’m willing to take that risk.”
Zucco says something more, but John’s attention wanders as colours bloom into the dark, a rosy and violet swirl. Twitching, trembling, John’s arm tries to fall. His hand hurts. He might be bleeding, the blade in his palm. He thinks he’s bleeding. This is a terrible place for an open wound. Can’t get it wet. Infection.
Vernet’s voice in the dark. Holmes’. Theirs, his.
John’s arm fights to fall. His fingers twitch about the scissors.
Another tug on the rope and he feels it, he feels the tear, the pulling away. Relief hovers out of sight in the endless subterranean night.
“What’s this?” Zucco shouts into John’s haze. “What have you done now?”
John crashes to his knees. A wave of cold floods his trousers, startling him as close to consciousness as he can climb. Did the rope snap? A renewed tug on his neck answers this question in the negative. Zucco let him fall. Why...? To force him to stand anew or die in the attempt?
A hand finds his in the dark, his bleeding hand wrapped tight about the scissors. A hand smaller than his own, weaker than his own, and yet it pulls the scissors away from him with absolute ease. John’s arm falls and, once dropped, refuses to again be raised. The fingers of his other hand attempt without success to work their way beneath the noose. Tingling and uncoordinated, they’re far too large.
“A pair of scissors?” Zucco asks. “Really, Doctor? Ugh, you’ve bled all over them!” He tsks and pulls, and John staggers back to his feet, swinging and swaying. He hears the scissors snap shut. He hears the rapid splashes of movement. He hears these things without registering them, and then he falls back to the submerged floor, his knees blazing in pain against the tile.
Dazed, confused, lights pulsing before his eyes, John hugs his hand against his chest. Can’t get it wet. Infection. He remembers air almost as an afterthought. He pulls and fumbles, the pounding in his head almost overpowering the sounds of splashing, of thrashing.
Holmes, Zucco. Grappling. John tries to stand, tries to help, and can only continue to kneel. Even that, he only just manages. Water hits his face as the pair struggles, unseen.
Blackness looms behind darkness, a rounder, deceptively warm blackness against the cold dark. John keeps fumbling at the noose. He pulls the knot to the front, holds it beneath his chin, and manages to work it looser. Not loose, but looser.
Air. A sip of it. A mouthful in this vacuum.
Light blazes, a sudden burst of light between eye and eyelid, between John and utter blaskness. His head swims. His left hand, his non-bleeding hand, searches the water at his side. His fingers touch tile rather than his revolver.
A joint shout heralds a loud splash before him. Again, water strikes his face. He tightens his injured hand on his waistcoat. Gunpowder, he thinks sluggishly. His gunpowder will be wet. Can’t shoot. Can’t help.
Wobbling on his knees, sitting on his legs, he listens for the fight only to realise he can’t. He can’t hear it. Splashes echo, but only splashes, small ones now.
He is damnably slow to piece the sounds together: they’ve fallen. Off the platform, into the void. An occasional slap hits the water. John hears someone break the surface, hears a single, desperate gasp, and hears no more.
The gasp echoes, echoes, and dies.
Off the walls, off the arched ceiling, off the water, John’s harsh breathing returns to him, filling up his straining ears. His pounding heart hides any subtler sounds. He breathes and waits, body shaking, mind numb.
Inch by reluctant inch, he pulls the noose off his head. He looks to the water, to the gap between the platforms, although he can see nothing.
He hears it instead. The abrupt, flailing splash. The heaving gasp.
John sits and he shakes with shivers and strain, and he waits, noose in hand, to know which one it is.
“John...!”
John tosses him the noose. It falls short, pathetically so, but when John reaches for the other end of the rope, he feels it grow taut. The pulley effect of the metal gate is the only reason he has enough strength to act as ballast to Holmes.
“Are you all right?” Holmes demands. “Tell me, are you all right?”
Holmes crashes into him in the dark, his knee hitting John’s shoulder, and a wet slap of cloth hits John’s cheek. John frowns, utterly confused, only to realise what this is.
He begins to giggle.
He cannot stop. He cannot breathe, but he cannot stop.
Ice cold and dripping, Holmes’ hands go to his neck, to the sides of his face, and back to his neck. The spreading damp seeps into John’s collar. “Can you breathe? What’s wrong?”
In reply, John reaches up with a shaking hand and tugs at Holmes’ costume. The giggles continue.
At first stunned into silence, Holmes too begins to laugh. It’s a quiet sound, a nearly silent snicker. It is, without question, the most charming, most comforting, warmest sound Holmes has ever made, be it through voice or bow. John loves it utterly. There is nothing to do but to love it utterly.
“Suitably dramatic attire for being blackmailed by an arsonist,” Holmes says by means of explanation. “By which I mean, he didn’t let us stop and change. Greatcoats only, but I’m afraid mine is waterlogged at the moment.”
John rasps in his attempt to respond. He nods instead, but it comes out as more of a lolling than a deliberate nodding. It must, because Holmes holds his head still for him. John shudders involuntarily in the cold, clammy grip.
“Do you still have matches?” Holmes asks.
John nods again, his head shifting between Holmes’ palms. Holmes’ fingers curl against his scalp. John’s hand fumbles into his pocket. His matchbox is wet on one side, but, a minor miracle under the circumstances, the match heads all lie upon the other side.
His hands shake together, the right stinging terribly across the palm, and Holmes takes the matches from him when John fails to light them. Holmes strikes a match. The sudden light blazes between them, absolutely blinding. Even once John blinks his eyes clear, Holmes’ face remains half-shadow, rendered all the stranger by the remains of greasepaint and water.
John forces out his question in a rough mumble.
“I’m looking for it,” Holmes says, as if this is an answer. He hands John the matchbox and, the tiny light in one hand, gropes about beneath the water with the other. “Ah! Your revolver.”
John accepts it with a nod and somehow manages to pocket it. He repeats his question.
“He’s dead,” Holmes says, as if John couldn’t ascertain that for himself by the distinct lack of anyone else surfacing from the water.
John shakes his head. He tugs on the front of Holmes’ Roman uniform. The match goes out with a hiss as Holmes brings his ear to John’s mouth.
“Are you all right?” John manages.
Holmes pulls back and lights another match. He holds the flame higher this time, and John jerks his head back, squinting reflexively. Holmes peers at him oddly before stating, “I’m fine.”
“Didn’t hurt you?”
“Only threatened,” Holmes replies.
John nods, relieved and so abruptly drained. He could collapse on Holmes. He wants to. He wants to lie down. If this involved something other than putting his entire body in a freezing, dirty puddle, he would.
Holmes’ free hand returns to John’s shoulder. This is how John knows he was swaying. He only feels dizzy in hindsight.
“You’re bleeding,” Holmes says, as if this is a terrible and dire circumstance.
Letting go of his waistcoat, John shows Holmes his hand. Holmes brings the match near. It’s not that bad. Some stitching required. He wiggles his fingers, just in case, and they all respond. Not as well as they should, but none of him responds as well as it should.
Holmes touches John’s chest rather than his palm. “Is all the blood from your hand?”
Nearly falling forward, John nods. Holmes shifts accordingly. John sinks against Holmes’ side. He forces himself to keep his head up, to keep his airway open. Breathing is as sublime as it is exhausting.
The match burns out. Holmes doesn’t light another. All turns to quiet, two men breathing in the dark.
“We need to dry off,” Holmes whispers eventually. John may have fallen asleep on him, or perhaps he only drifted. “I’m freezing. Can you stand?”
“Letter,” John mumbles. “Blackmail?”
“What?”
“He said, a letter.”
“Still on his body, I’m afraid,” Holmes replies. “It should be quite illegible by now, or will be by the time anyone fishes him out. Come here, stand.” Somehow, they stagger onto their feet. John wraps an arm about Holmes’ shoulder. Holmes lights another match and finds his bearings. “I’ve no idea what you were thinking,” Holmes adds as they stagger off.
“What I was thinking?”
“Writing anything down, let alone leaving it out in the open.”
In a newspaper, John doesn’t have time to correct.
“He was going to show it to the police if they caught him, you realise,” Holmes continues. “I could hardly take it back from him while at gunpoint, so I agreed to show him the way out in exchange for it.”
“Show them what?” John rasps.
Holmes groans. “Your letter!”
“Did he even let you read it?”
“I saw it! You used the envelope, you used my scarf pin--”
“And I wrote ‘sorry I shouted’.”
Holmes very nearly drops him. As it is, they stumble at the step into drier tunnels and Holmes has to light another match. “You wrote what?”
Blinking at both the flame and the question, John asks, “Did I need to write anything?” The materials had no significance to anyone but him and Holmes.
Holmes stares at him in the flickering, infinitesimal light. “You... He bluffed.” Holmes takes so long to process this that he singes his fingers. Another match lit, Holmes says in a tone of dull despair and possible apology, “I’m an idiot.”
John nods. The motion is at last enough to exhaust his neck. Spent, he drops his head on Holmes’ shoulder. Holmes gathers him tighter against his side.
“I’ll never write you anything incriminating,” John whispers with effort.
“But you will write to me.”
Pressed so close, a nod could be mistaken for a nuzzle. John risks the motion all the same.
Holmes breathes as if he has only now surfaced from beneath the water. “And...if I were to visit Mrs Hudson on occasion?”
“I’d like to talk about that without bombs above us,” John says. His cold arms must be frozen around Holmes’ torso. It will be difficult to drag Holmes to safety at this rate.
“Was he lying about that, too, I wonder...? I suppose the ambient temperature will tell us.” With that, Holmes resumes his slow, careful shuffling. He shivers against John, so terribly underdressed for anywhere outside of the hot stage lights.
Staggering, supporting one another, they force themselves through an endless journey. Hope reshapes echoes into more promising sounds. They are nearly at Holmes’ old rooms before any of those promises are fulfilled.
“Holmes! Dr Watson!”
“Here!” Holmes shouts. “Here, Inspector!”
Inspector Lestrade rounds the corner with a pair of lamps and three policemen. Flanked by Hopkins and his fire axe, Miss Hooper follows on their heels. Lestrade swears at the sight of them. Miss Hooper immediately says “I’ll fetch a blanket!” and vanishes with one of the lanterns. With a worried wave to John, Hopkins vanishes after her.
“What happened?” Inspector Lestrade asks.
“Self-defence,” Holmes responds. He presents John in his bloody waistcoat as if as evidence. John comes close to falling down.
Lestrade eyes the tunnel behind them for a moment. “Dead?” he asks John.
John nods.
Lestrade nods back. “Let’s get you both upstairs.”
“No bomb?” Holmes asks.
“A few fires, but we did have the brigade standing by,” Lestrade answers.
John very nearly collapses, perhaps with relief, perhaps with simple exhaustion, and Holmes clutches him upright.
One of the officers steps forward. “I can take him, sir.”
“Let Dr Watson have his pride, Sergeant,” Holmes snaps, renewing his grip on John all the tighter. His hold nevertheless remains weak.
“It’s all right,” John says. Frankly, he could be carried out at this point and not mind.
Holmes doesn’t move as John leaves his side. Inspector Lestrade moves instead and takes hold of Holmes.
“Mrs Hudson will want to see you when you recover,” John adds as the sergeant takes him by the arm. John droops against the officer despite his best efforts.
“I’ll stop by,” Holmes agrees, sagging against Lestrade. Relief rivals the exhaustion in his voice.
Dripping less and bleeding lighter, they continue on into the world above.
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